dovecot - Jul 2003 - Concerns switching from Courier to Dovecot

[ I'm posting this again since I wasn't subscribed to the list when I
 first posted. I'm sorry if this gets posted twice]



I was considering replacing Courier-IMAP with dovecot in the future, but
have some concerns. I realize that some things simply haven't been
finished yet like quotas, but some other things may prevent me from using
dovecot as a drop in replacement in the future.

Subfolders have different names in the file system. A folder
(INBOX.subfolder) is named ".subfolder" in Courier, but
"INBOX.subfolder"
in dovecot. I can't simply rename all the subfolders, because our
customers have direct access to the maildirs, and write to it directly
with procmail and mail clients like mutt.

Certain files have different names, but contain the same information.
For example, the subscription lists and UID files look the same to me
but have different names. I suppose they could be converted, but this
would make it difficult to run both IMAP servers side-by-side, which I'd
like to do until dovecot has all the features I need.

I also heard talk of the hierarchy separator being changed from "." to
"/".

Now, is it possible configuration options could be added to allow for
better Courier compatibility? I would be willing to help with this.

Thanks!

--
- Brian

On Wed, 2003-07-09 at 22:04, marcotte at panix.com
wrote:
> Subfolders have different names in the file system. A folder
> (INBOX.subfolder) is named ".subfolder" in Courier, but
"INBOX.subfolder"
> in dovecot. I can't simply rename all the subfolders, because our
> customers have direct access to the maildirs, and write to it directly
> with procmail and mail clients like mutt.
No, that's not the problem. Problem is that you have your clients
configured to use "INBOX." prefix for mailboxes which Dovecot
doesn't
want.

That is the biggest compatibility problem between them, as it requires
changes in client configuration. I have plans to make INBOX-prefix
configurable, but it's not there yet.. Maybe I'll continue the
configuration file changes today after which it's easier to add the
namespace configuration..
> Certain files have different names, but contain the same information.
> For example, the subscription lists and UID files look the same to me
> but have different names. I suppose they could be converted, but this
> would make it difficult to run both IMAP servers side-by-side, which
I'd
> like to do until dovecot has all the features I need.
You'd currently have to recompile Dovecot with the new filenames, but
that's pretty easy to do. And I think I'll make these filenames also
configurable from config file.
> I also heard talk of the hierarchy separator being changed from
"." to
> "/".
Yes, but it's not there yet. And again I think I'll make it configurable
and leave the default to "." as it is now.
> Now, is it possible configuration options could be added to allow for
> better Courier compatibility? I would be willing to help with this.
In the namespace configuration, yes :)