NAME

       imap-dl -- a simple replacement for a minimalist user of getmail

SYNOPSIS

       imap-dl [-v|--verbose] configfile...

DESCRIPTION

       If you use getmail to reach an IMAP server as though it were POP (retrieving from the server, storing it
       in a maildir and optionally deleting), you can point this script to the getmail config and it should do
       the same thing.

       It tries to ensure that the configuration file is of the expected type, and otherwise it will terminate
       with an error.  It should not lose e-mail messages.

       If there's any interest in supporting other similarly simple use cases for getmail, patches are welcome.

OPTIONS

       -v or --verbose causes imap-dl to print more details about what it is doing.

       In addition to parts of the standard getmail configuration, imap-dl supports the following keywords in
       the config file:

       options.on_size_mismatch can be set to error, none, or warn.  This governs what to do when the remote
       IMAP server claims a different size in the message summary list than the actual message retrieval
       (default: error).

EXAMPLE CONFIG

       If you've never used getmail, you can make the simplest possible config file like so:

           [retriever]
           server = mail.example.net
           username = foo
           password = sekr1t!

           [destination]
           path = /home/foo/Maildir

           [options]
           delete = True

LIMITATIONS

       imap-dl is currently deliberately minimal.  It is designed to be used by someone who treats their IMAP
       mailbox like a POP server.

       It works with IMAP-over-TLS only, and it just fetches all messages from the default IMAP folder.  It does
       not support all the various features of getmail.

       imap-dl is deliberately implemented in a modern version of python3, and tries to use just the standard
       library.  It will not be backported to python2.

       imap-dl uses imaplib, which means that it does synchronous calls to the imap server.  A more clever
       implementation would use asynchronous python to avoid latency/roundtrips.

       imap-dl does not know how to wait and listen for new mail using IMAP IDLE.  This would be a nice
       additional feature.

       imap-dl does not yet know how to deliver to an MDA (or to notmuch-insert).  This would be a nice thing to
       be able to do.

SEE ALSO

       https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3501, http://pyropus.ca/software/getmail/

AUTHOR

       imap-dl and this manpage were written by Daniel Kahn Gillmor, inspired by some functionality from the
       getmail project.