Subject: Re: Expiring/deleting old mail

From: Michael Haardt <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 17 Mar 2004 12:11:18 +0100

> > Message removal at delivery
>
> > This approach is easy to understand for users and easy to implement: It
> > keeps removing mail, starting from the oldest, until the given criteria
> > are matched.  It could be realised by adding an option to "fileinto"
> > and probably "keep":
>
> >   fileinto :max-days 7 "inbox.mailinglist";
> >   fileinto :max-messages 100 "inbox.mailinglist";
> >   fileinto :max-storage 1M "inbox.mailinglist";
>
> > It is still open how the last action should behave when delivering
> > a 2M message.  Perhaps there is a better name instead of "max-".
> > This mechanism should not be called expiration, because people expect
> > a different behaviour by that name.
>
> I'm sorry, but these are simply folder-level attributes crammed in at the
> message level because that's the mechanism sieve provides. But calling them
> message atributes doesn't change their nature.

This last approach does not add message or folder flags in any way.
The previous one did.  This is a modified action, which first cleans up
the folder and then delivers a message to it.

I could imagine to move that functionality into a new action (cleanup?),
but until I see where it could be useful apart from a following fileinto,
I talk about it as fileinto extension.

> I'm opposed to all of these approaches and strongly opposed to the last one. If
> you want to do this, do it right - specify an IMAP extension and then, if it
> makes sense, specify a sieve extension that can be used to control the
> mechanism.

That makes sense for folder or message attributes.  I don't want
any attributes, because I do not like their overhead.  To answer the
previous asked question of conflicting actions: There are no conflicts.
"max-days 7" followed by a "max-days 6" leaves the last six days mail
in the folder.

Michael

---

From: Rob Siemborski <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 17 Mar 2004 09:19:19 -0500 (EST)

> "max-days 7" followed by a "max-days 6" leaves the last six days mail

This seems like a very fast way for script authors to shoot themselves in
the foot.

-Rob

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