1Welcome to Heirloom mailx! 2========================== 3 4Mailx is derived from Berkeley Mail and is intended provide the 5functionality of the POSIX mailx command with additional support 6for MIME, IMAP, POP3, SMTP, and S/MIME. It provides enhanced 7features for interactive use, such as caching and disconnected 8operation for IMAP, message threading, scoring, and filtering. 9It is also usable as a mail batch language, both for sending 10and receiving mail. 11 12Until March 2006, this project has been developed under the 13name "nail"; it is integrated into the Heirloom project now. 14The old name will persist at some places. If you were calling 15the program under the name "nail" and want to continue to do 16so, create a symbolic link to the mailx binary. 17 18New releases of mailx are announced on Freshmeat. If you want to get 19notified by email on each release, use their subscription service at 20<http://freshmeat.net/projects/mailx/>. 21 22The project homepage is currently at 23<http://heirloom.sourceforge.net/mailx.html>. 24 25 26How to build 27============ 28 29To compile and install mailx, look at the file 'INSTALL'. You can also 30build mailx RPMs using 'rpmbuild -tb mailx-<version>.tar.bz2'. 31 32You should always install the template for the system-wide configuration 33file. If this is not possible because you lack the necessary permissions, 34integrate its contents into your ~/.mailrc. This is because some of the 35built-in defaults are not appropriate anymore for the Unix platforms of 36today, but are still being kept for compatibility. 37 38Mailx has been built successfully in the following environments using 39the current configuration system: 40 41Linux Kernel 2.0 and above; libc4, libc5, glibc 2.2 and above, 42 diet libc, uClibc; gcc, Intel C 43Sun Solaris 2.6 and above; Sun C, gcc 44Open UNIX 8.0.0 45FreeBSD 4.9 and above 46HP HP-UX B.11.11, B.11.23; HP C/ANSI C, gcc 47HP Tru64 UNIX 4.0G, 5.1B; Developers' Toolkit C, gcc 48NetBSD 1.6, 2.0 49IBM AIX 5.1; VisualAge C, gcc 50Cray UNICOS 9.0.2.2 51Control Data EP/IX 2.2.1AA; /svr4/bin/cc 52OpenBSD 3.3 53Apple Darwin 6.8 54Apple Mac OS X 10.2 Server 55NEC UX/4800 Release11.5 Rev.A 56NEC SUPER-UX 10.2 57DragonFlyBSD 1.3.7-DEVELOPMENT 58 59If your system does not appear in this list, just try it out. Whether 60it works or not, you should contact the development list and report the 61results. 62 63But note that I strongly discourage from porting mailx to Windows 64and environments that make Windows look Unix-like; I won't accept any 65patches or suggestions that go in this direction. There are two major 66reasons for this: First, any port makes maintaining harder; there are 67always more work-arounds in the source, and introducing new features 68involves the question whether they will work an all supported platforms. 69The more different a platform behaves from, let's say, the common Unix 70way, the more hacks have to be made, costing human time that could 71otherwise have been used to enhance the software for Unix platforms. 72Windows is just not worth this, and here we are at the second point: 73Porting software to Windows encourages people to use -- that is: to buy 74-- Windows. It supports a company that is known to threaten Open Source 75software like mailx. In short, porting mailx (or similar free software) 76to Windows has an ill effect on that software. Don't do it. 77 78Note that my statement doesn't legally restrict you if you want to port 79mailx to any platform. This would not be the way of free software either, 80especially since I might be wrong in the future; as an example, porting 81free software to mainframes of a certain company is considered a good 82thing today. I just wish to express my opinion as a free software 83developer, and to inform you that I don't maintain such a port. 84 85 86Mailbox formats 87=============== 88 89Mailx supports the mbox and maildir mailbox formats. 90 91The mbox format variant based on the 'Content-Length:' header field that 92is used on most SVr4 systems by default is not supported by mailx. As this 93format generally is a design flaw, you should fix your system by either 94using procmail for local mail delivery, which is a good idea anyway, or 95at least add the -E flag to the Mlocal line in /etc/sendmail.cf if using 96/usr/lib/mail.local. 97 98Although it is not bad, just obsolete, similar considerations apply 99to the MMDF format used on OpenServer systems; unless you switch to 100procmail (or contribute support for this format), mailx will not be 101able to read your mailbox there. 102 103 104Questions, suggestions, bug reports 105=================================== 106 107Please use the 'nail-devel' mailing list for questions, suggestions, 108or bug reports. This has at least three advantages over contacting me 109directly: 110 1111. Other people can comment on the issue. They might have solved a similar 112 problem, or might be willing to implement improvements. 113 1142. Since all posts are archived, a problem needs to be commented once only, 115 and the answers are readily available on the web then. 116 1173. Unless you had an acceptable reason to contact me directly, I will refuse 118 to give you technical answers by personal mail. Thus if you ignore this 119 advice, you will just have to resend your message to the list. 120 121Also before you send something to the list, make sure that you did the 122following: 123 1241. Check out that you are using a binary made from pristine sources of the 125 latest release. This is particularly important if you received your mailx 126 binaries from a third-party vendor. If you are unwilling to do this for 127 whatever reason, use the support channels of your vendor and avoid abusing 128 the Open Source development model. 129 1302. Check that your issue is not already solved or commented in the existing 131 documentation. This does not only involve reading this file; you also 132 need to look at the manual page and the ChangeLog. After doing that, you 133 need to search the mailing list archive for related topics. Remember that 134 you are spending other people's spare time when you ask questions, and 135 that you just waste it if your question was a superfluous one. 136 1373. If you are reporting a bug, try to reproduce it and include detailed 138 instructions for doing that in your report. If you cannot reproduce the 139 bug, document carefully what you have done before the problem occurred. 140 The more information you provide, the greater are the chances that the 141 bug can be fixed quickly. 142 143Both the contact instructions and the list archive are available at 144<https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/nail-devel>. You need 145to subscribe in order to post to the list. 146 147 148Enjoy! 149 150Gunnar Ritter 151Freiburg i. Br. 152Germany 153<gunnarr@acm.org> 01/03/07 154