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John Goerzen | 4 Jun 2004 18:07
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OfflineIMAP 4.0.3 released

Hello,

OfflineIMAP 4.0.3 has been released.  It is available from
http://quux.org/deve/offlineimap and has been uploaded to Debian.

The changelog states:

offlineimap (4.0.3) unstable; urgency=low

  * Fixed version numbers to read 4.0.3.  Closes: #220536.
  * Switched defaults from Python 2.2 to Python 2.3.
    Closes: #237560, #239018.
  * Fixed description typo.  Closes: #211251.
  * Fixed nametrans example.  Closes: #252644.
  * Applied patch from Johannes Berg for mycmp example in manual.
    Closes: #252645.
  * Fixed typos in manual.  Closes: #252646.
  * Regenerated docs.
  * Applied patch from Daniel James to adjust the insertion point
    for a new header.
  * Now calls dh_python and build-deps on newer debhelper.
  * Updated copyright information.

 -- John Goerzen <jgoerzen <at> complete.org>  Fri,  4 Jun 2004 07:10:00 -0500
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John Goerzen | 4 Jun 2004 18:11
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Status update

Hello,

There are a few status updates to post.

First, I never found the time to finish the switchover to Twisted.
Therefore, unless somebody else takes it up, the Twisted (4.99.x/5.x)
branch of OfflineIMAP is dead.

Secondly, I believe I have applied all patches that have been sent to me
to 4.0.3.  If your patch was sent but not applied, please re-send.  My
apologies for the length of time in getting this done.  There is one
exception: the patch removing my imaplib.  My imaplib still has features
not found in the Python2.3 imaplib, such as IPv6 support.  If you would
like to port the patches present in my imaplib to the Python 2.3
imaplib, that would be fine.  Otherwise, I'm going to stick with the
imaplib distributed with OffilneIMAP.

As for the status of OfflineIMAP, I an treating it as mostly "done" at
this point.  I am not adding new features right now because it basically
does everything I want it to.

If there are people out there that would like to add new features
(single-direction syncs and message size filtering are frequently
requested), please post here.  I'm happy to accept patches (and will
integrate them in a more timely fashion, I promise).

I will likely move OfflineIMAP from Subversion to GNU Arch soon to make
it easier for others to collaborate on the project.

-- John
(Continue reading)

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Aron Griffis | 5 Jun 2004 01:12
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Re: Status update

John Goerzen wrote:	[Fri Jun 04 2004, 12:11:35PM EDT]
> First, I never found the time to finish the switchover to Twisted.
> Therefore, unless somebody else takes it up, the Twisted (4.99.x/5.x)
> branch of OfflineIMAP is dead.

Could you give a quick summary of what this means?  I haven't done any
OfflineIMAP development (yet) but I'd like to know what a switchover
to Twisted would buy us.

Regards,
Aron

--
Aron Griffis
Gentoo Linux Developer
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John Goerzen | 5 Jun 2004 05:11
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Re: Status update

On Fri, Jun 04, 2004 at 07:12:59PM -0400, Aron Griffis wrote:
> John Goerzen wrote:	[Fri Jun 04 2004, 12:11:35PM EDT]
> > First, I never found the time to finish the switchover to Twisted.
> > Therefore, unless somebody else takes it up, the Twisted (4.99.x/5.x)
> > branch of OfflineIMAP is dead.
> 
> Could you give a quick summary of what this means?  I haven't done any
> OfflineIMAP development (yet) but I'd like to know what a switchover
> to Twisted would buy us.

Sure.  Bear in mind as you notice the length of this message that you
asked for it :-)

Since version 2.0.0, OfflineIMAP has been capable of communicating to
the IMAP server over multiple channels simultaneously.  This capability
is solely a performance-related one.  To be a correct and safe program,
OfflineIMAP must send commands to the IMAP server and receive responses
back.  On high-latency links, or even just a regular Internet pipe, this
causes a noticable slowdown.  While OfflineIMAP is waiting for a
response, the link sits unused.

To improve OfflineIMAP's performance, it can open up several connections
to the IMAP server.  It can be downloading two messages while it's
scanning a third folder, for instance.  This often results in dramatic
speedups.  My own benchmarks showed a reduction from 20 to 9 seconds
between OfflineIMAP 1.x to 2.x.  (This time was farther reduced to 2
seconds by OfflineIMAP 3.x.)

To be able to handle these multiple connections at once, there are two
main options available: multitasking and asynchronous I/O.  OfflineIMAP
(Continue reading)

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Aron Griffis | 5 Jun 2004 05:56
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Re: Status update

John Goerzen wrote:	[Fri Jun 04 2004, 11:11:07PM EDT]
> Sure.  Bear in mind as you notice the length of this message that you
> asked for it :-)

Wow!  Thanks for taking the time to write such a complete explanation.
Personally I agree that staying with threads instead of switching to
Twisted is the better route at this point.  My reason would simply be
the apparent lack of bugs in your current implementation.  Switching
would undoubtedly introduce new bugs that would then need to be
resolved.  And you might find as many bugs in Twisted as you find in
Python's thread support. ;-)

> BTW I notice you are a Gentoo developer.  (Great!  I'm a Debian
> developer... you may be interested in my Debian From Scratch rescue
> environment at http://people.debian.org/~jgoerzen/dfs/.  It's a rescue
> disk and installer modeled after Gentoo's.)

Thanks, I'll take a look.  Though I have to admit the only place I run
Debian at the moment is ia64.

> If there's anything I can
> do to help you out, please let me know.  I expect your port should be
> trivial since OfflineIMAP has no dependencies save Python (though it can
> use Python-Tk if installed).  But if there are ever patches, please try
> to make them generic and send my way.

