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<h1>archivemail</h1>
<hr>
<div id="status">
<strong>Latest version: 0.7.1</strong><br>
Released on 2007-11-07
</div>
<h2>What is it?</h2>
<p>
<span class="command">archivemail</span> is a tool for archiving and compressing
old email in mailboxes.
It moves messages older than the specified number of
days to a separate <a title="mbox(5) man page"
href="http://www.qmail.org/man/man5/mbox.html">mbox format</a> mailbox that is
compressed with <span class="command">gzip</span>.
It can also just delete old email rather than archive it.
<h2>What can it do for me?</h2>
<p>
Maybe some of your mailboxes are quite large (eg, over 10,000 messages) and
they are taking a while to load in your mail reader. Perhaps they are taking
up too much space on your disk. Archiving old messages to a separate,
compressed mailbox will mean:
<ol>
<li>Your mail reader will get a huge performance boost loading and reading
your mail.
<li>You will be taking up less disk space, since old mail will be compressed.
(Mail usually compresses quite nicely.)
<li>You won't be confronted with semi-obsolete mail all the time.
</ol>
<p>
You can also use <span class="command">archivemail</span> as a simple backup
tool.
<h2>Features overview</h2>
<ul>
<li>Supports archiving
<a title="about IMAP" href="http://www.imap.org/">IMAP</a>,
<a title="mbox(5) man page" href="http://www.qmail.org/man/man5/mbox.html">mbox</a>,
<a title="MH FAQ" href="http://www.faqs.org/faqs/mail/mh-faq/">MH</a> and
<a title="maildir(5) man page"
href="http://www.qmail.org/man/man5/maildir.html">Maildir</a> format
mailboxes.
<li>Old mail can be either archived or just deleted.
<li>The age in days that is considered old is configurable – it defaults
to 180 days.
You can also set an absolute limit date.
<li>Messages that are flagged important are not archived or deleted unless
explicitely requested.
<!--<li>You can specify an option so that unread mail is never archived.-->
<li>Can be configured to preserve unread mail.
<li>Can be configured to only archive messages over a given byte size.
<li>Stores the compressed archive mailboxes in a directory of
your choice, with an extension of your choice.
<li>Easy read-only testing, not touching your valuable data.
<li>Supports IMAPS/SSL.
<li>When archiving IMAP mailboxes, the message selection can be refined by
extending the underlying IMAP <code>SEARCH</code> command with arbitrary
search keys (you will have to cope with the raw IMAP protocol, though).
</ul>
<h2>Documentation</h2>
<p>
The <a href="manpage.html">archivemail manpage</a> is the primary documentation
for <span class="command">archivemail</span>.
To see what has changed in the latest version, check the <a
href="RELNOTES">release notes</a>.
If you want to have a closer look at the current development status, here's the
<a title="changelog in subversion HEAD" href=
"http://archivemail.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/archivemail/trunk/CHANGELOG?revision=HEAD&view=markup">
CHANGELOG</a> and the <a title="TODO list in subversion HEAD" href=
"http://archivemail.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/archivemail/trunk/TODO?revision=HEAD&view=markup">
TODO list</a>, fresh from the repository.
<h2>Where can I get it?</h2>
<p>
You can grab the latest version of <span class="command">archivemail</span>
directly from the <a
href="http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=49630">archivemail
download area</a> at Sourceforge.
There will hopefully be up-to-date binary RPM packages at the
<a href="http://software.opensuse.org/download/server:/mail/">OpenSUSE build
service</a> for SUSE Linux and Fedora Core 5 soon.
Also, many Linux distributions provide packages; e.g. there is a
<a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/archivemail">Debian
package</a>.
<p>
<span class="command">archivemail</span> is written in Python, and hacking it is
easy and fun; you can check out the source from the subversion repository with
the following command:
<div class="example">
<kbd>svn co https://archivemail.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/archivemail/trunk</kbd>
</div>
<p>
See also the short <a href="http://sourceforge.net/svn/?group_id=49630">
introduction to subversion access</a> at sourceforge.
<!-- 2007-11-06: this site has problems, and I cannot read the mentioned article.
<h3>Articles</h3>
<p>
Emmanuel Seyman wrote an
<a href="http://muttfr.org/gen.php3/2002/11/20/108,1,0,0,1.php3">article
about archivemail</a> for <a href="http://www.muttfr.org/">muttfr.org</a>, a
French website about <a href="http://www.mutt.org/">mutt</a>.
-->
<h2>Getting involved</h2>
<ul>
<li>Visit the <a
href="http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=49630">archivemail
tracker</a> to browse and/or submit bug reports and feature requests.
<li>You can subscribe to the <a
href="http://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/archivemail-user">archivemail-user
mailing list</a>.
This is a low traffic, subscribers-only list.
<li>Check out the <a href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/archivemail/">project page
for archivemail</a> at Sourceforge for a general overview.
</ul>
<h2>Requirements</h2>
<p>
<span class="command">archivemail</span> requires Python 2.3 or newer.
It also uses some optional python modules, but these should be pretty much
standard; if you get an ImportError nonetheless, please
<a title="jump to the archivemail tracker"
href="http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=49630">report it</a>, thanks.
<h2>License</h2>
<p>
This software is licensed under the terms of the
<a href="http://www.gnu.org/licenses/licenses.html#GPL">GNU GPL</a>, either
version 2 of the license, or any later version.
<h2>Credits</h2>
<p>
<span class="command">archivemail</span> was written by Paul Rodger
<code><paul <em>at</em> paulrodger <em>dot</em>
com></code>
and is currently maintained by Peter Poeml <code><poeml
<em>at</em> suse <em>dot</em> de></code>, Nikolaus Schulz <code><a href=
"mailto:microschulz@web.de"><microschulz@web.de></a></code>
and Brandon Knitter.
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