Procmail library project

Links and download

Snapshot of the latest development kit is available here. The most up to date version is in CVS.

News

2001-07 sourcefoge initial project WWW page constructed. An intermediate release was uploaded to the shourceforge as well. Announced this new project in procmail and smarlist Mailing Lists as well.

What is procmail library?

First, Procmail is a mail processing utility, which can help you filter your mail, sort incoming mail according to sender, Subject line, length of message, keywords in the message, etc, implement an ftp-by-mail server, and much more. Procmail is also a complete drop-in replacement for your MDA. (If this doesn't mean anything to you, you may not want to know.) Procmail runs under Unix. See Infinite Ink's Mail Filtering and Robots page for information about related utilities for various other platforms, and competing Unix programs, too (there aren't that many of either).

Procmail module library is a collection of several self standing plug-in modules that intend to make your procmail experience more fun. Instead of having to write cryptic looking procmail files, you could see if any of the existing modules wouls already solve the problem. For example, if you subscribe to many mailing lists and wonder how you could save the messages to separate folders, take a look at plug-in pm-jalist.rc. There is lot more to see, just read full description of all modules ffrom the Package Description link above.

The modules are developed using Emacs , and there is even an Emacs minor mode to "Lint" - to do the code checking - for procmail files. See another sourceforge project at tiny-tools.sourceforge.net and package tinyprocmail.el . The output will look something like this, when run on procmail file in Emacs: 

      *** 1997-11-24 22:13 (pm.lint) 3.11pre7 tinypm.el 1.80
      cd /users/jaalto/junk/
      pm.lint:010: Warning, no right hand variable found. ([$`']
      pm.lint:055: Pedantic, flag orer style is not standard `hW:'
      pm.lint:060: Warning, message dropped to folder, you need lock.
      pm.lint:062: Warning, recipe with "|" may need `w' flag.
      pm.lint:073: Warning, Formail used but no `f' flag found.
If you do not know what Emacs is see the tiny-tools project and page "Emacs Resource page". All the programs in this library are released under GPL (General Public Licence http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html ) The documentation is released under OPL (Open Publication Licence http://www.opencontent.org/openpub/ ), which permits free usage, but prohibits commercial usage without an agreement with the Author(s).

Platform Support

Any Unix system that can run Procmail. Only the very latest procmail version is supported. Procmail is usually installed as the system MTA (Mail Transport Agent), the software, that delivers incoming mail to users' mailboxes. Ask your sysadm, if you do not know if Procmail sia vailable in your system, or you could check version number with: 
    bash$ procmail -v

Developer list

Swatch Internet time (BMT), where 24h is divided into 1000 parts, you visited this page. Read more about the Biel Mean Time at http://www.gebsa.com.tr/internet_time.htm . Stop by Swatch resources at http://www.ryanthiessen.com/swatch/resources.htm . Follow this link for HTML time converter at http://www.mir.com.my/iTime/itime.htm . To get free source code for HTML pages, jump to http://javaboutique.internet.com/InternetTime/ or view the source code of this page for javascript example.

Jari Aalto jari.aalto@poboxes.com http://poboxes.com/jari.aalto/ Usually on-line @700 BMT or UTC+2 18:00 local time. ICQ identification jari-aalto 82313129 [ICQ online status indicator]

Mailing list information

There is no separate mailing list for the project. You should join the procmail mailing list (procmail-L) instead and send questions and suggestions there. Remember to add word pm-lib at the beginning of the Subject if you want to get attention immediately. For complete procmail mailing list instructions, visit http://www.ling.helsinki.fi/users/reriksso/procmail/lists.html Here is the join instruction, but it may not be up to date:

Send a message with the word subscribe as subject to procmail-request@informatik.RWTH-Aachen.de

Old archived messages can be read at http://www.rosat.mpe-garching.mpg.de/mailing-lists/procmail/

CVS update method

CVS is an excellent tool to keep up with the latest updates, fixes and new features. CVS for Unix is available at http://www.cvshome.com/ For win32 platform, the CVS comes with the cygwin kit available at http://www.cygwin.org/ (See link at the right hand corner and download setup.exe) If you want hassle-free and easy CVS binary for Win32 and not the whole Cygwin bundle, grab cvs binary from http://www.cvshome.org/dev/codewindow.html (1.10.5) 
        $ cvs -d :pserver:anonymous@cvs.pm-lib.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/pm-lib login
        password: [RET]
        $ cvs -z6 -d :pserver:anonymous@cvs.pm-lib.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/pm-lib co pm-lib
After the above initial checkout procedure, all you have to do is to issue this command from time to time to read the updates: 
	$ cd pm-lib
	$ cvs update

$Docid: 2001-07-28 Jari Aalto $ Copyright (c) 2001 by Jari Aalto. This material may be distributed only subject to the terms and conditions set forth in the Open Publication License, v1.0 or later (the latest version is presently available at http://www.opencontent.org/openpub/). Distribution of the work or derivative of the work for commercial purposes in any form is prohibited unless prior permission is obtained from the copyright holder. (VI.B LICENSE OPTIONS)
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Visit procmail homepage at http://www.procmail.org