Like one has different backup procedures for /etc vs. /var, I don't plan to backup my oldmail files at all.
And having the user restore a days old stale oldmail file from backups would perhaps be worse than no oldmail file at all. http://pyropus.ca/software/getmail/faq.html#faq says Do NOT delete or edit these files. You'll make getmail re-retrieve all your old mail, or even prevent getmail from running. The files are tiny by modern storage standards; you could have a million of these files and still not have to worry about the disk space they take up for a thousand years. Even if disks are bigger these days it is simply bad practice to cross ones fingers and let files grow and grow. E.g., that's why we use logrotate, and browsers limit the history they save. Environmentally conscious programs all clean up after themselves and I can't think of any programs that don't. And sure disks might be big but it is an embarrassment when there is this one file bigger than any other that nobody dares to delete because the FAQ says so. Also yes disks might be bigger but some people might be backing up important /var files over cellular or satellite etc. I'm sure there must be some entries in a 10 years big oldmail file that could be deleted. Maybe Osamu could make a script to delete obsolete entries. Anyway, here's how I use getmail, several times a day: Dreamhost ->(getmail)->~/Maildir, then ~/Maildir->(gnus)->~/[gnus directories](Then I read my mail in gnus.) At this point, there is no mail left on Dreamhost, and no mail in ~/Maildir, so I am certainly back to the same state of Day 1 when I first installed getmail, so I can certainly zap the oldmail files.
