Ubuntu Manpage: sievec - Pigeonhole's Sieve script compiler

Provided by: dovecot-sieve_2.2.22-1ubuntu2.14_amd64

NAME

       sievec - Pigeonhole's Sieve script compiler

SYNOPSIS

       sievec [options] script-file [out-file]

DESCRIPTION

The sievec command is part of the Pigeonhole Project (pigeonhole(7)), which adds Sieve (RFC 5228) support
to the Dovecot secure IMAP and POP3 server (dovecot(1)).

Using the sievec command, Sieve scripts can be compiled into a binary representation. The resulting
binary can be used directly to process e-mail messages during the delivery process. The delivery of mail
messages and - by means of the LDA Sieve plugin - also the execution of Sieve scripts is performed by
Dovecot's local delivery agent (LDA) called dovecot-lda(1). Usually, it is not necessary to compile the
Sieve script manually using sievec, because dovecot-lda will do this automatically if the binary is
missing. However, in some cases dovecot-lda does not have permission to write the compiled binary to
disk, forcing it to recompile the script every time it is executed. Using the sievec tool, this can be
performed manually by an authorized user to increase performance.

The Pigeonhole Sieve implementation recognizes files with a .sieve extension as Sieve scripts and
corresponding files with a .svbin extension as the associated compiled binary. This means for example
that Dovecot's LDA process will first look for a binary file "dovecot.svbin" when it needs to execute
"dovecot.sieve". It will compile a new binary when it is missing or outdated.

The sievec command is also useful to verify Sieve scripts before using. Additionally, with the -d option
it can output a textual (and thus human-readable) dump of the generated Sieve code to the specified file.
The output is then identical to what the sieve-dump(1) command produces for a stored binary file. This
output is mainly useful to find bugs in the compiler that yield corrupt binaries.

OPTIONS

-c config-file
Alternative Dovecot configuration file path.

-d Don't write the binary to out-file, but write a textual dump of the binary instead. In this
context, the out-file value '-' has special meaning: it causes the the textual dump to be written
to stdout. The out-file argument may also be omitted, which has the same effect as '-'. The
output is identical to what the sieve-dump(1) command produces for a compiled Sieve binary file.
Note that this option is not allowed when the out-file argument is a directory.

-D Enable Sieve debugging.

-x extensions
Set the available extensions. The parameter is a space-separated list of the active extensions. By
prepending the extension identifiers with + or -, extensions can be included or excluded relative
to the configured set of active extensions. If no extensions have a + or - prefix, only those
extensions that are explicitly listed will be enabled. Unknown extensions are ignored and a
warning is produced.

For example -x "+imapflags -enotify" will enable the deprecated imapflags extension and disable
the enotify extension. The rest of the active extensions depends on the sieve_extensions and
sieve_global_extensions settings. By default, i.e. when sieve_extensions and
sieve_global_extensions remain unconfigured, all supported extensions are available, except for
deprecated extensions or those that are still under development.

ARGUMENTS

       script-file
              Specifies the script to be compiled. If the script-file argument is a directory, all files in that
              directory  with  a  .sieve  extension  are  compiled  into a corresponding .svbin binary file. The
              compilation is not halted upon errors; it attempts to compile as many scripts in the directory  as
              possible.  Note  that the -d option and the out-file argument are not allowed when the script-file
              argument is a directory.

       out-file
              Specifies where the (binary) output is to be written. This argument is optional.  If this argument
              is omitted, a binary compiled from <scriptname>.sieve is  saved  as  <scriptname>.svbin.  If  this
              argument is omitted and -b is specified, the binary dump is output to stdout.

EXIT STATUS

       sievec will exit with one of the following values:

       0   Compile was successful. (EX_OK, EXIT_SUCCESS)

       1   Operation failed. This is returned for almost all failures.  (EXIT_FAILURE)

       64  Invalid parameter given. (EX_USAGE)

FILES

       /etc/dovecot/dovecot.conf
              Dovecot's main configuration file.

       /etc/dovecot/conf.d/90-sieve.conf
              Sieve interpreter settings (included from Dovecot's main configuration file)

REPORTING BUGS

       Report   bugs,  including  doveconf  -n  output,  to  the  Dovecot  Mailing  List  <dovecot@dovecot.org>.
       Information about reporting bugs is available at: http://dovecot.org/bugreport.html