`gmailctl` resolves a few of these, actually. The big one is that there's a command to diff your config file with what's in gmail, so you can capture any accidental changes that happen in gmail-land. This also helps with version-controlling your configuration, since it shows you when you just forgot to upload your config.

The imperative behavior and filter size limits are still annoying, granted. You can deal with it by staging through multiple labels, but it's not great.

Oh cool! Version control is useful. I might give it a shot sometime. I didn't have anything of the sort.

If you're curious, the tool I came up with had a DSL like this:

  $excom = from:example.com
  $exorg = from:(example.org OR example.net)
  if ($excom AND $exorg) AND -(to:me OR in:spam)
    archive
    if cc:person
      label "Person"
    end
  end

and it'd auto-translate to this:

  <?xml version='1.0' encoding='UTF-8'?>
  <feed xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom' xmlns:apps='http://schemas.google.com/apps/2006'>
    <entry>
      <category term='filter'></category>
      <apps:property name='hasTheWord' value='(from:example.com from:{example.org example.net}) -{to:me in:spam}'/>
      <apps:property name='shouldArchive' value='true'/>
    </entry>
    <entry>
      <category term='filter'></category>
      <apps:property name='hasTheWord' value='(from:example.com from:{example.org example.net}) -{to:me in:spam} cc:person'/>
      <apps:property name='label' value='Person'/>
    </entry>
  </feed>

which it would translate back to this:

  if (from:example.com from:{example.org example.net}) -{to:me in:spam}
    archive
  end
  if (from:example.com from:{example.org example.net}) -{to:me in:spam} cc:person
    label "Person"
  end

It didn't treat the filter as a blob (it actually parsed it and removed quotes etc. if appropriate) but it also didn't really change the underlying language either.

But it had variable and did let you nest conditions which made it easier to write some things. (Or so I hoped. In the end I didn't feel it was worth it...)

Another advantage of gmailctl is it uploads the filters using the API, so you don't have open Gmail settings and manually import an XML file.

You can technically get around the filter limit by switching from filters to Appsv Script. Setup a staging inbox, then run the query and action rules against that stagig area every 1 to 5 minutes.

I've considered that for a long time, but the trouble is it's not as robust, not to mention there's also a script time limit which I would hit as a result of having other scripts...