dovecot - Jan 2010 - Adding support for a new storage format - plugin?

Hi,

I've spent a little bit of time looking at the dovecot source (from the 
unstable 2.0 development tree), and I think I'm starting to get it
together...

Background:
I'm interested in dovecot to provide IMAP access to an existing database 
backed server store (http://www.openchange.org for more details). The goal is 
to provide parallel access using either IMAP or the exchange RPC protocol.

If I understand this stuff:
* I can potentially provide access to the store using a plugin. It looks like 
the virtual mailbox plugin is a potential example here.
* I may need to also provide an authentication plugin (not sure whether I can 
just re-use the existing ldap backend - quite possibly a useful option in my 
scenario)
* I probably can't use the existing SQL code, since it uses its own schema.
* I may need to provide some locking to ensure things are always in a 
consistent state for both IMAP and exchange RPC.

Comments? Suggestions? 

Brad

On 18.1.2010, at 8.23, Brad Hards wrote:
> Background:
> I'm interested in dovecot to provide IMAP access to an existing
database
> backed server store (http://www.openchange.org for more details). The goal
is
> to provide parallel access using either IMAP or the exchange RPC protocol.
I've also previously thought about adding support for OpenChange, but
I've never really had time to even start looking much into it. Or actually
it's really the other way around, I'd want to add Exchange RPC support
for Dovecot's storage backends.
> If I understand this stuff:
> * I can potentially provide access to the store using a plugin. It looks
like
> the virtual mailbox plugin is a potential example here.
Well, implementing the store using a plugin is exactly the same as implementing
it inside Dovecot's lib-storage code. So any of the lib-storage backends
could be used as an example.
> * I may need to also provide an authentication plugin (not sure whether I
can
> just re-use the existing ldap backend - quite possibly a useful option in
my
> scenario)
Dovecot can authenticate against AD with LDAP backend, so I'd hope that
would be enough.
> * I probably can't use the existing SQL code, since it uses its own
schema.
What SQL code? You mean the SQL mail backend code I wrote years ago and never
finished?