Not all that much better with PostgreSQL

[Daniel Vrátil]

On Friday, 12 April 2019 19:39:04 CEST Martin Steigerwald wrote:
> Hi.
> 
> Since five (!) minutes I am trying to access a mail in a folder that has
> been indexed before and just got the "Retrieving …" thing. Now, it
> finally came up.
> 
> Why? Likely cause I happened to click on a folder that has not been
> indexed and then Akonadi prioritized indexing the folder over my most
> recent request.
> 
> This in my opinion has been the major issue with Akonadi for years and
> still is the major issue:
> 
> Whenever Akonadi decides that it needs to do something in the
> background, it often *completely* stops responding to any user requests.

This is a known issue with maildir/online imap folders, has been known since 
forever. I do understand it is frustrating to wait for an email to appear just 
because something else triggered a long-running background operation.

There's a fix for this in the making, aiming at 19.08 if everything goes 
according to the plan.

> 
> However what is Akonadi's purpose? To serve the user of the applications
> that are using it.
> 
> For me after the rule to store all data safely and reliably the second
> most important rule would be:
> 
> The user goes first. Whenever the user clicks on a mail, a folder, an
> appointment, I let everything pause if need be in order to serve the
> other in a timely manner. I will always prioritize user requests above
> all background processing I do. And if the user decides differently after
> the moment, the user is always right and I stop or background the
> processing the user requested before in order to serve his/her most
> recent request promptly.
> 
> Basta.
> 
> The third most important rule, that is an addition to the first one is:
> 
> I do only work when it is useful. For example Akonadi currently thinks
> it has to re-index a folder just cause it filtered some mails into it.
> However, as a user I may not even intend to look into the folder. It
> just has to stuff those mails into it and *be done with it*. And when I
> click the folder, it can still apply rule 1 as follows:
> 
> Make sure the first mails are shown as quickly as possible and extend
> when the user likes to see more or uses the search facility. Display
> incrementally and remain responsive while doing so.
> 
> 
> I believe in order for Akonadi to be enjoyable by users it absolutely
> must abide by these rules.
> 
> Always and not just sometimes.
> 
> Also with a lot of mail.
> 
> I have seen this before – with Zimbra Collaboration Server which uses
> MySQL/MariaDB and Lucene. Even with a folder with 450000 mails.
> 
> So it can be done.
> 
> Rant over.
> 
> Thanks,


-- 
Daniel Vrátil
www.dvratil.cz | dvratil at kde.org
IRC: dvratil on Freenode (#kde, #kontact, #akonadi, #fedora-kde)

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