Ole-Morten Duesund f80f89cdd5 docs: reorganize and update all documentation to reflect production readiness

- Move all documentation to docs/ directory for better organization
- Update ANALYSIS.md with current production status and resolved issues
- Completely rewrite IMPLEMENTATION_COMPARISON.md with feature parity matrix
- Update TODO.md to reflect completed milestones and future roadmap
- Create comprehensive docs/README.md as documentation index
- Update main README.md with project status and documentation links
- All documentation now reflects August 2025 production-ready status
- Both implementations verified as feature-complete with identical output

🤖 Generated with [Claude Code](https://claude.ai/code)

Co-Authored-By: Claude <noreply@anthropic.com>

2025-08-05 19:29:44 +02:00

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Folder Pattern Matching in mail2couch

mail2couch supports powerful wildcard patterns for selecting which folders to process. This allows flexible configuration for different mail backup scenarios.

Pattern Syntax

The folder filtering uses Go's filepath.Match syntax, which supports:

* matches any sequence of characters (including none)
? matches any single character
[abc] matches any character within the brackets
[a-z] matches any character in the range
\ escapes special characters

Special Cases

"*" in the include list means ALL available folders will be processed
Empty include list with exclude patterns will process all folders except excluded ones
Exact string matching is supported for backwards compatibility

Examples

Include All Folders

{
  "folderFilter": {
    "include": ["*"],
    "exclude": ["Drafts", "Trash", "Spam"]
  }
}

This processes all folders except Drafts, Trash, and Spam.

{
  "folderFilter": {
    "include": ["Work*", "Projects*", "INBOX"],
    "exclude": ["*Temp*", "*Draft*"]
  }
}

This includes folders starting with "Work" or "Projects", plus INBOX, but excludes any folder containing "Temp" or "Draft".

Archive Patterns

{
  "folderFilter": {
    "include": ["Archive*", "*Important*", "INBOX"],
    "exclude": ["*Temp"]
  }
}

This includes folders starting with "Archive", any folder containing "Important", and INBOX, excluding temporary folders.

Specific Folders Only

{
  "folderFilter": {
    "include": ["INBOX", "Sent", "Important"],
    "exclude": []
  }
}

This processes only the exact folders: INBOX, Sent, and Important.

Subfolder Patterns

{
  "folderFilter": {
    "include": ["Work/*", "Personal/*"],
    "exclude": ["*/Drafts"]
  }
}

This includes all subfolders under Work and Personal, but excludes any Drafts subfolder.

Folder Hierarchy

Different IMAP servers use different separators for folder hierarchies:

Most servers use / (e.g., Work/Projects, Archive/2024)
Some use . (e.g., Work.Projects, Archive.2024)

The patterns work with whatever separator your IMAP server uses.

Common Use Cases

Corporate Email: ["*"] with exclude ["Drafts", "Trash", "Spam"] for complete backup
Selective Backup: ["INBOX", "Sent", "Important"] for essential folders only
Project-based: ["Project*", "Client*"] to backup work-related folders
Archive Mode: ["Archive*", "*Important*"] for long-term storage
Sync Mode: ["INBOX"] for real-time synchronization

Message Origin Tracking

All messages stored in CouchDB include a mailbox field that records the original folder name. This ensures you can always identify which folder a message came from, regardless of how it was selected by the folder filter.

Performance Considerations

Using "*" processes all folders, which may be slow for accounts with many folders
Specific folder names are faster than wildcard patterns
Consider using exclude patterns to filter out large, unimportant folders like Trash or Spam

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