This discussion is going in every direction, so to get some sort of conclusion in it I would think we should begin by defining a policy regarding dependencies and so forth with this software.

I'd think that we'd like as many people to use roundcube as possible. To do this it has to rely on few different software components as possible and the components it relies on should be very common.

Imap server
Apache / PHP / mysql

All ideas about things running in the background (eg. cron tabs, special services, even special extensions etc) are all good, but if you make roundcube depend on stuff like that there are not many people that will be able to use/install it.

A few software projects have fallen into the trap of making the software to dependable upon special requirements. Has anybody here tried to install Horde IMP for an example ? There's a special requirements program that has a long list of very special extensions and setup requirements which not many people can both technically set up and/or don't have access to...

Another bad example. Typo3. I actually gave up on this one. Requiring symbolic links, various php extensions, etc (worst part is probably terrible documentation)....

I think we should learn from other projects' mistakes and do things proper..

If anybody is experiencing a lot of delay in receiving the mail etc, there *might* be a bug but most likly the IMAP server of that setup is very very slow. This is not something roundcube could ever be responsible for.

I think as long as the performance is better than Squirrel (which it already is) then the performance is not something we need to worry about.

I'd say keeping the design and architecture _clean_ is a big MUST

Who's with me on that ?!? :-)

best w,
Arnor

On 2/7/07, Brennan Stehling <brennan@offwhite.net > wrote:
Yes, it is not exactly a straightforward solution. I would like a more
modular mail system which would give us more hooks to handle incoming
mail. I know you can create milters, etc, but those are not a trivial
thing to build. I once created extensions to the Apache web server
with mod_perl which was really quite easy and I was able to make
Apache do something the available extensions could not do alone.  (SSL
secured reverse proxy with LDAP lookup)

There is the James mail server which was created with Java which I
believe had plans for plugins.  But I cannot really run Java on my
FreeBSD 5.x server.

Is there a modular IMAP server which has hooks for languages like
Perl, Python or Ruby?

Brennan

On 2/7/07, till <klimpong@gmail.com > wrote:
> I guess you can use just about anything to implement that additional
> performance layer.
> Whatever floats your boat.
>
> On 2/7/07, Brennan Stehling < brennan@offwhite.net> wrote:
> > Interesting.  I suppose I could use a Perl script which sits and
> > listens for notifications and loads data into the MySQL database for
> > me.  I was hoping to avoid using a server-side language besides PHP
> > but if PHP is not going to work as a daemon process then Perl seems
> > like the right alternative.
> >
> > Brennan
> >
> > On 2/7/07, Mathieu Lecarme < mathieu@garambrogne.net> wrote:
> > > Brennan Stehling a écrit :
> > > > I am not terribly familiar with the lastest in PHP.
> > > >
> > > > One concept I am considering is a way to keep the state current on the
> > > > server for the webmail user.  Currently the PHP code is only run when
> > > > there is a request, but it would be helpful to have something running
> > > > on the server continually which can respond to events in real-time.
> > > >
> > > > Here is the idea.
> > > >
> > > > A user logs into the system and that updates a timestamp for their
> > > > date of last activity.  Each time the RC webmail client looks for new
> > > > messages it would update this timestamp.  The service running on the
> > > > server would be away of active sessions and watch their related IMAP
> > > > accounts for new activity.
> > > >
> > > > When a new message does arrive it can pull the summary data and place
> > > > it into the MySQL database so that when the webmail client looks for
> > > > an update it can just query the database and not MySQL.
> > > >
> > > > And when it does pull the updates from the server it will also just
> > > > hit the database for the summary data and only use the IMAP server
> > > > when pulling the full message.
> > > >
> > > > Has anyone seen PHP run on the server-side continually as a service?
> > > > How would we go about implementing that?
> > > >
> > > > Also, what facilities would PHP have to monitor a directory of files
> > > > for updates?  Will it just have to poll the directories and files for
> > > > the last update date?  Since PHP is largely just meant for web
> > > > applications I doubt it has a file system monitoring feature.
> > > >
> > > PHP is not a daemon, it's it secret weapon for managing memory leak and
> > > bad code. Every time a new PHP born, respond and die.
> > >
> > > For file monitoring, there is FAM (File Alteration Monitor)
> > > http://fr2.php.net/manual/en/ref.fam.php
> > >
> > > But it's out of scope, IMAP is an abstraction, you can't watch file
> > > modification, it's IMAP server business, not yours.
> > >
> > > IMAP is pull centric, not push. If you wont to do stuff like that, Cyrus
> > > (the most complete IMAP implementation) use notifyd, wich send some UDP
> > > packet when a mail comes, you can listen UDP port in a php script (not a
> > > server one), with a loop and all server stuff wich can put data in MySQL
> > > for its brother, php web.
> > >
> > > http://cyrusimap.web.cmu.edu/imapd/man/notifyd.8.html
> > > http://pwet.fr/man/linux/commandes/zephyr
> > >
> > > M.
> > >
> > >
> > >
> >
> >
> > --
> > Brennan Stehling
> > http://brennan.offwhite.net/blog/
> > http://www.smallsharptools.com/
> >
> >
> >
>
>
> --
> Till Klampaeckel
> e: mailto:klimpong@gmail.com
> p: +491704018676
> l: http://beta.plazes.com/whereis/till
>
> Want to know what's up in Berlin?
> - http://berlin.metblogs.com
>


--
Brennan Stehling
http://brennan.offwhite.net/blog/
http://www.smallsharptools.com/