Re: [Evolution] suggestion: mail fetch daemon

[Patrick O'Callaghan <poc usb ve>]

On Fri, 2009-03-06 at 17:26 +0100, Andrà Wyrwa wrote:
> Hei,
>
> how about implementing an independent mail fetch daemon or an option to
> start evolution in such a mode? How about combining that with a
> notification applet?
>
> Currently, there are basically two notification
> applets...mail-notification and evolutions plugin.
>
> The former is able to check all kinds of accounts.
> The latter only notifies me when evolution itself is already running.
>
> The problem is that using the former duplicates both configuration
> efforts and at least mail header fetching.
>
> The second requires me to have my full blown evolution started already.
> Meaning to have an automated notification constantly running, i'd have
> to start evolution on every system startup.
>
> Why not create a userspace daemon / applet that uses evolutions mailbox
> configurations to actually periodically fetch my mail and store it in
> evolution-data-server? Notify me that new email has been fetched if the
> case.
>
> From a technical view, wouldn't that just mean separating the mail
> fetching core out of the evo app into a separate app and then creating a
> simple dbus interface to enable evolution to tell that app what to do?

The word "just" here tends to irritate developers, as in "It just means
radically changing the application architecture" :-)

More seriously, e-d-s isn't the part of Evo that downloads data from
servers, it's the part that *provides* data (mainly contact info, alarms
etc.) to other apps. If it did actually download mail we'd be half-way
there, but AFAIK it doesn't. It took me a long time to unlearn my
misconceptions about this -- if in fact I have ...

> With probably a little more effort this concept should be extendable to
> syncing remote calendars and so on.
>
> Are there any efforts like that underway?
> If not...is it a bad idea or did just no-one have the time to start it,
> yet?

It doesn't look like a bad idea in principle, though I think it could be
harder to do than appears at first sight. In any case, you should file
it as an Enhancement Request in Bugzilla. Don't be surprised if the
reaction is "just use fetchmail" or some such.

poc