[MlMt] Syncing SmartBox synchronous between two hosts

[Bill Cole]

On 1 Aug 2016, at 10:03, Tobias Matthaeus wrote:

> Hello everyone,
>
>
>
> I am trying to use MailMate and I really like the SmartBox feature. 
> But I have a problem: I have two machines, and would really like to 
> have the SmartBoxes synchronous between this both hosts…

See the recent thread with the Subject: "enhancement, I think" for 
extensive discussion of the topic of synchronizing configuration between 
systems.

> This is possible with copying the file Mailboxes.plist into ownCloud 
> and symlink it to the ~/Library/Application Support/Mailboxes.plist 
> file. But after changing a SmartBox the Mailboxes.plist file is a 
> complete new file. The symlink will be overwritten with the new file 
> and this ends in the situation that both machines are not synchronous 
> in SmartBoxes anymore.
>
>
> Do you have any idea for me?

Currently you cannot be certain that the config files in 
~/Library/Application Support/MailMate/ contain the current 
configuration of MailMate (or even a consistent complete configuration) 
if MailMate is running, but they almost surely will within a few seconds 
of any changes made within MailMate. If MailMate has been launched since 
the login of the current user, you cannot be sure that 
~/Library/Preferences/com.freron.MailMate.plist will ever contain the 
current system-managed preferences for MailMate until the user logs out, 
although you CAN get those prefeernces by using a poorly-documented 
function of the 'defaults' command. For both sets of configuration, 
MailMate does not anticipate or accommodate the externally-stored 
configuration (on disk or in the 'cfprefsd' daemon that handling 'live' 
system-managed preferences) to be changed by anything else while MM is 
running.

In short: it is not currently possible to reliably automate 
synchronization of MailMate config between systems while MailMate is 
running on both machines. However, if all you want are the mailboxes, 
you can get a good-enough result by doing it manually or with a 
relatively simple script that copies files from their live location to 
the synched directory or vice-versa whenever one copy is newer than the 
other.

Benny has said (in the thread referred to above) that he intends to 
implement a config sync mechanism, probably via a special message in an 
IMAP account, possibly via a file package dropped in an arbitrary local 
directory that is synched by external means (i.e. iCloud, Dropbox, 
OwnCloud, etc.) to be loaded on other machines. It would not surprise me 
if someone involved in that discussion were to share a working "good 
enough" sync script in the very near future.