Re: Compiling mutt for OS X; using SMTP option. What libraries

[Kyle Wheeler <kyle-mutt@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

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On Monday, March 30 at 01:18 PM, quoth russurquhart1@xxxxxxxxxxx:
> Thanks for the reply and the dressing down! :)

Well, it wasn't intended to be a serious dressing down... but you're 
now saying something completely different from your original email. 
Can you blame me for interpreting your question "Is this written in 
any documentation somewhere?" as an indication that you HADN'T FOUND 
IT in the documentation?

I don't see how anyone could be reasonably expected to interpret your  
question as meaning "I found this information in the manual, but it's 
arranged on a per-feature basis, and it would be nice if all of this 
compile-time information could be collected into a single, brief, 
howto."

> I had indeed looked in the manual, and had found the things you 
> mentioned. My point was there seemed to be little else than a 
> mention. I had seen the reference to Cyrus SASL library, but where 
> is this library located at? URL? I did a search and found not only 
> that, but a reference to Cyrus SASL Library 2, i believe. Should i 
> use that one? Would it work with the latest mutt?

There is only one Cyrus-SASL library. If you actually attempted to 
download it, you'd discover that the most recent version of it is 
version 2.1.22 (released back in 2003). Earlier versions, predictably, 
had smaller version numbers. The last in the 1.x series was 1.5.28, 
released in 2002.

I'm not sure what the confusion is. Is it not reasonable to assume 
that mutt works with the most recent version of the software unless 
otherwise specified?

> As a technical writer I don't think it would hurt to have either a 
> section or separate manual taking a step-by-step approach to 
> describing what features are available, what their dependencies are, 
> if any, and their url, also maybe saying what features are not 
> compatible with others. The initial hurdle, imo, to getting mutt up 
> and running, is getting the correct parameters for the ./configure 
> command. If you pick the right ones, then the compile goes fine. If 
> it doesn't where do you go.

That's a very different question than the one you asked at first.

Unfortunately, there isn't a lot of extensive documentation on the 
process of compiling mutt... The mutt Wiki has accumulated a list of 
howto guides (http://wiki.mutt.org/?UserStory), but they may not tell 
you exactly what you want. Beyond that, the place to go for help is 
the mutt mailing list.

I think the reason there isn't much documentation on it is that most 
folks tend to install mutt with a package manager, and those who don't 
generally have a technical reason that they don't want to (i.e. they 
want a specific feature that the package manager doesn't provide), and 
have the technical experience necessary to figure it out. But if you 
want to write a "how to compile mutt" document, I'm sure it would be 
welcomed. You can probably even get it hosted on mutt's wiki.

> (I thought that some of this, at one time WAS in the documentation, 
> i.e. the ./configure and make steps. Are they still there?)

I don't remember it every being part of the *official* documentation. 
When do you think you saw it?

> Sorry if my novice questions bothered you, but the documentation didn't 
> answer my questions fully.

I don't mind novice questions at all! But you didn't indicate that 
you'd read the documentation, and it seemed to me that the 
documentation answered your question.

For what it's worth, on recent versions of MacOS X, you don't need the 
- --with-curses, --with-regex, or --enable-locales-fix options. Mutt can 
automatically detect the curses library that MacOS X comes with, the 
regex library that MacOS X comes with works fine by itself, and the 
result of isprint() is indeed reliable.

~Kyle
- -- 
A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the 
subject.
                                     -- Winston Churchill, July 5, 1954
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