1140724 - Subscribe to new imap INBOX subfolders without restart

Status: UNCONFIRMED

(MailNews Core :: Backend, defect)

Description

[hartnegg]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; rv:36.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/36.0
Build ID: 20150222232811

Steps to reproduce:

Create subfolder of INPUT (using web gateway to email system).


Actual results:

Thunderbird does not display the folder.
If I right-click the account, and select to edit the folder subscriptions, the newly created folder is shown and the checkbox is checked.
One must remove the checkmark, then re-add it.


Expected results:

If should either automatically show new folders, or permit to easily add it by showing an empty checkbox.

Comment 1

[hartnegg]

Correction: I meant INBOX, not INPUT.

Comment 2

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

hartnegg, are you still seeing this in versoin 45?

Comment 3

[hartnegg]

Works in 45.4.
Detects the new folder when it is restarted.

Comment 4

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

Thanks for the update.
I'm unclear on what correct behavior should be, so leaving this poen

Comment 5

[WADA:World Anti-bad-Duping Agency]

(In reply to hartnegg from comment #0)
> Steps to reproduce:
> Create subfolder of INPUT (using web gateway to email system).
> Actual results:
> Thunderbird does not display the folder.
> If I right-click the account, and select to edit the folder subscriptions,
> the newly created folder is shown and the checkbox is checked.
> One must remove the checkmark, then re-add it.
(In reply to hartnegg from comment #3)
> Detects the new folder when it is restarted.

There is no "automatic notification on newly created mbox/removed mbox" in protocol named IMAP.
So, some actions by user is needed in order to reflect the "newly created mbox/removed mbox by someone else" on your this Thunbird.
Subscribe, restart, which is done by you, is a "some actions by user".

> Expected results:
> If should either automatically show new folders, or permit to easily add it by showing an empty checkbox.

If an IMAP client wants to know about "newly created mbox/removed mbox by someone else" immediately, "periodical new mbox check" is needed as "periodical new mail check" is done on "new mails in Inbox".
Are you requesting volunteer developers to implement such feature for you?

IIUC, Thunderbird requests "LIST Mbox/%" when Mbox is collapsed/expanded or Mbox is double clicked while collapsed state.
"Newly created Mbox/XXX or removed Mbox/XXX by someone else" is detected by Thunderbird via the "LIST Mbox/%".

IIRC, Thunderbird shows the "newly detected mbox by LIST Mbox/%" when folder is collapsed/expanded or collapsed folder is double is expanded by double click at Folder Pane.
Does your request mean that it won't work in your environment?
If you use "Show only subscribed folders" option(Server Settings/Advanced), disable this option.
Do you still see phenomenon of that "Mbox/XXX created by someone else" is not shown by "collapse/expand or double click of account, parent mbox named Mbox"?

Comment 6

[hartnegg]

(In reply to WADA from comment #5)
> (In reply to hartnegg from comment #0)
> There is no "automatic notification on newly created mbox/removed mbox" in
> protocol named IMAP.
> So, some actions by user is needed in order to reflect the "newly created
> mbox/removed mbox by someone else" on your this Thunbird.
> Subscribe, restart, which is done by you, is a "some actions by user".

I had the impression that restarting Thunderbird does auto-detect new folders. But it did not work if they are subfolders of INBOX. Now restarting Thunderbird does detect subfolders of INBOX. Great.

> If an IMAP client wants to know about "newly created mbox/removed mbox by
> someone else" immediately, "periodical new mbox check" is needed as
> "periodical new mail check" is done on "new mails in Inbox".
> Are you requesting volunteer developers to implement such feature for you?

It is of course the number one important feature of an email client to show all emails. I think it is fair when finding new folders requires a restart. In the past I had cases in which a restart did not help, and I only got them by right-click on account, select subscribe to folders, place checkmark in front of the new folders. This was annoying.

Now I just learned that collapsing/expanding a whole account does find and subscribe to new folders. Very useful. In the past I only tried collapsing/expanding the folder which contained the new subfolder. This does not detect new subfolders. I'm not sure if it should, because that might be done quite often, and would each time cause a network request. Maybe instead the right-click menu of the account should contain an item to detect new folders, for those people who do not know that collapsing/expanding the whole account does also to that trick.