[RFE] Support some kind of ephemeral group/maildir (like Gnus)

[sergiodj]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.

I'm a Debian Developer and make constant use of debian-el to interact with the Debian Bug Tracking System. It can also interact with GNU's BTS.

One of the commands I relied on the most back when I was a Gnus user was debian-bug-get-bug-as-email, which would automatically download the mbox associated with a bug, create a Gnus ephemeral group and allow me to reply to previous messages from the bug.

Describe the solution you'd like

I'd like to see mu4e supporting something similar to ephemeral groups in Gnus (or making use Gnus implementation, not sure) so that I can extend debian-bug-get-bug-as-email to work with it. Unfortunately the BTS only offers mbox files, but it should be possible to convert them to maildir so that mu4e can work with them.

Describe alternatives you've considered

For now I don't have any alternative that works with mu4e. If I want to reply to a bug's previous message, I have to use Gnus.

[djcb]

I think what you'd need to do, as you say, is download the mbox file, convert it a maildir (somewhere under the mu top maildir) and then let mu index it; you should then be able to use it as any e-mail. You can delete the directory when you're done with it (the "ephemeral" part...)

Mu4e or mu really fundamentally only care about what's in the Maildir, and do not deeply integrate with the mail retrieval part (unlike Gnus), so it's hard to follow that (or re-use Gnus solution, for that matter).

Seems it's more a matter of some shell-scripting than something to be built into mu/mu4e I think.