Mu

#+TITLE:mu [[https://github.com/djcb/mu/blob/master/COPYING][https://img.shields.io/github/license/djcb/mu?logo=gnu&.svg]] [[https://en.cppreference.com][https://img.shields.io/badge/Made%20with-C/CPP-1f425f?logo=c&.svg]] [[https://img.shields.io/github/v/release/djcb/mu][https://img.shields.io/github/v/release/djcb/mu.svg]] [[https://github.com/djcb/mu/graphs/contributors][https://img.shields.io/github/contributors/djcb/mu.svg]] [[https://github.com/djcb/mu/issues][https://img.shields.io/github/issues/djcb/mu.svg]] [[https://github.com/djcb/mu/issues?q=is%3Aissue+is%3Aopen+label%3Arfe][https://img.shields.io/github/issues/djcb/mu/rfe?color=008b8b.svg]] [[https://github.com/djcb/mu/pull/new][https://img.shields.io/badge/PRs-welcome-brightgreen.svg]]\ [[https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/][https://img.shields.io/badge/Emacs-26.3-922793?logo=gnu-emacs&logoColor=b39ddb&.svg]] [[https://www.djcbsoftware.nl/code/mu/mu4e/Installation.html#Dependencies-for-Debian_002fUbuntu][https://img.shields.io/badge/Platform-Linux-2e8b57?logo=linux&.svg]] [[https://www.djcbsoftware.nl/code/mu/mu4e/Installation.html#Building-from-a-release-tarball-1][https://img.shields.io/badge/Platform-FreeBSD-8b3a3a?logo=freebsd&logoColor=c32136&.svg]] [[https://formulae.brew.sh/formula/mu#default][https://img.shields.io/badge/Platform-macOS-101010?logo=apple&logoColor=ffffff&.svg]]

Welcome to ~mu~!

Latest development news: [[NEWS.org]].

With the enormous amounts of e-mail many people gather and the importance of e-mail message in our work-flows, it's essential to quickly deal with all that mail - in particular, to instantly find that one important e-mail you need right now, and quickly file away message for later use.

~mu~ is a set of command-line tools for dealing with e-mail messages stored in the Maildir-format. ~mu~'s goal is to help you to quickly find the messages you need, view them, extract attachments, create new maildirs, and so on.

After indexing your messages into a [[http://www.xapian.org][Xapian]]-database, you can search them through a query language. You can use various message fields or words in the body text to find the right messages.

Built on top of ~mu~ are some extensions (included in this package):

• ~mu4e~: a full-featured e-mail client that runs inside emacs

• ~mu-scm~: bindings for the Guile/Scheme programming language (version 3.0 and later)

~mu~ is written in C++; ~mu4e~ is written in ~elisp~ and ~mu-scm~ is written in a mix of C++ and Scheme.

~mu~ is available in many Linux distributions (e.g. Debian/Ubuntu and Fedora) under the name ~maildir-utils~; apparently because they don't like short names. All of the code is distributed under the terms of the [[https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-3.0.en.html][GNU General Public License version 3]] (or higher).

• Versions

mu attempts to balance development speed and stability.

Active development takes place on ~master~ (the 1.14 series), and we maintain ~release/1.12~ as well. When possible, fixes (but not features) from ~master~ are back-ported to ~release/1.12~.

Every few months, we release a stable version (e.g. ~1.14.0~); development then continues in ~master~, with ~-pre<n>~ (e.g. ~1.14.1-pre1~): ~-pre~-suffixed versions refer to the current development code, until it is released (and then looses its ~-pre~ suffix, i.e., becomes the ~1.14.1~ release).

Hence, if you want to track active development, use ~master~; if you want to avoid any changes except bug-fixes, use a 1.12 [[https://github.com/djcb/mu/releases/][release]]; otherwise, track ~master~.

Overall, we try to avoid incompatible changes, but sometimes this is necessary, for example to update the versions of required libraries

• Installation

Note: building from source is an /advanced/ subject, especially if something goes wrong. The below simple examples are a start, but all tools involved have many options; there are differences between systems, versions etc. So if this is all a bit daunting we recommend to wait for someone else to build it for you, such as a Linux distribution. Many have packages available.

** Requirements

To be able to build ~mu~, ensure you have:

• a C++20 compiler (~gcc~ and ~clang~ are known to work)
• development packages for /Xapian/ and /GMime/ and /GLib/ (see ~meson.build~ for the versions)
• basic tools such as ~make~, ~sed~, ~grep~
• ~meson~

For ~mu4e~, you also need ~emacs~, version 28 or later.

Note, support for Windows is very much experimental, that is, it works for some people, but we can't really support it due to lack of the specific expertise. Help is welcome!

** Building

#+begin_example $ git clone https://github.com/djcb/mu.git $ cd mu #+end_example

~mu~ uses ~meson~ for building, so you can use that directly, and all the usual commands apply. You can also use it indirectly through the provided ~Makefile~, which provides a number of useful targets.

For instance, using the ~Makefile~, you could install ~mu~ using:

#+begin_example $ ./autogen.sh && make $ sudo make install #+end_example

You can of course also run ~meson~ directly (see the ~meson~ documentation for more details): #+begin_example $ meson setup build $ meson compile -C build $ meson install -C build #+end_example

** Contributing

Contributions are welcome! See the Github issue list and [[IDEAS.org]].