42508 - "rules.dat" created even though it's never used

Status: NEW

(MailNews Core :: Filters, defect)

Description

[Henrik Gemal]

It seems that just having a server creates the rules.dat file. There's is no 
reason for this. The rules.dat file should first be created when the user 
actually has some filters.

Comment 1

[Håkan Waara]

Navin's. I would love to see this before 1.0

Comment 2

[(not reading, please use [e-mail] instead)]

mass re-assign.

Comment 3

[Mark Banner (:standard8)]

it appears that rules.dat only exists from old builds or from imported profiles.
New profiles that are set up do not have a rules.dat file.

Should we be deleting the old rules.dat and replacing it by msgFilterRules.dat
rather than moving it, or would that break something else?

Comment 4

[(not reading, please use [e-mail] instead)]

sorry for the spam.  making bugzilla reflect reality as I'm not working on these bugs.  filter on FOOBARCHEESE to remove these in bulk.

Comment 5

[Gary Kwong [:gkw] [:nth10sd] (NOT official MoCo now)]

(In reply to comment #3)
> it appears that rules.dat only exists from old builds or from imported
> profiles.
> New profiles that are set up do not have a rules.dat file.
> 
> Should we be deleting the old rules.dat and replacing it by msgFilterRules.dat
> rather than moving it, or would that break something else?
> 

Still a valid bug then?

Comment 6

[Serge Gautherie (:sgautherie)]

Filter on "Nobody_NScomTLD_20080620"

Comment 7

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

ref comment 3

Comment 8

[:aceman]

At https://searchfox.org/comm-central/rev/753e6d9df9d7b9a989d735b01c8b280eef388bab/mailnews/base/util/nsMsgIncomingServer.cpp#1000 we COPY rules.dat to msgFilterRules.dat but leave the old rules.dat behind and it will no longer be used when msgFilterRules.dat is found.
We do not delete it. But we probably could these days (nobody will probably downgrade to such an old TB version).
But I don't think we should try to find stray rules.dat files in the profile and clean them up.
It would add startup perf hit looking for the files.
Firefox also leaves many old files behind after conversion (maybe that changes now that they explicitly do not support downgrades).