Mailspring/ROADMAP.md

Roadmap to Initial Release:

Target Ship Date: Late September

C++ MailSync

Goal: Reduce bugginess and battery impact, enable new controls over what mail data is synced, and dramatically improve performance by moving mailsync to a new C++ codebase based on MailCore2.

• Build a lightweight C++ command-line application that syncs mail using MailCore2 and libcurl and writes to the same sqlite3 database schema used by Nylas Mail.
• Remove the client-sync package and the Activity window and implement MailsyncProcess/MailsyncBridge wrappers around new C++ codebase. Broadcast database events from the C++ app into the JavaScript app so the UI updates as data changes.
• Remove thread and contact search indexing, perform indexing as data is retrieved from IMAP in C++.
• Remove migration support from JavaScript. Run the C++ app at launch with --migrate to run migrations before the main window is displayed.
• Make the DatabaseStore in the JavaScript application read-only. All changes to all models flow through C++ worker for that account.
• Rewrite the task queue to dispatch tasks to C++ and watch for table changes rather than executing tasks in JavaScript.
• Rewrite all mail triage tasks (flag changes, folder changes, label changes) in C++ and update JS code to dispatch tasks to the C++ codebase.
• Rewrite sync progress reporting to use new metrics attached to Folder models
• Refactor the way the JavaScript front-end references "Labels" and "Folders" to reflect the fact that Gmail has both labels and folders, not just labels and "special labels with weird behavior."
• Refactor the FileUploadStore and FileDownloadStore into a single AttachmentStore. Remove all uploading / downloading from JavaScript.
• Rewrite the onboarding flow to spawn a C++ worker to check IMAP/SMTP credentials.
• Rewrite the SendDraftTask in C++
  • Basic implementation
  • Ensure errors are presented in JavaScript and re-open the message window
  • Ensure "multisend" works and metadata is transferred to the new message
  • Ensure the message is saved to the Sent Folder
• Store IMAP/SMTP credentials and the cloud API token in the keychain securely.
• Ensure C++ worker crashes are reported through Sentry or Backtrace
• Restart C++ workers if they crash and alert the user to repeated errors.
• Add support for Gmail authentication flow and XOAUTH2 [ until this is done, you need to use an "App Password" ]
• Add more robust retry / failure handling logic to C++ code.
• Decide what license to use for the C++ codebase / whether to open-source it or provide binaries.
• Link the C++ codebase into Merani as a submodule, make Travis and AppVeyor CI build the C++ codebase.

C++ MailSync Testing:

• Test with a Gmail account
• Test with a FastMail account
• Test with a Yahoo account
• Test with an iCloud account
• Test with a AOL account
• Test with an insecure IMAP/SMTP account
• Test that "multisend" works for open/link tracking
• Test that sending errors are shown in JavaScript

Cloud Services

Goal: Provide equivalent infrastructure that will allow snooze, send later, to continue working, autoupdating of the app, etc.

• Re-implement Identity services (billing.nylas.com)

  • Implement basic sign in / create your account pages and token-based auth
  • Implement autoupdate and download endpoints for Mac, Win, Linux
  • Implement billing dashboard for paid version

• Re-implement Accounts services ("Edgehill" API):

  • Implement storage of key-value metadata for threads, messages and contacts.
  • Implement delta stream that sends metadata changes to the app (eg: when an email is opened.)
  • Implement delta stream handling in the C++ codebase

Deployment

• Create a new AWS account for Merani project
• Register Merani domain(s)
• Setup Sentry for JavaScript error reporting
• Obtain Mac Developer Certificate for Merani
• Obtain Windows Verisign Certificate for Merani
• Deploy new identity API to id.getmerani.com
• Deploy new accounts API to accounts.getmerani.com
• Deploy cloud workers to a secured AWS VPC Blocked: Waiting for Nylas to open-source the rest of the code.

General

• Create a new logo / icon for Merani
• Bump Electron to 1.7.6
• Bump React to 15.x
• Remove "heavy" Node modules no longer needed in 2017 and contribute to slow launch time: Bluebird, Q, node-request, etc.
• Re-implement package manager to support two-phase loading. Get the window onscreen faster and wait to load non-essential plugins.
• Stop transpiling async/await which are now supported by Electron
• [~] Rewrite all CoffeeScript in modern JavaScript. See this spreadsheet for progress.
• Figure out why the composer contenteditable selection freaks out sometimes (related to upgrading Electron + Chromium?) Composer is not shippable ATM.
• QA the entire application

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Roadmap Past 1.0

• Bring back Mail Rules!
• Update documentation for creating plugins and themes
• Create help site using existing content from support.nylas.com. Verify they are OK with this?
• Implement plugin / theme browser like the Chrome Web Store.
  • Decide whether to restore support for plugins that need native modules.
• Localize the app into other languages
• Improve Linux support (find a maintainer interested in focusing on Linux?)
• Overhaul the rich text composer:
  • It's currently pretty slow and degrades the overall experience. Initially we wanted to support editing reply text / inline replies, and this has come at a high cost. Investigate using Draft.JS instead of our custom composer.
• Add options for controlling the size of the message cache
  • Only sync the last "X" months of mail headers
  • Only sync the last "X" months of mail bodies / attachments
  • Omit certain folders
• Create new plugins:
  • Receipts
  • Templates with per-template performance tracking
  • Groups
  • Files