[exim-dev] Automatically removing old mail

Hello,

I brought up this topic two times now and by now accept the fact that
nobody likes it being integrated in Sieve. ;) So here is a new approach:

Some mail systems allow the concept of "rolling/automatically expiring"
mailboxes/folders which automatically remove old mail, which is useful
for newsletter lists and junk mail folders. It is important that this
function is not performed by the client, because clients usually don't
clean up during vacation.

For that reason, I suggest a Maildir extension, which allows the mail
system to remove mail. Perhaps there is a better name than expire,
because people might expect a different behaviour by that name. It is
controlled by creating a file called "expire" in maildir base directories
with a similar structure to the first line of "maildirsize": A list of
numbers with a suffix that specifies their meaning:

1000000s 86400t 100c

That would limit messages to a total of 1MByte, at most one day old and
at most 100 messages. When delivering mail, old mail will be removed
until these constraints are met.

It is still open how it should behave when delivering a 2M message.
The decision is between delivering it, rejecting and discarding it.
Right now, mail is delivered.

I have no idea if limiting the message age is really useful to anybody.
I don't care how old mails in my junk folder are, as long as they take
up too much storage.

Any opinions are appreciated.

Michael