Hi, we've been using dovecot for the past 2 years or so for our 3K+ mail accounts and have never regretted our step. Yet from time to time there appear to be, how shall I say, "major" problems in the daemon that of course are no reason to whine and complain about because dovecot is OSS and everybody can do something about it. And that's where I would like to make a suggestion. From our own software projects I am used to the usage of extensive testing frameworks, like junit for java based applications. I almost completely lack knowledge about C/C++ programming, so I have no idea if something like this could be done for dovecot. For "the other end" of the mail chain I know dumbster, which is a fake SMTP server used for testing MUAs. So maybe something similar could be done for IMAP/POP3 servers? What I am thinking of is to run those tests before anything new is released. On the other hand I cannot even estimate how much work would be needed for this ... Udo Rader -- bestsolution.at EDV Systemhaus GmbH bestsolution.at -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: signature.asc Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 189 bytes Desc: This is a digitally signed message part URL: <dovecot.org/pipermail/dovecot/attachments/20051114/3ddb6bd4/attachment.bin>
> What I am thinking of is to run those tests before anything new is > released. On the other hand I cannot even estimate how much work would > be needed for this ... > > Udo Rader >You could develop a test suite using something like perl. The approach would be run beat the hell out of all the functionality that dovecot provides and validate the input/output against what is expected. It's a black-box style of testing, but it would help indicate any potential problems. It was through my own version of this that I found there are some limitations to how many UIDS I can transmit at one time. But who expects >10,000 UIDS in a single call? Between running IMAP calls to localhost and inspecting the local filesystem directly, I suspect a really nice test suite could be developed. Interestingly, most of it could apply to more than just dovecot if you seperate testing for IMAP/Maildir standard formats from dovecot particulars (like indexing?).