[MlMt] Rules sometimes don't move messages

[Randall Gellens]

On 23 Mar 2021, at 9:36, Robert Goldman wrote:

> On 23 Mar 2021, at 11:13, Randall Gellens wrote:
>
>> I'm running Mailmate version 1.13.2 (5673), which I think is the 
>> latest release version.  One of my rules adds a tag and moves the 
>> message to a different IMAP folder.  Lately, I've noticed that it 
>> unpredictably and randomly but repeatedly fails to perform the move.  
>> It does apply the tag, so I know it activated.  I don't see any 
>> errors in the Activity Viewer, but the errors might have been hours 
>> ago.  I checked /tmp/mailmate_logs, but the only file there is 
>> mailmate_parser_problems.log which reports some non-compliant message 
>> content.
>
> I'm also having real problems with rules lately.  I absolutely have 
> not been able to add rules that work, although most of my old rules 
> seem to work.  I'd be *very, very* grateful if someone could post a 
> HOWTO about rule debugging.
>
> My previous approach was to make rules that would set flags, so that I 
> could interactively tell if they were working, but now I have been 
> having problems where rules will stop working when I add a conjunct, 
> and not restore operation when I remove it.

You could try creating a new rule, as a test.

> Are there files that we can examine to get a sense of what might be 
> going wrong?

Not that I am aware of.  One trick you can do is use Edit -> Find -> 
Mailbox Search to manually create the exact conditions that are in the 
rule, and see if the search finds the messages you expect.

> Am I right in thinking that the `Mailboxes.plist` file in 
> `~/Library/Application Support/MailMate/` is where all the rules are 
> stored?

Yes, that's where they are.  If you create a new rule and that works, 
you can look at both in the plist file and see if you can find any 
differences.

> Is there some logging we could turn on to see when rules succeed at 
> matching or fail?

Not that I am aware of.

--Randall