812662 - Compacting folders trashed open draft

Status: RESOLVED INCOMPLETE

(Thunderbird :: Untriaged, defect)

Description

[John Hart]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 5.1; rv:16.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/16.0
Build ID: 20121024073032

Steps to reproduce:

Opened and was editing a file in the draft folder when the message do you want to compact folders popped up. It is very annoying having the message pop up. If it happened when closing Thunderbird it would be useful. Doing something while folders are compacting is difficult at best and can be dangerous as demonstrated by what happened.  Seeing as how I was only reading the draft I decided to let it go ahead and compact the folders so I clicked yes.   


Actual results:

The file view closed and the file disappeared from the draft folder. Luckily it was in the trash folder.  


Expected results:

The do you want to compact folders message shouldn't pop up until Firefox is being closed and it shouldn't delete the file you are looking at.

Comment 1

[John Hart]

I've discovered a sub folder and contents were deleted. The folder is seldom used so the problem wasn't discovered until after the trash was emptied and contents lost.

Comment 2

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

John, I don't understand about "trash". Are you talking about Trash folder?  Or trash as in you cleaned up the drafts folder?

Also, when you lost that specific draft message:
- did you specifically safe the draft before closing compose?
- did you see anything to indicate draft folder was compacted at the time that you had compose open?
- did you see any pop up or error message other than "compact" when working on the draft?

Comment 3

[John Hart]

- Fortunately the draft was in the "Trash folder"
- did you specifically safe the draft before closing compose? no
The draft was done days before, I think I was reading it in the compose but don't think any changes were made and didn't close the compose window before allowing compacting to start.
- did you see anything to indicate draft folder was compacted at the time that you had compose open? no
The draft folder might not have been open when compacting started, I might have been looking at another folder and it could have been trash but I'm not sure.   
- did you see any pop up or error message other than "compact" when working on the draft?
No error messages, just one saying "finished compacting"

Compacting folders while doing something else is a BAD IDEA. It sits doing nothing for hours but as soon as I try to do something, up pops the compact folders prompt. If I let it go ahead it at some point it will interfere with what I'm trying to do. I design real time computer systems and know how difficult it is to resolve conflicting processes. Compacting folders while accessing folders will be difficult to debug and has little utility. The easy and safe way to handle it would be to ask before closing and let it finish before closing down or allow the user to schedule it.

Comment 4

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

We've had many fixes since comment 3.
Have you seen this problem recently?

Comment 5

[Phoenix]

Resolved per whiteboard