bug#73470: Rmail is not working with maildirs

bug#73470: Rmail is not working with maildirs

[Marc Coquand]

I noticed that according to the documentation, rmail should work with
maildirs, assuming you have movemail installed.
 
I made sure GNU movemail is installed and tried setting my maildir using
set-rmail-inbox-list command. I set it to maildir://~/my-mail, which is
the folder where my mail is stored. It loads without issue on other
mail clients.
 
However, with rmail I get the error when fetching the mail saying "No
mail.". I would expect it to load my email.

The maildirs were created with isync. 

bug#73470: Rmail is not working with maildirs

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Marc Coquand <marc@mccd.space>
> Date: Wed, 25 Sep 2024 15:20:51 +0300
> 
> I noticed that according to the documentation, rmail should work with
> maildirs, assuming you have movemail installed.
>  
> I made sure GNU movemail is installed and tried setting my maildir using
> set-rmail-inbox-list command. I set it to maildir://~/my-mail, which is
> the folder where my mail is stored. It loads without issue on other
> mail clients.
>  
> However, with rmail I get the error when fetching the mail saying "No
> mail.". I would expect it to load my email.

What happens if you expand "~" in "~/my-mail" and set the inbox to the
result?  For example, if "~/my-mail" expands to "/home/user/my-mail",
try using "maildir:///home/user/my-mail", per the documentation in the
node "Movemail" of the Emacs user manual.

bug#73470: Rmail is not working with maildirs

[Eli Zaretskii]

[Please use Reply All to reply, to have the bug tracker on the CC list.]

> From: Marc Coquand <marc@mccd.space>
> Date: Thu, 26 Sep 2024 15:36:28 +0300
> 
> Hi Eli,
> 
> So I tried setting the following
> 
> (setq rmail-primary-inbox-list '("maildir:///home/me/mail/home"))
> 
> I can see that in ~/mail/home there exists a cur,new and tmp directory
> as well as all other mail folders.
> 
> I also tried the following, since I have one mail directory for work and
> one personal:
> 
> (setq rmail-primary-inbox-list '("maildir:///home/me/mail/"))
> 
> Neither worked.
> 
> M-x version returns GNU Emacs 29.4 (build 2, x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu, X
> toolkit, cairo version 1.18.0) of 2024-06-25

Are you sure you are using movemail from GNU Mailutils?  What do the
following shell commands produce?

 $ which movemail
 $ movemail

bug#73470: Rmail is not working with maildirs

[Marc Coquand]

I installed movemail via nix. Running the commands yielded:

~ $ which movemail
/home/me/.nix-profile/bin/movemail

~ $ movemail
movemail: wrong number of arguments

~ $ movemail --version
movemail (GNU Mailutils) 3.17

I also tried explicitly setting the variable rmail-movemail-program to
/home/me/.nix-profile/bin/movemail with no success. 

Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> writes:

>> From: Marc Coquand <marc@mccd.space>
>> Date: Thu, 26 Sep 2024 15:36:28 +0300
>> 
>> Hi Eli,
>> 
>> So I tried setting the following
>> 
>> (setq rmail-primary-inbox-list '("maildir:///home/me/mail/home"))
>> 
>> I can see that in ~/mail/home there exists a cur,new and tmp directory
>> as well as all other mail folders.
>> 
>> I also tried the following, since I have one mail directory for work and
>> one personal:
>> 
>> (setq rmail-primary-inbox-list '("maildir:///home/me/mail/"))
>> 
>> Neither worked.
>> 
>> M-x version returns GNU Emacs 29.4 (build 2, x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu, X
>> toolkit, cairo version 1.18.0) of 2024-06-25
>
> Are you sure you are using movemail from GNU Mailutils?  What do the
> following shell commands produce?
>
>  $ which movemail
>  $ movemail

bug#73470: Rmail is not working with maildirs

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Marc Coquand <marc@mccd.space>
> Cc: 73470@debbugs.gnu.org
> Date: Thu, 26 Sep 2024 17:17:05 +0300
> 
> 
> I installed movemail via nix. Running the commands yielded:
> 
> ~ $ which movemail
> /home/me/.nix-profile/bin/movemail
> 
> ~ $ movemail
> movemail: wrong number of arguments
> 
> ~ $ movemail --version
> movemail (GNU Mailutils) 3.17

OK, so now please tell what is "/home/me/mail/home".  Is it a file or
a directory?  If it's a directory, please show its contents.

bug#73470: Rmail is not working with maildirs

[Eli Zaretskii]

> Cc: 73470@debbugs.gnu.org
> Date: Thu, 26 Sep 2024 17:28:27 +0300
> From: Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org>
> 
> > From: Marc Coquand <marc@mccd.space>
> > Cc: 73470@debbugs.gnu.org
> > Date: Thu, 26 Sep 2024 17:17:05 +0300
> > 
> > 
> > I installed movemail via nix. Running the commands yielded:
> > 
> > ~ $ which movemail
> > /home/me/.nix-profile/bin/movemail
> > 
> > ~ $ movemail
> > movemail: wrong number of arguments
> > 
> > ~ $ movemail --version
> > movemail (GNU Mailutils) 3.17
> 
> OK, so now please tell what is "/home/me/mail/home".  Is it a file or
> a directory?  If it's a directory, please show its contents.

