As an otherwise happy Evolution user, I was envious to Thunderbird users because of some of the plugins they have. One of the more useful ones is the Remove Duplicate Messages extension. A sane email client doesn’t create duplicates of course, but when you move mailboxes around, switch from an IMAP server to another, or restore mail from your backups after a disaster, it is easy to accidentally create hundreds of duplicates. (My recent return to Gmail since they started offering IMAP comes to mind!)

Today I was browsing the Evolution FAQ just to see what it’s like and whether there are any cool Evo tricks I don’t know about. There are, and I also found out about the existence of a remove-duplicates-plugin!

Evolution remove-duplicates-plugin

The plugin builds nicely on Ubuntu Gutsy, and after restarting Evolution you can go and enable the plugin. Then simply select all messages in a folder and find a new “Remove duplicates” entry in the context menu.

Release early, release often. We all know how free software maintains its superior quality over closed models of software production. The Mertonian ideal of scientific progress relies on the same principle. Snuxoll also knows this, and decided to submit some work in progress to peer review, and Gary was kind enough to provide very constructive criticism. This is what makes us so great!

peer review

Update Nov 18: added linkage.

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