Bug#109171: Use Maildir format by default
Package: debian-policy
Version: 3.5.6.0
Severity: wishlist
Debian uses the traditional mailbox style by default. However, it has some
disadvantages over maildir -- one of them is that it does a non-reversible
modification to the message's text if it contains the sequence 'From ' at the
beginning of a line. MUAs like mutt also save the user's mail folders in the
same problematic format.
My proposal is to:
1. Use the maildir format by default for storage of the user's incoming mail.
This means both the MTA must be configured for maildir by default (e.g. in
eximconfig) and all the MUAs must be able to grok it without needing any
manual configuration
2. Use the maildir format to store the user folders by default if the user's
MUA allows it
The issues are:
- Debian is about choice. So, of course mailbox vs maildir will end up being a
configuration question. Just make maildir the default, please.
- Standards for where to put the user's incoming mail/where in $HOME to put the
folders. I believe most programs which use maildir already share common
places, but putting them in policy would be good.
- Making programs which can't use it yet be able to use it
- Somehow making programs able to guess which is the mbox/mdir choice of the
day (perhaps using debconf).
- Dealing with indecise people who change the default while the system is live
References:
1. Content-Length Considered Harmful
http://home.netscape.com/eng/mozilla/2.0/relnotes/demo/content-length.html
2. Benchmarking mbox versus maildir
http://www.courier-mta.org/mbox-vs-maildir/
3. Using maildir format
http://cr.yp.to/proto/maildir.html
4. Maildir Bulletin
http://www.coker.com.au/maildir-bulletin/
5. maildir(5)
http://www.qmail.org/qmail-manual-html/man5/maildir.html
<insert standard "Debian should take the lead", "look at the xterm backspace
mess and how well Debian handled it", etc>
-- System Information
Debian Release: testing/unstable
Architecture: i386
Kernel: Linux flower 2.4.7 #1 Sat Jul 21 20:57:24 BRT 2001 i686
Locale: LANG=en_US.ISO8859-1, LC_CTYPE=en_US.ISO8859-1
Versions of packages debian-policy depends on:
ii fileutils 4.1-2 GNU file management utilities.
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