Re: Exclusive-access locking of maildrop

[John Gardiner Myers <[e-mail]>]

[e-mail] (Steve Dorner) writes:
> Anybody going to the trouble of writing an IMAP server has very
> little extra work to do (I'm sure JGM will correct me if I'm wrong) to
> support little ol' POP3,

You're correct, implementing POP3 was very little work.  I had to add
a "pop lock" and create a field in the mailbox to store the LAST
value, the rest was pretty trivial.  POP3's biggest use of my time has
been creating and contributing to the mailing list :-)

In the case of my servers, my implementation is the only thing that
can read my database.  Defining a "standard" way to lock an
implementation-specific database would be meaningless.

I expect simultaneous access via both POP and IMAP to be extremely
rare--I tend to think individual users will choose one method or the
other.  If it does happen, the software has to deal with it somehow.
In my case, the IMAP server won't permit an "expunge" operation.
Other IMAP servers might open the mailbox in "read-only" mode.

I think it would be a big mistake to allow messages to disappear
during a POP session.  Things would break.

-- 
_.John G. Myers		Internet: [e-mail]
			LoseNet:  ...!seismo!ihnp4!wiscvm.wisc.edu!give!up