492044 - Support mailbox format "mix"

Status: NEW

(MailNews Core :: Backend, enhancement)

Description

[Stefan Bertels]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; de; rv:1.9.0.10) Gecko/2009042316 Firefox/3.0.10
Build Identifier: 

Thunderbird supports mbox (unix) mailbox format only. This format stores all messages in one file which has some drawbacks:

- if one item changes, the whole file changes, this doesn't perform very well
- if you access one message or the folder, widely used desktop on-access virus scanners will scan the whole file (and therefore block Thunderbird for some time)
- if you backup your mails, you will create big incremental backups because almost any backup software will store the whole file again

There is a simple, robust and efficient mailbox format named "mix" which was developed by people who really know what they are doing they worked on IMAP, MIME etc.) 
http://www.washington.edu/imap/documentation/mixfmt.txt.html

The UW IMAP server supports this "mix" format and it works like a charm. I previously used "mbx" which is similar to mbox regarding file size etc. but allows simultaneous write access. The "mix" format is even better because it stores mails in small chunks (but not as small as one chunk per mail as in maildir). I think using this mailbox format for Thunderbird will increase performance and allow efficient incremental backups.

I know "mbox" has one advantage: it is very common and very easy to use. But this is something most Thunderbird users will not care about. At least an option "use mix" for new folders (as in UW IMAP) would be great.

Reproducible: Always

Comment 1

[Joshua Cranmer [:jcranmer]]

Intriguing, but probably something that should be extension fodder. Still, I'm adding this to the pluggable storage bug.

Comment 2

[Magnus Melin [:mkmelin]]

Confirming RFE.

Comment 3

[Ludovic Hirlimann [:Usul]]

Removing myslef on all the bugs I'm cced on. Please NI me if you need something on MailNews Core bugs from me.