This was originally posted on my old blog, ngmarleyDOTnet, on Apr 19, 2009 @ 18:47 CST. That blog is now defunct and the content is slowly being absorbed into this one. I’ve rewritten this one just a bit to make it better.
I bought a new Macbook last week (several weeks ago, when this post was originally written) for my anticipated travels. I wanted something both lightweight and stable. For several reasons, I like to check my gmail using the mutt email client (command-line based).
- I don’t like the web interface.
- Command-line is faster.
Ok, maybe only 2 reasons.
I was able to compile mutt with imap, smtp, and SSL support and with header caching (had to install gdbm library as a prerequisite for header caching). Here’s the configure line I used:
./configure --enable-imap --enable-pop --with-gss --with-ssl --with-sasl --with-regex --enable-hcache --enable-smtp
The gmail connection info needs to be added to the ~/.muttrc config file:
set move = no set quit = yes set copy = no set recall = no set imap_user = "my_email.address@gmail.com" set imap_pass = "Sup3rS33krit" set smtp_url = "smtp://my_email.address@smtp.gmail.com:587/" set smtp_pass = "Sup3rS33krit" set from = "my_email.address@gmail.com" set realname = "Nathan Marley" set folder = "imaps://imap.gmail.com:993" set spoolfile = "+INBOX" set postponed = "+[Gmail]/Drafts" set record = "+[Gmail]/Sent Mail" set header_cache = ~/.mutt/cache/headers set message_cachedir = ~/.mutt/cache/bodies set certificate_file = ~/.mutt/certificates set sort = 'threads' set sort_aux = 'last-date-received' hdr_order Date From To CC
Now I can just open terminal, type ‘mutt’, and I’m checking my email. What’s better – I have a script (written in Python) that I use to check whether or not I have any new messages, and if I do, list the sender and how many messages from each sender. So I don’t even have to spend the 2 extra seconds to fire up mutt if I don’t need to.