> The program is not a client for end-users; it fetches email to a
computer
> for the purpose of tape-archiving, so having the entire message is
important
There are existing programs that do this. Why write a new one?
None of the programs we've looked at (mostly fetchmail, I can't remember the
alternatives anymore) have very good control over when emails are removed
from the IMAP server. Our requirements (imposed by corporate legal...) are
that the archiving machine not delete messages from the email server until
_after_ they have been archived to tape, and that emails stay on the
archiving machine's hard drives for a certain amount of time for quick
retrieval. The volume of email is large enough that scheduled batch
fetching is not feasible; fetching must be continuous, but tape archiving
can't be. So, we need to be able to signal to the email client that it
needs to delete a specific set of emails that it has fetched once the
archiving is done.
Writing a client to do this is pretty easy; modifying fetchmail for our
requirements was not an attractive prospect. We do have email clients that
work (both POP3 and IMAP), but the prospect of using well-tested code is
very attractive, if we can find something that fits our requirements without
too much hacking.
From my point of view, and I could be wrong, c-client is ideal; it's
essentially a highly configurable email client. Every action can be
controlled at a low level, it's capable of interfacing with every type of
IMAP server (POP as well, by the looks of it), and it's documented as being
designed for very low-capability systems. Our servers aren't dedicated to
writing email to tape; they have other things to do, so having the email
fetching clients not take gigabytes of RAM when fetching huge emails is
nice. I would think a client designed for limited systems would be able to
do that, but maybe I misread things, and it's just the imapd component that
can run on a small server. Either way, I like the looks of c-client, and I
can see other places where it can be useful. It's a nice looking project.
_______________________________________________
Imap-uw mailing list
Imap-uw@u.washington.edu
https://mailman1.u.washington.edu/mailman/listinfo/imap-uw
