dotdirs (.Sent and so on) seem to be enforced for the maildir backend

[polyzen]

Curious to know if there's a reason for this?

[soywod]

What do you mean by "enforced"? In the regular Maildir spec, a maildir folder contains 3 subfolders tmp, cur and new. The rest is skipped. Files starting by a dot (.) are also ignored. The Maildir++ introduces the fact to accept subfolders starting by a dot (.) as "mailboxes":

Maildir++ adds a couple of things to a standard Maildir: folders and quotas. […] Folders are created as subdirectories under the main Maildir. The name of the subdirectory always starts with a period. For example, a folder named "Important" will be a subdirectory called ".Important". You can't have subdirectories that start with two periods.

[polyzen]

notmuch backend works great.

maildir backend doesn't find anything with d79c6c4 but does when built from 984eb8c:

• Config: https://paste.xinu.at/fd5Lg/
• Log: https://paste.xinu.at/0o3O/

The cannot read maildir directory "/home/user/.mail/arch/.INBOX" error still occurs, but only when I run list when I'm not cd'd into my maildir-dir, ~/.mail/arch. I must've been running my tests in #327 (reply in thread) while in that dir.

[soywod]

The cannot read maildir directory "/home/user/.mail/arch/.INBOX" error still occurs, but only when I run list when I'm not cd'd into my maildir-dir, ~/.mail/arch. I must've been running my tests in #327 (reply in thread) while in that dir.

Wait I don't understand, there is no concept of "must be cd'd into my maildir". When using the maildir backend, the mailbox argument -m|--mailbox can be:

• "inbox or INBOX" (case insensitive since d79c6c4): this refers to the root of the maildir-dir config. According to your config, it should point to ~/.mail/arch.
• a path (absolute, or relative to maildir-dir since 1f01202)
• a folder name. If you give "MyFolder", then it will look for a maildir subfolder as describe in the Maildir++ spec: ~/.mail/arch/.MyFolder

I tried again with the same config as yours and I cannot reproduce the error. I start to doubt that your ~/.mail/arch is a real maildir, could you share the output of ls -al ~/.mail/arch?

[polyzen]

~ > ls -al ~/.mail/arch
total 32
drwxr-xr-x 8 user user 4096 Mar  9 02:28 ./
drwxr-xr-x 4 user user 4096 Mar  5 02:01 ../
drwx------ 5 user user 4096 Mar  9 02:28 Archive/
drwx------ 5 user user 4096 Mar  9 02:28 Drafts/
drwx------ 5 user user 4096 Mar  9 02:31 INBOX/
drwx------ 5 user user 4096 Mar  9 02:28 Junk/
drwx------ 5 user user 4096 Mar  9 02:28 Sent/
drwx------ 5 user user 4096 Mar  9 02:28 Trash/

[polyzen]

When I set maildir-dir = "~/.mail/arch/INBOX", himalaya list works as intended.

[soywod]

It is what I thought, your ~/.mail/arch is not a valid maildir directory. It is just a regular folder that contains other maildir directories. So the behaviour is totally normal. Which tool do you use to synchronize your emails locally?

[polyzen]

On March 9, 2022 4:21:31 AM EST, "Clément DOUIN" ***@***.***> wrote: It is what I thought, your `~/.mail/arch` is not a *valid* maildir directory. So the behaviour is totally normal. Which tool do you use to synchronize your emails locally?

I use mbsync.

…

-- Best, Daniel <https://danielcapella.com>

[soywod]

In fact it could work this way also (since paths validation is done before folder names validation):

[your-account]
maildir-dir = "~/.mail/arch"

[your-account.mailboxes]
inbox = "Inbox"
sent = "Sent"
drafts = "Drafts"
# …

[polyzen]

As Maildir++ is an extension of Maildir, perhaps both should be supported? mbsync optionally supports Maildir++, as does notmuch. I prefer the flat Maildir layout myself.

[polyzen]

When building the latest commit:

---- test_maildir_backend stdout ----
thread 'test_maildir_backend' panicked at 'called `Result::unwrap()` on an `Err` value: cannot get maildir instance from "inbox"

Caused by:
    cannot read maildir directory "/tmp/himalaya-test-mdir/.INBOX"', tests/test_maildir_backend.rs:39:51

[soywod]

As Maildir++ is an extension of Maildir, perhaps both should be supported? mbsync optionally supports Maildir++, as does notmuch. I prefer the flat Maildir layout myself.

You may have misunderstood sth about Maildir.

Maildir is a standard for storing emails in a folder. There is no "link" between different Maildirs, each Maildir is independent. The fact that your ~/.mail/arch folder contains subfolders Inbox, Sent, Drafts etc is just an architectural choice from mbsync. Btw, ~/.mail/arch is NOT a valid Maildir, but it CONTAINS valid Maildir folders.

Maildir++ is a Maildir extension that proposes 2 major additions: folders and quotas. Maildir++ allows subfolders that start by a dot .. There is nothing more. A Maildir++ folder is fully compatible with a Maildir folder. Himalaya supports this extension, which means that if you put sent = "Sent" in your mailbox aliases, it will look for a Maildir++ subfolder .Sent. But if it does not find any valid folder, it will just look for a regular folder Sent.

No matter the tool you use to sync your emails, you will have to map folders in your Himalaya configuration (because every tool can have its own folder structure). So far this is the best approach IMO:

[your-account]
maildir-dir = "~/.mail/arch" # although, arch is not a valid maildir, but it is used as "root" maildir folder

[your-account.mailboxes]
inbox = "Inbox"
sent = "Sent"
drafts = "Drafts"

[soywod]

When building the latest commit:

---- test_maildir_backend stdout ----
thread 'test_maildir_backend' panicked at 'called `Result::unwrap()` on an `Err` value: cannot get maildir instance from "inbox"

Caused by:
    cannot read maildir directory "/tmp/himalaya-test-mdir/.INBOX"', tests/test_maildir_backend.rs:39:51

It looks like e2e tests broke after the recent changes, I opened an issue #335.