61960 - local folder Empty Trash doesn't compact all local folders, but it should to save space and for consistency across local folders

Status: NEW

(MailNews Core :: Backend, defect)

Description

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

from n.p.m.mail-news:

Empty Trash Folder in NS 4.75/4.76 compacts all folders below Local
Mail.  In NS 6.0 I have to compact every folder one by one.

Comment 1

[scottputterman]

reassigning to naving.

Comment 2

[Navin Gupta]

Should empty Trash compact all folders ?

Comment 3

[David :Bienvenu]

yeah, I guess so - it did so in 2.x, 3.x, and 4.x (just for local folders, mind
you).

Comment 4

[Navin Gupta]

nominating.

Comment 5

[Navin Gupta]

nominating

Comment 6

[Navin Gupta]

Attachment: proposed fix

Comment 7

[Navin Gupta]

Compact all folders after empty trash. request for review, david ?

Comment 8

[David :Bienvenu]

r=bienvenu 

Comment 9

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

sr=sspitzer

Comment 10

[scottputterman]

moving to 0.9.3.  Please hold onto the changes in case we can get this in later.

Comment 11

[Navin Gupta]

fix landed on trunk. 

Comment 12

[Mike Jaques]

How fast is compacting folders, even large multi-meg folders, and does it make 
the app unresponsive while it does it? Does it throw up a dialog while 
compacting letting you know it is compacting if so so you don't get people end-
tasking it?  I am not a mail/news user, but to me, this seems not to be a 
function of empty trash, and just because it was the functionality in NS 
2/3/4.x doesn't mean it is right or can't be changed.  MS OL Express gives you 
the functionality of selecting a folder and compacting just it File -> Folder -
> Compact   or compacting all at once  File -> Folders -> Compact All Folders

I don't necessarily agree thats the right place, but I don't persoanlly think 
it should be a function of emptying the trash as I can see very big folders 
making the app seem slow every time they simply empty the trash.

Comment 13

[timeless]

compacting folders in 4.x gives a dialog and can take a very long time 
depending on what you did to a folder.  Compacting a folder that had 2000 
entries and now has 0 is very fast :-).  Compacting all of my mailboxes tends 
to take a considerable amount of time.  However this bug shouldn't care about 
that. If you're concerned w/ an indication and can verify we don't indicate 
please check to see if a bug already exists and if not file one.  Warning: 
there's currently a debate between the people who want progress dialogs and the 
people who want to use status bars.

Comment 14

[Navin Gupta]

I think we should make it a pref, because it take a while to compact 
all folders if folders are huge. 

Comment 15

[Mike Jaques]

problem with just making it a pref is do you turn it on or leave it off by 
default?  I'd say off,   maybe a right-click context menu option over the 
recycle bin to turn on/off the pref and activate compaction on emptying. 
Otherwise it'll become one of those lost features that no one ever changes 
cause well, the average (read 80% or more) user doesnt do much more tweaking to 
Netscape/Mozilla then making a couple of profiles. 

I still say putting it in a drop down also/ontop of my suggestion above would 
be handy, perhaps the user doesnt want to empty there recycle bin and just 
wants to compact the folders?  Is that even possible at the moment? I am asking 
as I am not a mail/news user and have no clue.

Comment 16

[scottputterman]

removing the nsbranch. 

Comment 17

[Navin Gupta]

I have backed out the fix. We need to rethink how to do this one, mainly 
because it increases time for emptyTrash and needs better user feedback. 

Comment 18

[Scott MacGregor]

Mail news triage meeting --> .9.5

Comment 19

[scottputterman]

moving to 0.9.6

Comment 20

[scottputterman]

removing HAVE FIX based on comments about being backed out.

Comment 21

[Arnaud Ladrière]

My vote is : add a "compact all folders" in the menu, so that ppl who do not
activate the option in the prefs can launch the whole operation and have a
coffee ...

Comment 22

[Bill Shannon]

Note that the same problem occurs with IMAP folders.  With "Delete Immediately"
set, delete messages in several folders and then select Compact Folders.  Only
the current folder is compacted (expunged).  In 4.x, all open folders were
compacted.  This problem has existed since early Netscape 6 and still occurs
with Mozilla 1.1beta.

Comment 23

[Bill Shannon]

I'm not familiar with the Mozilla code at all, but I stumbled across this in
nsImapMailFolder.cpp:

NS_IMETHODIMP nsImapMailFolder::CompactAll(nsIUrlListener *aListener,  nsIMsgWin
dow *aMsgWindow, nsISupportsArray *aFolderArray, PRBool aCompactOfflineAlso, nsI
SupportsArray *aOfflineFolderArray)
{
  return Compact(aListener, aMsgWindow);  //for now
}

Is this the reason "Compact Folders" only compacts the current IMAP folder?

Comment 24

[David :Bienvenu]

yes, for imap folders, but this bug is about local folders.

Comment 25

[Carsten Menke]

Other question, I remarked latley that I had to "Compact Folders" to get rid of
Mails I deleted a half year ago. Thoug the Trash file was empty. 

