1166225 - Archive function for NNTP news post renders target Archive folder unusable until restart

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Thunderbird :: Mail Window Front End, defect)

Description

[Giangi]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; Trident/7.0; SLCC2; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; .NET CLR 3.5.30729; .NET CLR 3.0.30729; .NET4.0C; Tablet PC 2.0; MS-RTC LM 8; .NET4.0E; rv:11.0) like Gecko

Steps to reproduce:

- Select a few newsgroup post (more than 2 or 3)
- Press the Archive button (the NNTP account is configured to archive into "Local Folders)


Actual results:

- Posts remains in the NNTP folder (while the status bar shows the message "Moved X messages from...")
- The Archive folder named as the NNTP one get "stuck" and not populated, the mouse pointer is in the "wait status"
- any subsequent archiving are simply ignored


Expected results:

Posts should get moved to the Archive folder

BTW: I have found a similar bug but I'm not sure if it's the same problem (and it's fro SeaMonkey) https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=660845

Comment 1

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

Actually this sorta works. And I am surprised because I thought it was not in the original implementing spec. In fact I thought I'd find a bug report bug mentioning that it was disabled/not permitted for newsgroups. Bbut perhaps I am thinking of bug 660845 or something else, because there is clearly an Archive choice in the newsgroup account settings.

So, a fundamental question (for Blake and Joshua) is do we want to allow this "abuse" of the archive function?  Or for news, do we want users to rely on "copy"?  (which is what I have always done)


What fails (described below) is, the folder is left unusable after the article is copied, which perhaps bug 660845 comment 6 helps explain.

(In reply to Giangi from comment #0)
> Actual results:
> 
> - Posts remains in the NNTP folder (while the status bar shows the message
> "Moved X messages from...")
> - The Archive folder named as the NNTP one get "stuck" and not populated,
> the mouse pointer is in the "wait status"
> - any subsequent archiving are simply ignored

> Expected results:
> Posts should get moved to the Archive folder

Note, it's not possible to actually "move" a newsgroup post. At best you can copy.

> BTW: I have found a similar bug but I'm not sure if it's the same problem
> (and it's fro SeaMonkey) https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=660845
thanks for that reference

Comment 2

[Ronald Killmer]

To test this I visited Account Manager and picked the Mozilla news account. Then picked Copies & Folders to activate Archive and selected Archive on Local Folders.

I then selected a posting in m.s.thunderbird and right clicked. I noticed Archive was added to the context menu and used it.  Got status notice of archive taking place.  Next I navigated to LF Archive 2015 folder and messages was copied there.  However, TB behavior was odd, the mouse pointer was spinning constantly. A subsequent effort to archive additional messages failed during the same session.

My test confirms archiving of new messages is only partially functional. Clearly a process is hung as cursor spinning denotes and is probably why subsequent archive efforts failed.

Comment 3

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

There is not a hung process in this case - the spinner simply wasn't stopped only because the "move" operation didn't complete.  And subsequent copy or move efforts to the Archive folder fail because the folder is left in a state of "still in use". If a Copy had been used to do the archive instead of a move, then you wouldn't see either of these behaviors.

Comment 4

[Ronald Killmer]

The action did visually complete and was a full duplicate of the posting selected for the test. A "still in use" state does make sense as blocking efforts to repeat the archive action.

Comment 5

[Giangi]

(In reply to Wayne Mery (:wsmwk, use Needinfo for questions) from comment #1)
> So, a fundamental question (for Blake and Joshua) is do we want to allow
> this "abuse" of the archive function?  Or for news, do we want users to rely
> on "copy"?  (which is what I have always done)

Personally I would like to have the Archive function working on news too, Copy would be fine because I've configured a "clean up" limit.

> What fails (described below) is, the folder is left unusable after the
> article is copied, which perhaps bug 660845 comment 6 helps explain.

For your reference on my TB I do not have option news.allow_delete_with_no_undo but I have found option news.warn_on_delete set to False

Comment 6

[Lu Wei]

"Select a few newsgroup post (more than 2 or 3)" is not necessary; Archiving only one article will also block later archiving operations. I guess it may have something to do with deleting operation in newsgroup is not the same with mailbox. Personally I'd like to have archiving function in newsgroups, for it's very convenient to press A. But I suggest archiving in newsgroups do not combine with a deleting operation, for a valued post that let you archive should not be deleted.

