285681 - Compact / expunge All Folders from Command Line

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Thunderbird :: General, enhancement)

Description

[Marc DVer]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8b2) Gecko/20050304 Firefox/1.0+
Build Identifier: version 1.0 (20041206)

For scripting purposes, it would be nice if the executable could have an
additional command line option for compacting all folders for a given account. 
One of the potential uses for this is for automated backups.  Another potential
use, specifically the one that would pertain to my case, is for automated
transfers of accounts from one location to another.  It would also be nice if
there were an indicator of some sort in the dos window that would show the
progress of the compaction.  Other programs, like 7-zip, allow for monitoring
the progress of compaction without interfering with the execution of the script
calling said program, like 7-zip.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:

Comment 1

[Peter Kupfer]

I agree very highly that this would be nice. It would work very well with the
MozBackup program.

Marking as confirmed because it does not, TMK, exist.

Comment 2

[ncgqprophet]

This would be a boon for us sysadmins, to cut down on the size of backups. In my experience, users don't (want to) understand the process of compacting their mailboxes, so if this could be done automatically (once a week, or at night perhaps) then I'd be the first to implement it.

So yes, *please* isolate the compacting process and release it as a small, standalone tool.

Comment 3

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

wontifx?

I doubt we'd ever take a patch for this and add complexity to command line (which has been highly resistent to change), now that automatic compact is the default

Comment 4

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

With compact automatic enabled by default, if the user/installation allows Thunderbird to self maintain then a fix for this bug should not be needed.

Comment 5

[Marc DVer]

I agree that it is no longer as big a deal, but some environments may still have a need for it.

In a high traffic office network administrators might want to control when compactions are done, at least when the mail stores are on a server and not the local computer. Many administrators might want to be able to compact on a schedule, using a batch job of some sort.

On the other hand, it might be easier if a standalone utility were made just for this. I am not in a position to write it, and I doubt anyone else would be interested.

Does this bug win a prize for longest in the queue before being resolved?

Comment 6

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

(In reply to Marc DVer from comment #5)
> I agree that it is no longer as big a deal, but some environments may still
> have a need for it.
> 
> In a high traffic office network administrators might want to control when
> compactions are done, at least when the mail stores are on a server and not
> the local computer. Many administrators might want to be able to compact on
> a schedule, using a batch job of some sort.

This proposal requires the user to have saved their passwords in the Thunderbird profile.  And someone with such a serious corporate need to enforce that, and also deploy a script I hope would also have the staff to make code the fix for this bug happen.  And any who wants to work on it is welcome propose the code. 

But I think it unlikely that the code would be accepted into the codebase. So so the whole idea is I think untenable. 

And if expunge is the issue then there are preference provided by bug 359284