Re: [VM] VM is awesome (was vm-save-buffer)

[Daniel Barrett]

On November 5, 2015, Johan Vromans wrote:
>...when a mail folder gets big (more than 2000 messages or so)
>VM really slows down.

Hmm, I have a 2500 message Amazon folder (mbox format) that opens in
half a second. That might be because I have a fast 12-core CPU and an
SSD, but just in case, here is something for you to try:

1. Open your mbox file in Emacs like a normal file. (Not with VM.)
2. Globally replace all mail header lines that begin with "X-VM-",
changing them to begin with "XX-VM-". This will make VM ignore these headers
the next time you visit this folder. Save and close the file.
3. Visit this mbox in VM. VM will recalculate all the headers you
just renamed, which might take some extra time.
5. Save the folder and close it.

Now open your folder again. Is it faster? VM has some kind of bug
where these headers get out of whack, and deleting/recreating them
improves performance again.

>With big IMAP folders it becomes painfully slow when saving (due to
>the local cache of 100+Mb) and autosave (or poll?)  makes Emacs
>unresponsive for several seconds every couple of minutes.

Interesting. I don't use IMAP so I've never noticed this. (I use
fetchmail to retrieve my email from the IMAP server and then
process it all locally.)

>So all advantages have their drawbacks as well. Which one outweights
>the other is very individual.

Very true!

--
Dan Barrett
address@hidden