nextcloud / nextcloud/mail

IMAP4rev2 / SMTPUTF8 Support (RFC 6531 & RFC 9051)

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Description

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

IMAP4rev2 is the latest revision of the IMAP protocol and brings a number of improvements, clarifications and standardisations compared to IMAP4rev1.

Why IMAP4rev2 is important:

  1. IMAP4rev2 combines numerous extensions that were previously optional (e.g. ENABLE, UTF8=ACCEPT, LITERAL+, IDLE, etc.). .
  2. Many older inconsistencies have been eliminated, simplifying implementations.
  3. Modern mail servers (e.g. Dovecot, Cyrus) are already beginning to officially support IMAP4rev2.

Full support would make NextCloud future-proof and standards-compliant.

Proposal:

  1. Gradual implementation of the mandatory extensions
  2. Possibly a feature flag imap4rev2 for gradual activation

References:
RFC 9051 – IMAP4rev2
RFC 3501 – IMAP4rev1
RFC 6531 – SMTPUTF8

Describe the solution you'd like

Enable the creation of email accounts with non-ASCII characters (e.g. äöüß@domain.tld)

Describe alternatives you've considered

No response

Additional context

No response

Contributor guide

Open the contributing guide

First steps

  1. Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

Research direction

Start by reviewing RFC 9051 for IMAP4rev2 and RFC 6531 for SMTPUTF8, then map the mandatory extensions and non-ASCII account creation requirement onto the existing mail implementation. Done means the requested protocol support and creation of addresses such as äöüß@domain.tld work reliably, but the issue does not identify files or tests to begin with.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
php
Domain
backend, networking
Issue type
Feature
Difficulty
5/5
Estimated time
Over a week
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Needs clarification
Newbie friendliness
25/100

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