160281 - Clean up (Purge/Expunge/Compact) All folders on exit (property of IMAP-account)

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(MailNews Core :: Networking: IMAP, enhancement)

Description

[Walter Mueller]

From Bugzilla Helper:
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; de-AT; rv:1.0.0) Gecko/20020530
BuildID:    2002053012

Netscape 4.78 introduced this nice feature. 
When closing the last Mail&News Window messenger did expunge/compact all folders
that have been modified by the user during this session. This is an enhancement
to "Compact INBOX on exit". Feature could be selected in account-settings of
IMAP-account.

feature has diappeared in Mozilla - would be nice to be available again.

prefs.js setting in NS 4.78 was:
user_pref("mail.imap.server.our_server.cleanup_folders_on_exit", true);

Comment 1

[Gyles Harvey]

Work is happening in this area (Bug #164746, Bug# 230672) - is there any way to
raise the profile of this RFE?

I've raised Bug #223525 on Thunderbird too.

Even outlook express can do this!

Comment 2

[Roland Stuehmer]

A nice thing to have only would I recommend to default to off because this would
make Mozilla look bad performancewise on shutdown.

Compacting 40 folders (in Cyrus) via Thunderbird sometimes takes more than 10 s.
This could be your shutdown penalty. :)

Comment 3

[Martin Petricek]

Well, if thunderbird would turn into small window "Compacting folders" with some "Hide" button and perhaps some sort of progressbar, user would be aware what is happening and could clikc the "hide" to make the window go away.

Comment 5

[petr.pisar]

(In reply to comment #2)
> A nice thing to have only would I recommend to default to off because this
> would
> make Mozilla look bad performancewise on shutdown.
> 
Thus we get performance penalty on next start up. Really intelligent approach.

I'd like to see proper log out with all cleanups. Thunderbird terminates its IMAP connection by simple TCP shutdown nowadays. (I see it my IMAP server log.) I would really appreciate when I could browse mail mailbox with other client (e.g. Mutt) without bothering with deleted not-yet-expunged items.

I think solution described in comment #3 is usable. Actually, it doesn't have to be some strange small windows replacement. It could yet another notification window like mail sending notification. However there must exist button to break the expunge clean up and to exit the program immediately.

Comment 6

[Jérôme Bouat]

(In reply to comment #5)
> (In reply to comment #2)
> > A nice thing to have only would I recommend to default to off because this
> > would
> > make Mozilla look bad performancewise on shutdown.
> > 
> Thus we get performance penalty on next start up. Really intelligent
> approach.

Maybe a trade-off would be to compact all folders on exit only when it save more than a user defined disk space (default to 4 MB ?).

With this solution the user will see that the mail client:
- can close quickly (when there is no space to save
- optimize the disk space and the startup time as well when it is usefull

Comment 7

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

We aren't going to explicitly schedule compact on startup. 

Regarding the disposition of this bug ... bug 384092 comment 2 speaks to this bug, and our overall goal is to get to bug 286888.  Considering both items (but mostly bug 384092 comment 2), I'm closing this WONTFIX.