[dev] I/O hammering (was: imp folder prefix)

[Anil Madhavapeddy]

Egan wrote:
>
> Does anyone know why building the message list
> is so I/O intensive?

Listening to your spindles isn't the most scientific way of solving the
problem ;-)  It would very useful if you could get an IMAP trace to
figure out what extra commands IMP is sending that Outlook isn't.

Bear in mind that Outlook caches the message bodies to local disk, and
IMP obviously cannot do this.  So Outlook just needs to compare message
headers when the folder is reopened, whereas IMP needs to parse the
whole lot.

It shouldn't be hammering your box _that_ badly though - I access
folders with > 20000 messages with Courier-IMAP on a relatively slow
machine with no problems.

Anil