Isn't this a problem if not automatically compacted, that it will fill peoples
hardrives ? Because if you get attachments regulary all is still stored in the
Inbox file. So I think, that Mozilla should do this time based, that the people
don't think that Mozilla/NS6 grows the Profile constantly. 

Also Persons which are working at a University could have a real problem with
it, in our University you only got 15 MB space for your /home dir. And 30 MB
under Windows. So keeping all Mails until the User compacts the folder is in my
eyes not a good idea.

Comment 26

[Carsten Menke]

Additional Things:

I think it's really time consuming, that you have to do "Compatct Folders" for
each Account and each Folder. Compact Folders (as suggested earlier) should
Compact all Folders on all Accounts. Optionally you could pop a msgbox that says
that this could be a long time taking process.

But have to do this manually for each and every thing is bad and only time
consuming.

Comment 27

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

mass re-assign.

Comment 28

[Felix Miata]

I agree with comment 25 and 26. I expect "empty trash" to recover the space
wasted by trash, the same way it works with a real trash can. Now with the
horrendous amount of email with virus attachments, folders grow 10 or more times
faster than normal, and inbox could easily become dumpster sized, even though
the junk has been "deleted", and the trash "emptied". Users don't know what
compacting folders is or why it is necessary. Compaction should be automatic by
default, with a prefs option for those who know what it is and don't like
automatic compaction to be able to disable it.

Comment 29

[Carsten Menke]

@Felix 
 
I don't even see the need for the hidden pref to disable automatic compaction of 
folders, when I do not want to be deleted forever I move it to the Trash, when I 
empty the trash I'm sure it is waste. 
 
Also not nice when the FBI comes to your house, and finds e-mails that are 
actually not there :-) 

Comment 30

[Felix Miata]

If it was up to me, the delete button and the delete key would both mean what
they say, at least optionally. Hit delete and, _poof_, all gone to the big bit
bucket in the sky, with no stops in between, no messing with garbage cans.

Comment 31

[David :Bienvenu]

Shift delete will delete a message w/o copying it to the trash. However, you
still need to compact the folder before the messgage will be removed from the
source folder. This is useful for things like undo...

Comment 32

[Felix Miata]

Like I said, if it was up to me, the delete button and the delete key would both
mean what they say. If I wasn't sure it would get wontfixed, I'd file a bug to
provide that option. I might do it anyway, or maybe file one to suggest
replacing the botton word "delete" with "to trash".

Comment 33

[Rainer Raisch]

I think, the trash or any other folder shouls always be compressed, when exiting
the browser, once the folder is empty.

Comment 34

[Asa Dotzler [:asa]]

*** Bug 224515 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 35

[Jo Hermans]

*** Bug 325420 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 36

[(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 37

[Daniel Veditz [:dveditz]]

Nominating: When people go to the trouble of emptying their trash they are rather shocked to later find all their mail still in their mail folders. An explicit "Throw out the Trash" step is the perfect time to launch the compact action. In fact I would go so far as to remove the explicit compact menu item and just make it synonymous with emptying the trash.  (We could keep the space-based auto-compact option for people who really want it, that's a separate decision.)

Comment 38

[Felix Miata]

(In reply to comment #37)
> I would go so far as to remove the explicit compact menu item

I hope you get overruled on this point. I get hundreds of emails every day. I empty trash only at the end of each day. I always compact immediately after emptying trash. I also compact after moving mail containing attachments among folders and when deleting attachments or mail containing attachments. If I don't, performance suffers tremendously.

Comment 39

[Magnus Melin [:mkmelin]]

Certainly we need the compact menu (especially for imap + you may want to compact folders, but keep trash, i know i do). 

For local folders, sounds pretty reasonable though. For IMAP I think we definitely shouldn't.

I don't think we'd block though, marking wanted3+ P3.

Comment 40

[Jens Müller (:tessarakt)]

Please provide a pref for that ... In the long-term, hopefully a switch to more efficient mail storage backends will occur ...

Comment 41

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

calling all UI gurus, given that more efficient storage backend will happen rsn, not

and, there certainly is no lack of compact ENH bugs https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/buglist.cgi?short_desc=compact;bug_severity=enhancement;resolution=---;query_format=advanced;short_desc_type=allwordssubstr;product=MailNews%20Core;product=Thunderbird -- nevermind the real bugs

Comment 42

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

the patch is trivial, and is wanted-thunderbird3+
Is there any reason not to proceed?

Comment 43

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

Attachment: unbitrotted patch

From Navin Gupta.

Comment 44

[David :Bienvenu]

Comment on attachment 506315 [details] [diff] [review]
unbitrotted patch

I'm pretty sure this will do strange things if you have empty trash on exit set, as we will start doing a compact during shutdown. I'd suggest doing this in the front end.

Comment 45

[Worcester12345]

(In reply to David :Bienvenu from comment #44)

Comment on attachment 506315 [details] [diff] [review]
unbitrotted patch

I'm pretty sure this will do strange things if you have empty trash on exit
set, as we will start doing a compact during shutdown. I'd suggest doing
this in the front end.

Maybe time to "unbitrot" again?