Re: gnus INBOX housekeeping, kept (copies of) mail lying around

[Eric Abrahamsen]

Gijs Hillenius <gijs@hillenius.net> writes:

> [...] hope snipping this much is ok..
>
>>>
>>> If my Gnus (5.13, part of Debian's Emacs) copies messages back into
>>> the INBOX, does fancy-split set the delete/expunge IMAP flag to
>>> these?
>>>
>>> Because, if it does not flag them for deletion, would that perhaps
>>> explain why the nightly Cyrus pruning does not do anything? Cyrus is
>>> set to remove from disk all messages that have been flagged for
>>> deletion for 3 days.
>>
>> No, no flags are set. From IMAP's point of view, splitting is simply a
>> MOVE operation. Sorry, I misspoke earlier when I said the messages
>> were *copied* back into the same group. They're actually MOVEd. That
>> means there's only ever one copy of the message, but it gets a new
>> UUID number each time.
>>
>> No new flags are set at all.
>
> So, these message come back int the INBOX, but are not shown anymore by
> Gnus. They are also not marked as deletable and that would explain why
> Cyrus does not remove them from disk, yes?

Right. Once they are given the Seen flag, that flag sticks with them
even if they are moved around (including "moved" into the same group
they were already in). That Seen flag means Gnus won't show them to you
again.

I think the distinction here is between message deletion, and adding the
"Deleted" flag. Deletion occurs as part of the move process (the message
is in one instant removed from one group and added to another). If
you're MOVEing to the same group, the message is deleted from that
group, then added back to that group. But it keeps its old flags, and no
other flags are put on it (there's nothing in the splitting process that
would add a Deleted flag), so Cyrus doesn't see any reason why it should
garbage-collect the message at the end of the day.

Hope that makes sense.

E