Re: [Geary] Geary keeps running in background and Folder path question

[Michael Gratton <mike vee net>]

Hi Casey,

On Mon, 4 May, 2020 at 09:30, Casey Stone via geary-list 
<geary-list gnome org> wrote:
> In 'Preferences' I have 'Watch for new mail when closed' deselected, 
> yet, if I quit Geary then put my laptop to sleep over night, when I 
> wake it up the next morning I get Gnome notifications about new 
> emails and if I fire up 'top' I can see there is a Geary process 
> running (Gnome does NOT show Geary running).

It's probably not an issues with your preferences, rather something is 
preventing Geary from shutting down. There's an open bug report about 
this: <https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/geary/-/issues/728>, if you are 
seeing something similar then it might be being caused by the same 
issue.

So we can work that out, could I get you to try the last thing I 
suggest in the last comment of that issue, namely run Geary under gdb 
(per these instructions: 
<https://wiki.gnome.org/Apps/Geary/ReportingABug#Stack_Trace>), and 
when you notice it fail to exit when you quit the app (via Ctrl+Q or 
just closing all windows), do a Ctrl+C then enter `thread all apply bt 
full` at the gdb command prompt, and attach the resulting output to 
that issue?

> Could you please tell me (1) which area should this information be in 
> (AccountInformation or Folders),

The `AccountInformation` section is the old configuration format, used 
up until around v0.12. If you aren't using versions that old, you can 
remove that whole section, keeping the others.

> (2) can I have a 'space' character in the folder path like 
> trash_folder=Deleted Messages or do I need to escape it somehow,

Spaces should be fine without escaping or quoting, as long as the 
folder name does not start with a space.

Under the hood, Geary uses GLib's GKeyFile for reading and writing that 
file, and the values for the folder entries are lists of strings. You 
can find the full details of the syntax it uses described here: 
<https://developer.gnome.org/glib/stable/glib-Key-value-file-parser.html#glib-Key-value-file-parser.description>

>  (3) what is the deal with the semi-colon at the end -- most of the 
> entries in my geary.ini do not end with a semi-colon but some do.

Per the above, the folder values are actually lists of strings -- the 
semicolons are the list delimiter. The list forms a path from the root 
to the desired mailbox. On many IMAP servers, special folders such as 
Trash, Sent, etc are in the root of the personal mailbox, and so the 
path and hence the list contains a single folder. Some IMAP servers do 
things differently however, Cyrus mail servers for example put all 
personal folders under the Inbox, in such cases the full path to Sent 
is `INBOX;Sent`.

The trailing semicolon you see on those values is an artefact of the 
implementation. It should be harmless to leave it off, but I haven't 
tested what happens if you do. No harm in trying though.

> Maybe there is some place I can see an up-to-date example geary.ini 
> file showing all the options (and not showing any defunct options)?

There isn't any such example or docs because people shouldn't have to 
edit it by hand, the whole file is an implementation detail that may 
change from one release to another. If there is a problem such that you 
do need to edit it manually, please let us know so we can look into 
fixing the underlying problem instead.

> NOTE: I also have config files in 
> ~/.local/share/geary/<accountname>/geary.ini but that seems to be 
> three years old and only has the [AccountInformation] section. The 
> current geary.db is however under ~/.local/share/geary/<accountname>.

That location for the config file dates back to 0.11 and earlier, or 
thereabouts. If you aren't using a version that old, then it's safe to 
delete those.

HTH,
//Mike

--
⊨ Michael Gratton, Percept Wrangler.
⚙ <http://mjog.vee.net/>