Storing Gmail labels

[Zain Memon]

On Tue, Oct 2, 2012 at 12:49 PM, chris coleman <christocoleman at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>
> On Tue, Oct 2, 2012 at 2:33 AM, Eygene Ryabinkin <rea-fbsd at codelabs.ru>
> wrote:
>> Tue, Oct 02, 2012 at 10:53:11AM +0200, Rainer M Krug wrote:
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>>> On 02/10/12 10:34, Eygene Ryabinkin wrote:
>>> > Mon, Oct 01, 2012 at 09:44:46PM -0700, Zain Memon wrote:
>>> >> Can I get OfflineIMAP to fetch and store my Gmail labels without
>>> >> having multiple copies of
>>> >> the same message?
>>> >
>>> > If I am not terribly mistaken, current implementation of GMail
>>> > folder storage does not allow for this.
>>>
>>> Well - you could use the
>>> https://developers.google.com/google-apps/gmail/imap_extensions api
>>> (particularly
>>>
>>> https://developers.google.com/google-apps/gmail/imap_extensions#access_to_gmail_labels_x-gm-labels)
>>> to get the tags for downloaded messages, if I am not completely
>>> mistaken.
>>
>> I meant the implementation of GMail support in OfflineIMAP.  Sorry
>> for not being clear.
>> --
>> Eygene Ryabinkin                                        ,,,^..^,,,
>> [ Life's unfair - but root password helps!          | codelabs.ru ]
>> [ 82FE 06BC D497 C0DE 49EC  4FF0 16AF 9EAE 8152 ECFB | freebsd.org ]
>
>
> I'm considering creating a patch for storing Gmail labels for
> type=Gmail. For the Maildir format, where could I store the label data
> for each message? I'm not super familiar with the Maildir format but
> it seems to me that labels should be handled similarly to flags, but I
> don't think it's a good idea to store labels in the filename of each
> message. Does the Maildir format allow for mutable data to be stored
> in the file itself?
>
> Hi Zain,
>
> You should get the extra info from gmail, and then store it in headers
> inside the message.
> The headers are: X-GM-MSGID, X-GM-THRID, X-GM-LABELS, in addition to
> existing XLIST.
> The user will need to use a mailreader (Thunderbird is one) that has an
> extension available to support those gmail specific message headers IN THE
> MESSAGE not on the gmail server.
> There is some more detail / code here, but note, it's code that talks to
> gmail's servers to ask for the extra info "live", not code that reads to
> extra info from the message headers...:
> http://www.google-melange.com/gsoc/project/google/gsoc2012/atuljangra/31001
>
> Chris
>
>

The reason I was hesitant to store X-GM-LABELS as a header in the
message is because it is mutable, similar to the flags. I could change
labels for a message on the server and I would expect OfflineIMAP to
sync that to my local copy; but it's my understanding that Maildir file
contents are supposed to be immutable.