Ans also, what are the values of rmail-movemail-program and
rmail-movemail-variant-in-use inside Emacs, after you load the Rmail
library.

bug#73470: Rmail is not working with maildirs

[Marc Coquand]

So /mail/home is a directory and the contents are maildir content. There
is an INBOX file, cur, new, tmp and directories like Archive,
Spam, Trash etc.

rmail-movemail-program is .nix-profile/bin/movemail. The second variable
I can not find, even after opening rmail.

Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> writes:

>> Cc: 73470@debbugs.gnu.org
>> Date: Thu, 26 Sep 2024 17:28:27 +0300
>> From: Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org>
>> 
>> > From: Marc Coquand <marc@mccd.space>
>> > Cc: 73470@debbugs.gnu.org
>> > Date: Thu, 26 Sep 2024 17:17:05 +0300
>> > 
>> > 
>> > I installed movemail via nix. Running the commands yielded:
>> > 
>> > ~ $ which movemail
>> > /home/me/.nix-profile/bin/movemail
>> > 
>> > ~ $ movemail
>> > movemail: wrong number of arguments
>> > 
>> > ~ $ movemail --version
>> > movemail (GNU Mailutils) 3.17
>> 
>> OK, so now please tell what is "/home/me/mail/home".  Is it a file or
>> a directory?  If it's a directory, please show its contents.
>
> Ans also, what are the values of rmail-movemail-program and
> rmail-movemail-variant-in-use inside Emacs, after you load the Rmail
> library.

bug#73470: Rmail is not working with maildirs

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Marc Coquand <marc@mccd.space>
> Cc: 73470@debbugs.gnu.org
> Date: Fri, 27 Sep 2024 18:15:46 +0300
> 
> 
> So /mail/home is a directory and the contents are maildir content. There
> is an INBOX file, cur, new, tmp and directories like Archive,
> Spam, Trash etc.
> 
> rmail-movemail-program is .nix-profile/bin/movemail. The second variable
> I can not find, even after opening rmail.

What Emacs version is that?

And please describe step by step how you get new email after
activating Rmail, what messages you see in *Messages* after that, and
whether there are any files names ".newmail-SOMETHING"  or RMAILOSE.n
(where n is a number) in the directory that is the default-directoy of
the Rmail buffer.

bug#73470: Rmail is not working with maildirs

[Marc Coquand]

Version is GNU Emacs 29.4 (build 2, x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu, X toolkit,
cairo version 1.18.0) of 2024-06-25.

I was able to change so I can read the inbox, I can read inbox files by
changing the command to

(setq rmail-primary-inbox-list
'("maildir:///home/mccd/mail/home/INBOX"))

Ideally though it'd be nice to have all email available from the
subdirectories as well. Perhaps this is not supported by Rmail.

This is the messages output:
Wrote /home/mccd/RMAIL
Computing summary lines...done
X new messages read
Making completion list...


Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> writes:

>> From: Marc Coquand <marc@mccd.space>
>> Cc: 73470@debbugs.gnu.org
>> Date: Fri, 27 Sep 2024 18:15:46 +0300
>> 
>> 
>> So /mail/home is a directory and the contents are maildir content. There
>> is an INBOX file, cur, new, tmp and directories like Archive,
>> Spam, Trash etc.
>> 
>> rmail-movemail-program is .nix-profile/bin/movemail. The second variable
>> I can not find, even after opening rmail.
>
> What Emacs version is that?
>
> And please describe step by step how you get new email after
> activating Rmail, what messages you see in *Messages* after that, and
> whether there are any files names ".newmail-SOMETHING"  or RMAILOSE.n
> (where n is a number) in the directory that is the default-directoy of
> the Rmail buffer.

bug#73470: Rmail is not working with maildirs

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Marc Coquand <marc@mccd.space>
> Cc: 73470@debbugs.gnu.org
> Date: Fri, 27 Sep 2024 19:38:15 +0300
> 
> 
> Version is GNU Emacs 29.4 (build 2, x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu, X toolkit,
> cairo version 1.18.0) of 2024-06-25.
> 
> I was able to change so I can read the inbox, I can read inbox files by
> changing the command to
> 
> (setq rmail-primary-inbox-list
> '("maildir:///home/mccd/mail/home/INBOX"))
> 
> Ideally though it'd be nice to have all email available from the
> subdirectories as well. Perhaps this is not supported by Rmail.

Yes, it must be one file name.  But maybe you can try to add more
elements to the list for the other directories?

> This is the messages output:
> Wrote /home/mccd/RMAIL
> Computing summary lines...done
> X new messages read
> Making completion list...

Thanks, so this bug can be closed, I guess?