Shortcomings of Maildir++ layout

[Timo Sirainen]

> On 18 Nov 2015, at 23:00, Hadmut Danisch <hadmut at danisch.de> wrote:
> 
>> Sounds more like you just introduced a new self-created problem that
> would require yet another workaround.. ;-)
> 
> Definitely wrong.
> 
> Appending  .dir  to directories  and .folder to folder files keeps files
> completely  distinct and name collissions are not possible.
> 
> 
>> But what was not clear from your mail, is what exactly you identified
> as "the problems" with standard Maildir++ setup?
> 
> 
> Having regular files filenames beginning with a . is a no-go and flawed
> by design. Extremely error-prone No serious designer would ever do that.

Dovecot doesn't force you to use LAYOUT=Maildir++. Just use LAYOUT=fs and you can also specify a DIRNAME=<something that never exists> to avoid collisions with cur/new/tmp names. Actually, Dovecot doesn't even force you to use Maildir at all. Its own sdbox/mdbox mailbox formats are much more efficient if you don't care about using a standard mailbox format.

> Even worse, both folders   foo/bar and foo.bar  both get the filename
> .foo.bar

Not with listescape plugin enabled. And if namespace separator is '/' as you seem to imply, newer Dovecot versions will give an error instead of silently translating foo/bar to .foo.bar (newer = probably last 5+ years or something).