Certainly.  So far there hasn't been a peep about offlineimap,
certainly a testimony to the quality of your code, since I'm sure that
people are using it on Gentoo.
(Continue reading)

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John Goerzen | 5 Jun 2004 06:14
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Re: Status update

On Fri, Jun 04, 2004 at 11:56:52PM -0400, Aron Griffis wrote:
> John Goerzen wrote:	[Fri Jun 04 2004, 11:11:07PM EDT]
> > Sure.  Bear in mind as you notice the length of this message that you
> > asked for it :-)
> 
> Wow!  Thanks for taking the time to write such a complete explanation.
> Personally I agree that staying with threads instead of switching to
> Twisted is the better route at this point.  My reason would simply be
> the apparent lack of bugs in your current implementation.  Switching
> would undoubtedly introduce new bugs that would then need to be

Yup, I agree.

> > disk and installer modeled after Gentoo's.)
> 
> Thanks, I'll take a look.  Though I have to admit the only place I run
> Debian at the moment is ia64.

No problem :-)  

> Certainly.  So far there hasn't been a peep about offlineimap,
> certainly a testimony to the quality of your code, since I'm sure that
> people are using it on Gentoo.

That's good to know :-)

> Well, Gentoo just has a different philosophy on architecture support.

[ snip ]
(Continue reading)

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Aron Griffis | 11 Jun 2004 00:35
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Re: problems with threads

John Goerzen wrote:	[Tue May 04 2004, 04:55:04PM EDT]
> This problem is likely unrelated to threading.  Can you send me a -d
> imap log showing the weird flags attempted to be set?

Ok, one month later I have the debug logs ready for you:

1. http://gentoo.org/~agriffis/offlineimap_bug/20040610_1204_All_bad_machine_before_problem.bz2
2. http://gentoo.org/~agriffis/offlineimap_bug/20040610_1249_All_good_machine.bz2
3. http://gentoo.org/~agriffis/offlineimap_bug/20040610_1247_All_bad_machine_with_problem.bz2
4. http://gentoo.org/~agriffis/offlineimap_bug/20040610_1256_All_good_machine.bz2

Explanation of the logs:

- The machines do not have syncronized clocks.  The offlineimap runs
  happened in the order that they are listed above, even though #2
  says 1249 and #3 says 1247.  The clock on the good machine is about
  2.5 minutes ahead of the clock on the bad machine.

- The "All" in the logs above is a result of my logging wrapper for
  offlineimap.  It indicates that I was synchronizing all accounts.
  Most of the time I synchronize only one of the accounts at a time.
  The fact that this has only ever happened to me when I'm
  synchronizing multiple accounts simultaneously is what suggests to
  me that it's a threads/locking problem, but I honestly haven't
  attempted to decipher the logs

Let me know if there is more I can provide.  The bad machine is still
in its bad state so I can extract more information if you need it.

Regards,
(Continue reading)

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John Goerzen | 11 Jun 2004 15:02
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Re: problems with threads

Thanks for the files...  unfortunately I'm away from my computers for a
few days but will get back to you when I return next week.

-- John

On Thu, Jun 10, 2004 at 06:35:04PM -0400, Aron Griffis wrote:
> John Goerzen wrote:	[Tue May 04 2004, 04:55:04PM EDT]
> > This problem is likely unrelated to threading.  Can you send me a -d
> > imap log showing the weird flags attempted to be set?
> 
> Ok, one month later I have the debug logs ready for you:
> 
> 1. http://gentoo.org/~agriffis/offlineimap_bug/20040610_1204_All_bad_machine_before_problem.bz2
> 2. http://gentoo.org/~agriffis/offlineimap_bug/20040610_1249_All_good_machine.bz2
> 3. http://gentoo.org/~agriffis/offlineimap_bug/20040610_1247_All_bad_machine_with_problem.bz2
> 4. http://gentoo.org/~agriffis/offlineimap_bug/20040610_1256_All_good_machine.bz2
> 
> Explanation of the logs:
> 
> - The machines do not have syncronized clocks.  The offlineimap runs
>   happened in the order that they are listed above, even though #2
>   says 1249 and #3 says 1247.  The clock on the good machine is about
>   2.5 minutes ahead of the clock on the bad machine.
> 
> - The "All" in the logs above is a result of my logging wrapper for
>   offlineimap.  It indicates that I was synchronizing all accounts.
>   Most of the time I synchronize only one of the accounts at a time.
>   The fact that this has only ever happened to me when I'm
>   synchronizing multiple accounts simultaneously is what suggests to
>   me that it's a threads/locking problem, but I honestly haven't
(Continue reading)

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Heiko Heil | 14 Jun 2004 00:46
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Courier IMAP Srv.: sync Maildir

Hello offlineimap-users,

how can I sync my Courier IMAP-Server (v1.4.3-2.3, Debian Woody) with
offlineimap (4.0.1-1.backport) using a proper directory-structure
(without those silly '.' delimited not-directories)?

Cheers,
Heiko
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Aron Griffis | 14 Jun 2004 18:22
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Re: Courier IMAP Srv.: sync Maildir

Heiko Heil wrote:	[Sun Jun 13 2004, 06:46:04PM EDT]
> how can I sync my Courier IMAP-Server (v1.4.3-2.3, Debian Woody) with
> offlineimap (4.0.1-1.backport) using a proper directory-structure
> (without those silly '.' delimited not-directories)?

The sample configuration file distributed with offlineimap explains
this clearly.  Please read it.

Regards,
Aron

--
Aron Griffis
Gentoo Linux Developer
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