Supported platforms =================== Mutt has been reported to compile and run under the following Unix operating systems: AIX BSDI Convex Data General Unix (DG/UX) Digital Unix (OSF/1) DYNIX/ptx FreeBSD HP-UX IRIX Linux Atari MiNT MkLinux NetBSD QNX SCO Unix 3.2v4/5 Solaris SunOS Ultrix UnixWare - An ANSI C compiler (such as gcc) is required. - You must also have a SysV compatible curses library, or you must install either GNU ncurses, ftp://prep.ai.mit.edu/pub/gnu/ or S-Lang, ftp://space.mit.edu/pub/davis/slang/ Installation ============ Installing Mutt is rather painless through the use of the GNU autoconf package. Simply untar the Mutt distribution, and run the ``configure'' script. In most cases, it will automatically determine everything it needs to know in order to compile. However, there are a few options to ``configure'' to help it out, or change the default behavior: --prefix=DIR install Mutt in DIR instead of /usr/local --with-sharedir=DIR specify where to put architecture independent data files --with-curses=DIR use the curses lib in DIR/lib. If you have ncurses, ``configure'' will automatically look in /usr/include/ncurses for the include files. --with-slang[=DIR] use the S-Lang library instead of ncurses. This library seems to work better for some people because it is less picky about proper termcap entries than ncurses. It is recommended that you use at *least* version 0.99-38 with Mutt. --with-mailpath=DIR specify where the spool mailboxes are located on your system --with-homespool[=FILE] treat file in the user's home directory as the spool mailbox. Note that this is *not* the full pathname, but relative to the user's home directory. Defaults to "mailbox" if FILE is not specified. --enable-pop enable POP3 support --with-rx use GNU rx instead of local regexp routines. Many systems don't have the POSIX compliant regcomp/regexec/regfree routines, so this provides a way to support them. --enable-flock use flock() to lock files. --disable-fcntl by default, Mutt uses fcntl() to lock files. Over NFS this can result in poor performance on read/write. Note that using this option could be dangerous if dotlocking is also disabled. --enable-nfs-fix some implementations of NFS do not always write the atime/mtime of small files. This means that Mutt's ``mailboxes'' feature does not always work properly, as it uses these attributes to work out whether the file has new mail. This option enables a workaround to this bug. --enable-locales-fix on some systems, the result of isprint() can't be used reliably to decide which characters are printable, even if you set the LANG environment variable. If you set this option, Mutt will assume all characters in the ISO-8859-* range are printable. If you leave it unset, Mutt will attempt to use isprint() if either of the environment variables LANG, LC_ALL or LC_CTYPE is set, and will revert to the ISO-8859-* range if they aren't. --with-exec-shell=SHELL on some versions of unix, /bin/sh has a bug that makes using emacs with mutt very difficult. If you have the problem that whenever you press control-G in emacs, mutt and emacs become very confused, you may want to try using a Bourne-derived shell other than /bin/sh here. Some shells that may work are bash, zsh, and ksh. C shells such as csh and tcsh will amost certainly not work right. Note that this option is unrelated to what shell mutt gives you when you press '!'. Only use this option to solve the above problem, and only specify one of the above shells as its argument. (If you encounter this problem with your platform's native Bourne shell, please send a short report to mutt-dev@cs.hmc.edu, so a short note on this topic can be added to the Platform notes section below.) --enable-exact-address By default, Mutt will rewrite all addresses in the form Personal Name regardless of the input. By enabling this option, Mutt will write addresses in the same form they are parsed. NOTE: this requires significantly more memory. Once ``configure'' has completed, simply type ``make install.'' Mutt should compile cleanly (without errors) and you should end up with a binary called ``mutt.'' If you get errors about undefined symbols like A_NORMAL or KEY_MIN, then you probably don't have a SysV compliant curses library. You should install either ncurses or S-Lang (see above), and then run the ``configure'' script again. Platform Notes ============== All platforms There is a bug in most (if not all) S-Lang versions which prevents the Meta key from working with mutt. A patch can be found in the file patch.slang-1.2.2.keypad.1 in this mutt distribution. Solaris 2.4 The system regcomp() and regexec() routines are very badly broken. So much so that using them will cause Mutt to be totally unusable. The --with-rx option to `configure' should always be used. (Note: the problems have apparently been fixed in Solaris 2.5) Color does not work right with Solaris curses. You will have to compile with either ncurses or slang to get working color support. Linux On recent Linux systems, flock() and fcntl() locks don't mix. If you use the --enable-flock switch on such systems, be sure to give the --disable-fcntl argument as well. The Linux libc 5.4.45 disables locale support in programs running setgid mail. You'll need to use the configure switch "--enable-locales-fix". If you're using a non-iso-8859 font, you lose. This is not an issue on glibc (libc 6) based systems. Digital Unix (OSF/1) Don't try "--with-rx", because you won't be able to match anything (using system's regex functions seems to work fine though). Also, the system curses library is said to be badly broken. Use GNU ncurses or SLang instead. FreeBSD 3.0 /bin/sh is broken on this platform. You need the "--with-exec-shell" configuration switch here; ksh and bash are reported to be fine. This may also be an issue with earlier FreeBSD versions.