codezeilen / smaildir

An object-oriented maildir interface

MailDir for Smalltalk

This provides an object-oriented interface to a maildir structure in your file system. The package provides the library (MailDir-Core) as well as a basic UI for browsing emails (MailDir-UI).

It is an evolved version of CCMail originally created by Conrad Calmez.

How to install SMailDir

1. Get a Squeak trunk from anytime after 2017
2. Load Metacello
3. Finally, load SMailDir with the following command:

Metacello new
  baseline: 'MailDir';
  repository: 'github://codezeilen/SMailDir/repository';
  load: 'default'.

Setup

General notes

As maildir implementations use different flag separators in file names you can configure this for your mail archive object through the message MDMailArchive>>#flagSeparator:.

Using the user interface

You can also use a small helper tool for creating a maildir profile which includes an archive as well as SMTP credentials for answer emails. You can either find the tool in the Apps menu from the world docking bar or open it with:

MDMailProfileBrowser open

Using plain objects

To create a MDMailArchive use:

MDMailArchive archiveIn: FileDirectory default / 'GMail' flagSeparator: $;.

This will initially create an object structure representing the maildir structure and create a basic index. This might take several minutes depending on the size of your maildir.

Usage

Acessing message data

In general, you can find any messages related to data of an email in the mails and the meta information protocol of the class MDMail.

Answering mails

SMailDir integrates with the MailSender infrastructure of Squeak. If you have set up a complete MDMailProfile you can answer mails from within the image.

Moving mails

For moving mails you can use the messages in the mails protocol.

Synchronization

To synchronize your maildir structure you can call MDMailArchive class>>#synchronizeAllArchives. The class also allows you to start a background process regularly synchronizing your archive through MDMailArchive class>>#startSynchronizationProcess.

The synchronization preserves the object structure of MDMails. So if an email file was moved, the corresponding MDMail object is also moved to another MDMailBox object.

Integration with other projects

The default configuration also installs the (Rack)[https://github.com/hpi-swa/Rack] which integrates the single tools in MailDir-UI.

Open issues

• Deleting messages in a GMail maildir might not delete them properly as GMail interprets deletion differently
• Be aware of synchronization issues. The process is not 100% robust yet. Although it happens very seldomly, single mail can get lost. We are working on it (see issue #3 and #4)
• On the same note: If you try to modify a mail (set to read or move) which has changed on the file system since the last synchronization, you might also get errors (see issue #5).

smaildir's Issues

Synchronizing after an archive was moved does not work

Reason: Boxes are synchronized based on their boxname and not their path while the box objects store their full path themselves.

Solutions:

• Check for the path in the synchronization
• Construct the box path dynamically

Selection in the mail profile browser breaks when new profile is added

The selection changes to the new entry but the form does not update.

During the writing process incomplete mails might get stored

Loading emails with large attachments is slow

The synchronization process can lose emails when interrupted

When the email was only moved into the temporary storage before it being moved to another location and the process is interrupted before it is stored in the new location, then the email can get lost.

Synchronizing while having email UI open can lead to 'Mails not properly indexed'

Because the changed notification comes in before the index was re-built. We need some kind of concurrency control to support that.

Sent mails without message ids

Sent messages do not have a message id which leads to collisions in the mail index

Change synchronization process to also cover changes from objects to files

The major motivation for that change is to increase robustness. Currently objects might be in an inconsistent state in relation to the files at the moment the change to the object is written to a file.

Separate the creation of archives from the creation of profiles

Currently every profile has one archive and every archive has one profile. This might not be true if you want to use aliases or forwarded email addresses. In this case we would want a mail archive browser and a mail profile browser.