Re: mutt/2149: _quit_ command doesn't, if there's new mail
The following reply was made to PR mutt/2149; it has been noted by GNATS.
From: Derek Martin <invalid@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: Mutt Dev List <mutt-dev@xxxxxxxx>, bug-any@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Cc:
Subject: Re: mutt/2149: _quit_ command doesn't, if there's new mail
Date: Fri, 9 Dec 2005 11:17:40 -0500
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On Fri, Dec 09, 2005 at 05:01:07PM +0100, Michael Tatge wrote:
> * On Thu, Dec 08, 2005 I wrote:
> > * On Thu, Dec 08, 2005 Zefram wrote:
> > > Michael Tatge wrote:
> > > >Still i can't confirm this.
> > >
> > > What do you mean? It doesn't happen for you?
> > >
> > > Yes. I'm using "q", to save changes and quit; that's what doesn't work.
> >
> > Ah, ok so quit not exit.
> > *testing*
> > Yeah i got that here too quite a nasty bug, annoying kind of.
>
> Come to think about it i don't think that this is a bug.
It may well not be a bug *technically*, but it is some severe suckage.
I've bumped my head on this more than once in the past, and submitted
a bug report on it. If mail is coming in very quickly (for example,
if you are fetching a large number of messages off your mail server),
it may be difficult to leave the mailbox or sync it.
No other mail client I have ever used suffers from this annoying
behavior, which leads me to conclude that there is a better way to do
it than whatever mutt is doing. I probably would have looked into
this myself, except that when I brought it up before both Thomas and
Michael Elkins seemed in agreement that this is the "right" behavior,
so there was no point.
> At least for mbox it would be very bad to sync the mailbox when changes
> (i.e. new mail arrives) are detected. Which is why mutt catches up with
> the changes first, and when changes happen fast in a short time, it
> loops until the changes stop. Not doing so would result in mail loss or
> a corrupted mailbox.
There's no reason why that should be true. If mutt locks the mailbox,
then the MDA should stop delivering mail to it, and mutt should be
able to sync. If the user wants to sync, or wants to leave the
mailbox, they should not be prevented just because new mail is
arriving... Mutt should simply obtain a lock as soon as possible,
sync the folder, and get the hell out. If it's not that simple, then
someone needs to look at what other mail clients are doing, cuz they
don't have this problem. And as far as I'm concerned, it *IS* a
problem; I agree with the OP wholeheartedly.
> It is debatable whether this fail-save behaviour should be forced on one
> file per message mailbox formats like maildir where syncing would not
> hurt but that is another question.
It should not be, because it is not necessary, and it is annoying to
the user.
--
Derek D. Martin http://www.pizzashack.org/ GPG Key ID: 0xDFBEAD02
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