Re: How to search on emacs-devel?

[Eric Abrahamsen]

Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca> writes:

>> Gotcha. I was thinking this would be a git interface to whatever mail
>> store happened to be out there in the wild, but you're describing
>> something where it's the IMAP server that interfaces with "the wild",
>> and git is just the internal store? I guess I don't see a major
>> advantage to just using IMAP directly...
>
> The idea is that the use of IMAP would be a transient artifact and
> ditched at some point when the MTA can deliver directly to your
> MailGit mailbox.
>
> Then instead of fetching mail via IMAP and being f**ed when you're
> offline, you "git pull" to quickly and efficiently get a complete local
> copy of your mailbox (and `git push` to send back up the information
> about which message you've read/deleted, the tags you've added, or
> whether you moved some messages to other folders, ...).
>
> There are many tricky parts, tho:
> - Find a good layout to avoid conflicts during `git merge`.
> - Figure out a way to let Git forget old mail you really want deleted.
> - Write a bidi-gateway with something like IMAP so you can start using
>   it before reaching the brave new world where your favorite email
>   provider support MailGit format mailboxes.

Okay! Makes sense, and there are some interesting things to think about
there. MailGit might sit nicely next to BuGit in the Monnierware
multiverse :) I'd be happy to spitball this and contribute some code as
things progress.