bunchmail

README

#+TITLE: BunchMail
#+AUTHOR: Aybar C. Acar

* What is it?

It is a very simple command line utility to combine several Maildir
folders into one.

* Is it any good?

*NO!*. I wrote it because I needed to combine several gmail accounts and other miscellaneous mail accounts reaching back to 1999 into a single Maildir. This is essentially throwaway code. I'm only making it public in case

- I need it again later and I can't find it in the mess that is my hard drive,
- someone else may have a similar use-case and might make use of it

So, it is a brittle, not very optimized (but fast enough) utility that worked for me, YMMV.

* Features

- Collates all mail by you into the target Sent folder.
  - You need to give all email identities (addresses) you use, or have ever used; and it will use them to decide which messages were sent by you.
- Ability to select which source maildirs get combined into the final inbox, and which ones are going to get sent to the final Archives maildir.
- Can deduplicate messages across many source Maildirs (based on Message-ID).
  - Can be turned on with the =--nodupes= flag.
  - In case of duplicate messages destined to the target Inbox and Archive, the copy kept is placed in the Inbox.
- Infers the date/time each message was sent by parsing =Received:= headers if they exist.
  - Adjusts the base name and ctime/mtime of each message file according to this timestamp. 

* How do I use it?

#+BEGIN_EXAMPLE
  Usage of bunchmail:
    -archives value
          Comma separated list of Archive maildir paths
    -bunchpath string
          The directory path to the bunch maildir
    -domain string
          the domain to use for message files (default "bunchmail.local")
    -identities value
          Comma separated list of all mail addresses you use(d) to send mail (for sent mail collation)
    -inboxes value
          Comma delimited list of Inbox paths
    -nodupes
          If true, duplicate messages are discarded
    -removeflags string
          Flags to remove from mail (e.g. "FRT")
#+END_EXAMPLE

*Note:* When using the comma separated lists of paths (e.g. for --inboxes) do not trust shell expansions ( =~/foo= etc.). Either write the full path or use variables (.e.g. =$HOME/foo=)