Bug#109171: Use Maildir format by default

[miquels@cistron-office.nl (Miquel van Smoorenburg)]

In article <[🔎] 20010819133212.A1150@wonderland.linux.it>,
Marco d'Itri  <md@Linux.IT> wrote:
> >2. Benchmarking mbox versus maildir
> >   http://www.courier-mta.org/mbox-vs-maildir/
>This has to be a joke. Everybody who knows something about mail servers
>can tell UW-* programs suck. The benchmark only confirms this, not that
>maildir is faster

True.

>(it usually is not, and it definitely is not for 
>tipical POP servers).

Still, deleting messages from a mbox-style mailbox means copying
the entire mailbox usually at least twice. That can cause a heavy
load on your mailserver. Also it is nessecary to scan the entire
mbox at startup - readdir() is usually faster (if you skip the stat())

>Debian should make sensible decisions about use of available technology.
>The reality is that maildir is only useful on some setups with remote
>mounted mailboxes and broken NFS locking.

There certainly are mailbox formats that are better than maildir,
but IMHO unix-style mbox files isn't one of them.

Mike.