vm-virtual-update-folders doesn't work

[John Hein]

trunk rev 1335

I had one virtual folder open in addition to my inbox. I went back to the inbox and marked 5 or 6 messages (not the same as the one message in the virtual folder, but that probably doesn't matter). Then I tried to open a new virtual folder with 'V C marked'.

Instead of opening a new virtual folder containing the marked messages, vm took me to the virtual folder that was already opened. And it did not add the marked messages.

[John Hein (xpqheqdvq4)]

Hmm.. maybe this never worked as I am now expecting. Turns out the "other" virtual folder was already a 'marked' virtual folder.

This is probably just operator error. I'm checking to see if there's a way to add to a 'marked' virtual folder that is already open.

[John Hein (xpqheqdvq4)]

Okay, it's not just operator error, I think.

vm-virtual-update-folders sounds like what I wanted perhaps:

===================
Updates all virtual folders.
E.g. when creating a folder of all marked messages one can call this
function in order to add newly marked messages to the virtual folder
without recreating it.
===================

But running that in the existing marked virtual folder or the inbox folder didn't update the existing marked virtual folder.

But now I'm questioning if I ever used this. So maybe this "never" worked or hasn't in a long time. I'll try a few older versions.

[John Hein (xpqheqdvq4)]

vm-virtual-update-folders in 1152 worked when I run it in the inbox (not in the virtual folder). And it works by adding newly marked messages, not by removing previously marked (and now unmarked) messages. This is actually what I wanted, so that's good. I could see someone wanting the marked folder to reflect the new marked messages, but you can get that by quitting and recreating the marked folder.

Wait the test in 1152, was too simple. I did 'M M' on message 1, 'V C marked', switch back to inbox, then 'M M' on message 2, vm-virtual-update-folders, switch to marked folder. That worked. But when I select some later messages (using M S), then update, only the first of the newly marked messages (there were 4) got added to the virtual folder.

Individually marking messages one at a time, then using vm-virtual-update-folders, then unmark the old one and mark a new one, then update again seems to work.

So it looks like the trouble I'm reporting is that vm-virtual-update-folders doesn't update an existing marked virtual folder with more than one of all newly marked messages. That seems to be the behavior I'm seeing. And it seems to be about the same in 1152 as 1335 as far as this goes.

[Uday Reddy (reddyuday)]

John Hein writes:

> Okay, it's not just operator error, I think.
>
> vm-virtual-update-folders sounds like what I wanted perhaps:

This was in vm-virtual.el, which has been an unsupported add-on.

I am slowly trying to absorb it into VM, but I have noticed that this
function hasn't been working. I will have to look into it some time, but I
should probably remove it from the info file until I get it to work.

Cheers,
Uday

[Uday Reddy (reddyuday)]

John Hein writes:

> Wait the test in 1152, was too simple. I did 'M M' on message 1, 'V C
> marked', switch back to inbox, then 'M M' on message 2, vm-virtual-
> update-folders, switch to marked folder. That worked. But when I
> select some later messages (using M S), then update, only the first of
> the newly marked messages (there were 4) got added to the virtual
> folder.

Apparently, you have to do M N before doing V U. I would never have guessed
it from the doc string!

Cheers,
Uday

[John Hein (xpqheqdvq4)]

M N V U didn't do it for me, but probably because V U is bound to vm-create-unseen-virtual-folder (well V U is translated to V u - the latter is bound to the unseen op). I'm assuming you bound V U to vm-virtual-update-folders?

If I set-local-key to bind V U to vm-virtual-update-folders, then try M N V U, it still doesn't seem to update the marked folder.

I take it back. If I do all my marking in a _real_ folder, M N V U does add newly marked messages to the marked virtual folder.

However, if I add a level of virtual folderness, if I start from a virtual folder, then V C marked from that, it doesn't add _any_ newly marked messages to the "nested marked virtual folder of marked messages in a virtual folder". Even the mark one at a time technique doesn't help. You have to quit the nested marked virt folder and create another one with the new messages. Not quite symmetric behavior compared to starting from a real local folder. Not sure about an imap folder.

Thanks for updating the doc string. That'll help. But I think there may still be bugs in some dark corners.

This is quite low priority. The fact that I've stumbled onto this after so many years is a good indicator of its importance. If I had to guess without looking, I'd guess that it has been broken in this way since its birth. In any case, it's certainly no 8.2.0 ship stopper IMO (or 8.2.1 or ...). I'd be inclined to ignore this until after 8.2.0