Bug 1147259 - No junk plugin installed by default
Summary: No junk plugin installed by default
Keywords:
Status: CLOSED RAWHIDE
Alias: None
Product: Fedora
Classification: Fedora
Component: evolution
Version: 20
Hardware: x86_64
OS: Linux
unspecified
medium
Target Milestone: ---
Assignee: Milan Crha
QA Contact: Fedora Extras Quality Assurance
URL:
Whiteboard:
Depends On:
Blocks:
TreeView+ depends on / blocked
 
Reported: 2014-09-28 14:44 UTC by Michael Catanzaro
Modified: 2014-10-08 10:09 UTC (History)
4 users (show)

Fixed In Version: evolution-3.13.7
Clone Of:
Environment:
Last Closed: 2014-10-08 10:09:30 UTC
Type: Bug
Embargoed:


Attachments (Terms of Use)
Screenshot (74.05 KB, image/png)
2014-10-01 12:53 UTC, Michael Catanzaro
no flags Details
Screenshot after installing spamassassin plugin (81.26 KB, image/png)
2014-10-01 12:56 UTC, Michael Catanzaro
no flags Details

Description Michael Catanzaro 2014-09-28 14:44:14 UTC
Description of problem: Evolution's spam filtering doesn't seem to work at all. I've been marking messages as spam for two months now, but spam is still getting through and I see no evidence that Evolution has ever blocked a single message.

Today I discovered and installed the secret package evolution-spamassassin. I guess now that I have this installed, evolution will begin filtering my mail? But there's no UI indication that this is needed. Evolution should have warned me that I had no spam filter extension installed rather than presenting me with spam filtering options that don't do anything, or else the extension should have been installed by default.


Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): evolution-3.10.4-4.fc20


How reproducible: Always


Steps to Reproduce:
1. Have an email account with a provider that doesn't filter spam.
2. Mark lots of messages as spam.

Actual results: Spam gets through.


Expected results: Spam gets filtered.


Additional info: It's also bad to require users to use the command line to install extra packages to make an app work properly, so it would be good to additionally add appdata files for these plugins so that they appear in gnome-software.

Comment 1 Milan Crha 2014-09-29 09:17:48 UTC
Thanks for a bug report. Evolution in Fedora has split spamassassin and bogofilter plugins into separate packages due to dependencies, to not pull the binaries they require to each installation.

You can see what spam filtering plugin is used in Edit->Preferences->Mail Preferences->Junk tab. You can enable/disable junk filtering too, the same as fine tune settings there. As you can see there, the Junk filtering in evolution doesn't depend only on a spam detection software, there can be used other ways how to detect a junk message, like with message headers.

The idea with appdata files makes sense, I'm only afraid of translation of them, because they might not go to the upstream Evolution, because it's a Fedora-specific issue/feature.

Upstream user documentation (without any specific distribution details, like the package split of the plugins):
https://help.gnome.org/users/evolution/stable/mail-spam.html.en

Comment 2 Michael Catanzaro 2014-09-29 13:49:07 UTC
(In reply to Milan Crha from comment #1)
> You can see what spam filtering plugin is used in Edit->Preferences->Mail
> Preferences->Junk tab. 

Well, the problem is that this isn't true. After installing evolution-spamassassin I now have a small section at the bottom for SpamAssassin options, but before there was no indication that SpamAssassin was or was not in use. There was just an option to "check incoming messages for junk" and since I had it checked, I would expect it to work.

> The idea with appdata files makes sense, I'm only afraid of translation of
> them, because they might not go to the upstream Evolution, because it's a
> Fedora-specific issue/feature.

Ah, good point. :/

Comment 3 Milan Crha 2014-10-01 07:58:17 UTC
(In reply to Michael Catanzaro from comment #2)
> (In reply to Milan Crha from comment #1)
> > You can see what spam filtering plugin is used in Edit->Preferences->Mail
> > Preferences->Junk tab. 
> 
> Well, the problem is that this isn't true. After installing
> evolution-spamassassin I now have a small section at the bottom for
> SpamAssassin options, but before there was no indication that SpamAssassin
> was or was not in use. There was just an option to "check incoming messages
> for junk" and since I had it checked, I would expect it to work.

It's how it currently works. The box lets you choose which spam filtering plugin to use, but when there is no installed, then the box is hidden. Do you think it would help if the box would be left shown, but only with a text like "No Spam Filtering plugin installed"? That would give a little clue that something is missing. And maybe with some generic text about a likely existence of the plugin in a separate package for the distribution or something like that would be helpful as well. I'd only not like to mention any distro/linux specific comments/guides in such information box.

Comment 4 Michael Catanzaro 2014-10-01 12:53:49 UTC
Created attachment 943046 [details]
Screenshot

Are you saying the UI has changed since 3.10? Since that's definitely not what I'm seeing here. In this screenshot, with evolution-spamassassin removed, the checkbox to block junk mail still exists and there's no UI indication whatsoever that it won't work.

A warning that no spam plugin is installed would indeed help, though that's still not great... the correct approach is to accept a huge dependency tree if the functionality can't be split into a plugin with its own appdata file. Pretend yum doesn't exist, only GNOME Software: the spam plugin is impossible to install. :/

I see there are lots of other plugins, so perhaps treating the spam plugins like those would make sense?

Comment 5 Michael Catanzaro 2014-10-01 12:56:10 UTC
Created attachment 943047 [details]
Screenshot after installing spamassassin plugin

The only UI change after installing evolution-spamassassin is the addition of one more heading and checkbox on the bottom. There's no indication that a spam plugin is now active, just as there was no indication that no plugin was previously active.

As a side note, the list in the middle probably ought to be expanded vertically....

Comment 6 Milan Crha 2014-10-02 09:26:13 UTC
(In reply to Michael Catanzaro from comment #4)
> Are you saying the UI has changed since 3.10?

Nope, I only suggested a possible change, trying to find something helpful for users.

Comment 7 Milan Crha 2014-10-08 10:09:30 UTC
I asked more information about the addons for software and after that added them into evolution [1]. I also asked for a string freeze break to get the files for Fedora 21, but even if not approved, then this will be available in Fedora 22.

[1] https://git.gnome.org/browse/evolution/commit/?id=446a23d


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