dovecot - Dec 2009 - dovecot-shared

I'm confused about dovecot-shared.

If the file exists, \SEEN flags are NOT shared?

So if dovecot-shared exists, flags are actually private.  The doc
seems clear on this (albeit not worded very well).  I only question it
because intuitively you would think the opposite.  If backwards
compatibility is the reason for this reverse behavior, the file should
have been named dovecot-private-flags.  In fact that's a great name
to stick a list of flags (one-per-line) that are private.

-frnak

On 28.12.2009, at 2.08, Frank Cusack wrote:
> I'm confused about dovecot-shared.
> 
> If the file exists, \SEEN flags are NOT shared?
Right.
> So if dovecot-shared exists, flags are actually private.  The doc
> seems clear on this (albeit not worded very well).  I only question it
> because intuitively you would think the opposite.  If backwards
> compatibility is the reason for this reverse behavior, the file should
> have been named dovecot-private-flags.  
I was thinking it more like "if this file exists, it's a shared
mailbox, so there are many users reading it, so each user should have their own
private (seen) flags".
> In fact that's a great name
> to stick a list of flags (one-per-line) that are private.

Yeah, that's been in todo for a while. I'd probably make dovecot-shared
file have options:

private = \Seen Spam NotSpam
shared = \Answered
default = private # or shared

Of course if default is private there's not much point in specifying the
private flags and vice versa for shared..