735155 - Auto detach attachments when saving to sent folder to save mailbox space

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 83040

(Thunderbird :: Message Compose Window, enhancement)

Description

[boris]

→ Send a message with attachment (save to sent folder option: enabled)
→ Duplication of the content while usually only a link would be sufficient, resulting in waste of mailbox space.
→ There should be an option to only save the link (which is known at send time) rather than the file itself.
The option should be general, attachment size-dependent, or individual for each message and could also include a link/remove option (to keep the link or nothing respectively)

Related, but not identical to:
Bug 577959 - strip attachments when saving to Sent folder 
Bug 9309 - option to have attachments auto saved to chosen location 
Bug 359319 - Attachments: Option to have attachments stripped from message upon receipt 

Research on the options how to get this implemented currently results in no realistic options for add-ins (e.g. AttachmentExtractor) since they have no access to the structures during send time. -Cleaning up/Detaching afterwards is possible, but the link is already lost by then, therefore resulting in a dead link or attachment duplication. Inclusion in the appropriate core code segment actually might be much easier and would have better results.

Comment 1

[Hashem Masoud]

(In reply to boris from comment #0)
You are suggesting data de-duplication. This is a great idea but even Google mail doesn't have this yet AFAIK.

Comment 2

[Johannes]

I would like to have following option for sent mails: A hardlink to every attached file is saved to chosen location (a folder only containing detached attachments) and then the file path to that hardlink is saved in the message instead of the file.

By using a hardlink in a special folder you are able to rename or remove the original file and you can still open the file from within the message it was attached to and you don't have duplicated files.