Comment 7

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

news.allow_delete_with_no_undo is also not specified on my system.

But I'm fairly certain this setting is unrelated. And yes the problem is easily reproduced with just one article.

Comment 8

[Blake Winton (:bwinton) (:☕️)]

I guess I don't really see any reason not to let people archive (meaning copy) from NNTP, so we might as well.  ;)

Comment 9

[Joshua Cranmer [:jcranmer]]

(In reply to Wayne Mery (:wsmwk, use Needinfo for questions) from comment #1)
> Actually this sorta works. And I am surprised because I thought it was not
> in the original implementing spec. In fact I thought I'd find a bug report
> bug mentioning that it was disabled/not permitted for newsgroups. Bbut
> perhaps I am thinking of bug 660845 or something else, because there is
> clearly an Archive choice in the newsgroup account settings.
> 
> So, a fundamental question (for Blake and Joshua) is do we want to allow
> this "abuse" of the archive function?  Or for news, do we want users to rely
> on "copy"?  (which is what I have always done)

There's a few separate issues. One of them is the fact that news accounts don't have mail folders, so all their folders need to be ascribed to another account. But the main reason that news doesn't support archive is become someone decided 20 years ago that "delete" meant "cancel" in news folders, and so any operation which implied a delete (like move or archive) was disabled. I did cleanly separate the two actions years ago, so the only technical reason that it can't be done is that there's likely around 5 checks forbidding it from working.

Comment 10

[Ronald Killmer]

With much thought I think there may be a solution.  First off a revision of the Account Manager with addition of a News account detector that which would restrict news accounts to the Copy mode for Archiving.  This can workaround the fact News lacks mbox type folders. Forcing Copy mode sidesteps the delete/cancel issue because we are not altering the news header list.

The nice aspect of the Archive feature is the pre-configured destination folder setup through Account Manager, saving time having to navigate with the context menu Copy command.

I know this is not simple to code, but may resolve the code hanging the way it is now doing.

Comment 11

[Giangi]

(In reply to Joshua Cranmer [:jcranmer] from comment #9)
> 
> There's a few separate issues. One of them is the fact that news accounts
> don't have mail folders, so all their folders need to be ascribed to another
> account. But the main reason that news doesn't support archive is become

I do not understand... in my profile *there is* a folder for the news account and it does contains files named as the subscribed news and they do contains the messages!

Comment 13

[lee.q.1985]

Would be nice if the Archive works same way as other messages (delete and move it archive folder).

Comment 14

[Ian Neal]

See https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1718839#c13 for an explanation as to what is happening.

Comment 15

[Ian Neal]

Attachment: Bug 1166225 - Archive function for NNTP news post renders target Archive folder unusable until restart. r=mkmelin

Comment 16

[Ian Neal]

Attachment: Bug 1166225 - Archive function for NNTP news post renders target Archive folder unusable until restart - TB version. r=mkmelin

Comment 17

[Ian Neal]

SM version of this patch is over in Bug 1718839.
Could look at also "deleting" the news message after copying it in the MessageArchiver.jsm module, maybe in a follow-up?

Comment 18

[Pulsebot]

Pushed by [e-mail]:
https://hg.mozilla.org/comm-central/rev/bebbee105390
Archive function for NNTP news post renders target Archive folder unusable until restart - TB version. r=mkmelin

Comment 19

[Pulsebot]

Pushed by [e-mail]:
https://hg.mozilla.org/comm-central/rev/5797d7f754ba
follow-up to fix linting. rs=eslint DONTBUILD

Comment 20

[Rob Lemley [:rjl]]

Comment on attachment 9231247 [details]
Bug 1166225 - Archive function for NNTP news post renders target Archive folder unusable until restart - TB version. r=mkmelin

[Approval Request Comment]
User impact if declined: Broken archive folders after using archive on NNTP folder

Comment 21

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

Comment on attachment 9231247 [details]
Bug 1166225 - Archive function for NNTP news post renders target Archive folder unusable until restart - TB version. r=mkmelin

[Triage Comment]
Approved for beta

Comment 22

[Rob Lemley [:rjl]]

Thunderbird 91.0b4:
https://hg.mozilla.org/releases/comm-beta/rev/f70fe27557c8
https://hg.mozilla.org/releases/comm-beta/rev/9aa933aa11e5