JMAP protocol support

[okias]

I'd like to create this issue for tracking of JMAP protocol support [1] progress/interest. I guess at some point JMAP protocol will be implemented by K9 Mail.

This time, JMAP is already implemented in few Mail servers, so wide adoption will probably follow soon.

Update: there is guide for client authors: https://jmap.io/client.html

[1] http://jmap.io/

[ghost]

Recently this was published:

https://fastmail.blog/2018/12/27/jmap-is-on-the-home-straight/
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18766709

I think JMAP is an eventual evolution. It has a lot to offer particularly on mobile devices which IMAP was not designed for. It would be a suitable investment in time for K-9 to be the first JMAP client. I do see this being eventually baked into Android however as a complete replacement for IMAP.

[marclaporte]

This request (which I strongly support) is now listed at: https://jmap.io/software.html

[iNPUTmice]

Just as a quick FYI there is a Java / Android library available here: https://github.com/iNPUTmice/jmap

The jmap-mua part of the library makes a lot of assumptions about the mail client, its work flow and how it stores it's data and might not be a good fit for k9. However the lower level jmap-client module would still take a lot of work of the shoulders of anyone wanting to implement JMAP in k9.

[cketti]

I'm happy to report that the Prototype Fund has "pre-selected" my project to add JMAP support to K-9 Mail for funding. I still have to complete the formal application and then the project will probably start in September.

[bortzmeyer]

The standard has just been published: RFC 8621 https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8621

[cketti]

Short update: The project funding was approved and I'll be working on this for the next 6 months.

[marclaporte]

@cketti The great news was published here: https://jmap.io/news.html#k-9-mail-is-working-on-adding-jmap-support

If you have any updates, we are very interested :-)

Thanks!

[cketti]

The 6 months are up. The repository now contains a module called k9mail-jmap that is a version of the K-9 Mail app with rudimentary support for JMAP. The usability is not great and I don't plan on making APKs of it available. People interested in the current state will have to build the app themselves.

I created a JMAP milestone in the issue tracker with things that have to be implemented before I feel comfortable to include the JMAP code in the main app.

I plan to continue working on JMAP support, but I don't consider it a blocker for the next stable version of K-9 Mail. So it might be a while before I'll get back to it.

[doctorlard]

This is something I would like to contribute to; I'm considering moving (some of) my mail to Fastmail, so I can test it. This should probably depend on the updated UnifiedPush issue #5165 (which is currently understandably locked as off-topic)

[cketti]

There's a milestone for adding JMAP support: https://github.com/thundernest/k-9/milestone/26

It's currently not a high priority and there's a significant amount of work left to get this into a state that is good enough to be included in the app.
If you want to contribute to this, please try to keep the pull requests at a reasonable size and don't try to make too many changes at once.

UnifiedPush is just one possible push mechanism that can be used with JMAP. It's an optional feature, not a requirement.