[Spambayes] spambayes.messageinfo.db & FAQ.txt

[Meyer, Tony]

> I tried out spambayes (with imapfilter.py & Python 2.2), and 
> nothing surprised me except the fact that 
> spambayes.messageinfo.db gets dropped in the local directory 
> rather than in some location configured by an option.

Yeah, I'd noticed this too, but hadn't got round to doing anything about
it.  It's nice to hear that imapfilter is working for you... :)

> what is this DB for?  Or 
> does it get rebuilt from the messages on the server if it's 
> not found in the current directory?  In which case, again, 
> what is its purpose?

It stores information about messages that spambayes apps have seen (as
opposed to the 'hammie.db' database that stores word counts).
Specifically, at the moment it stores whether a message of a given id
has been classified and/or trained.  It doesn't get rebuilt.  I suspect
that the reason you didn't notice anything is that re-classification of
messages should (unless training changes things) result in the same
classification, and often messages that have been classified (and moved)
are no longer in folders that are being filtered anyway.  It might have
meant that the 'hammie.db' database ended up being trained with multiple
copies of messages, however.

> I did notice the comment in message.py that there are plans 
> for a central DB, but in the mean time, perhaps it would be 
> nice to append something like this to FAQ.txt:

I think this is the reason that it was left like this.  If I understand
things correctly, the aim is to have a single file that contains this
database, the 'hammie.db' one, and whatever else turns up.

For the moment, what I'll do is add an option that specifies where the
db should go (we can remove the option if the file later disappears).
This will default to just "spambayes.messageinfo.db" (so still in the
CWD), but you can set it with a full path to fix this problem.  It'll be
in the "Storage" section, under the name "messageinfo_storage_file".
I'll add it to the web ui for imapfilter and pop3proxy, but you can also
add this to your config file:

[Storage]
messageinfo_storage_file: path/to/my/file/messageinfo.db

=Tony Meyer