Need advice: mailbox-based \Seen flag

[Ken Murchison]

Boris Lytochkin wrote:
> Hello!
> 
> I need an advice in implementing per-mailbox \Seen flag (or 'shared'
> \Seen flag in per-user basis).
> 
> For now I want to implement it this way:
> 1) add a new mailbox attribute, say 'sharedseen'
> 2) switch path for .seen file in imap/seen_*.c:seen_getpath() if
>    'sharedseen' flag is set on mailbox.
> 3) changes in replication module?
> 
> So, setting 'sharedseen' attribute to mailbox will cause using
> per-mailbox seen-file.
> 
> What are weak points of this implementation?
> Is there more correct way to make per-mailbox \Seen flag?

My quick thoughts would be the following:

- Add a 'sharedseen' mailbox attribute as you suggest (as a mailbox 
annotation)

- When a mailbox is opened that has this annotation enabled, we open the 
seen state database for the special 'anyone' user instead of the 
authorized user.  This would allow using the same API with minimal 
changes.  Perhaps we could come up with a better userid then 'anyone' 
but its already reserved as special via ACL.

-----

- As an alternative to using a seen db for 'anyone' we could go back to 
using a local seen db in the mailbox folder, but then we'd have to have 
function pointers to swap between the functions for local access vs 
per-user access.

- As another alternative, we could keep track of shared seen state in 
cyrus.index, but that would require an upgrade to the index file format, 
and more API changes.


Any thoughts from the gallery on my quick OTH idea?

-- 
Kenneth Murchison
Systems Programmer
Project Cyrus Developer/Maintainer
Carnegie Mellon University