Why kernel development still uses email [LWN.net]

Why kernel development still uses email

Posted Oct 13, 2016 9:52 UTC (Thu) by davidgerard (guest, #100304)
In reply to: Why kernel development still uses email by jschrod
Parent article: Why kernel development still uses email

GMail's implementation of IMAP is ... idiosyncratic. It mostly works, except when it doesn't.

offlineimap is the least-worst way to suck down everything from GMail, because they've had extensive dev discussion about the latest flaky thing GMail's done with IMAP. It appears GMail "IMAP" is to some defree best regarded as a separate protocol descended from IMAP.

Why kernel development still uses email

Posted Oct 13, 2016 14:56 UTC (Thu) by spaetz (guest, #32870) [Link] (6 responses)

Previous offlineimap maintainer here. Gmail IMAP indeed resembles imap, but differs in many respects. The main problem is that it maps its "flags" to IMAP folders, ie a message with multiple flags in gmail is contained in many imap folders simultanously (and proper imap clients will download them multiple times). Once you delete a message from an imap folder you merely remove the corresponding tag, it will still be in your Gmail inbox.

Additionally, there is the "All Mails" folder or somesuch, so even if you delete a message from all folders it will still be there, iirc. If you delete a message from this folder, it will miraculously resurrect itself when it still has any flags attached. THings like this make it difficult to work with Gmail as a proper IMAP server.

Why kernel development still uses email

Posted Oct 14, 2016 17:49 UTC (Fri) by mathstuf (subscriber, #69389) [Link] (5 responses)

Personally, I just hide the problematic labels from IMAP altogether (All Mail and Sent in particular). I just set Fcc to be INBOX and it has worked well enough for me.

Why kernel development still uses email

Posted Oct 15, 2016 15:03 UTC (Sat) by spaetz (guest, #32870) [Link] (4 responses)

Yes, you can do that but it (mostly) prevents you from using gmail in typical gmail fashion, using its features. :-)

Why kernel development still uses email

Posted Oct 15, 2016 18:38 UTC (Sat) by mathstuf (subscriber, #69389) [Link]

I guess? Then again, I also tend to completely delete email I no longer need rather than archive it at all *shrug*. What use cases do they really enable other than "all email I've ever received ever"?

Why kernel development still uses email

Posted Oct 19, 2016 16:13 UTC (Wed) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link] (2 responses)

Why do you want to do that?

I have all my email locally in Thunderbird, and use gmail solely as an IMAP server. Why would I want to do anything else?

(Also, gmail is useful for sending mail when I'm away from home, though I've discovered it seems to tamper with the "reply to" which is a damn nuisance!!! If I use the gmail server to send mail, I do NOT want it setting replies to go to my gmail account unless I ASK FOR IT!!!)

Cheers,
Wol

Why kernel development still uses email

Posted Oct 19, 2016 17:48 UTC (Wed) by spaetz (guest, #32870) [Link] (1 responses)

> Why do you want to do that?

> I have all my email locally in Thunderbird, and use gmail solely as an IMAP server. Why would I want to do anything else?

Err, because I maintained OfflineImap and - believe it or not - most users of the gmail backend were actually using Google and were not happy to just use it as an imap backend?

*I* don't use gmail at all but most users actually do, at least the support issues we received suggested that.

Why kernel development still uses email

Posted Oct 19, 2016 19:12 UTC (Wed) by mathstuf (subscriber, #69389) [Link]

I don't doubt that people wanted something more, but I guess I've never really wanted more (other than Gmail to recognize "move"). Looking at my configuration for offlineimap, I see that the local repos are marked as `GmailMaildir` and the remotes as `IMAP`. What features am I missing (with and without my "All Mail" and "Sent" exclusions)?