README

getmail version 4 -- a flexible, extensible mail retrieval system with
support for POP3, IMAP4, SSL variants of both, maildirs, mboxrd files,
external MDAs, arbitrary message filtering, single-user and domain-mailboxes,
and many other useful features.

getmail is Copyright (C) 1998-2009 Charles Cazabon.
getmail is licensed for use under the GNU General Public License version 2
(only).  See docs/COPYING for specific terms and distribution information.

getmail version 4 requires Python version 2.3.3 or later.  You can have
several installed versions of Python peacefully co-existing, see
python.org for details.

To install:  getmail v.4 uses the standard Python distutils.  Do the following
  as a regular user:

    python setup.py build

  Then (probably as root), do:

    python setup.py install

  This will install the software as follows:

    -the four scripts will be installed in <PREFIX>/bin/
    -the Python files will be installed under the site-packages directory of
     your Python installation (typically /usr/local/lib/pythonXXX or
     /usr/lib/pythonXXX, but may be elsewhere -- this is detected automatically)
    -the documentation will be installed under <PREFIX>/doc/getmail-<version>/
    -the man pages will be installed under <PREFIX>/man/

  <PREFIX> is the directory Python was configured to install under (typically
  either /usr/local/ or /usr/, but may be another value).  See the file
  docs/documentation.html or docs/documentation.txt for details on installing
  files to directories other than these defaults.

The four scripts included in the package (getmail, getmail_maildir,
getmail_mbox, and getmail_fetch) will have their "#!"-interpreter line
automatically modified to invoke the Python interpreter you run the setup
script with.  If you later remove this version of Python, and the newer version
does not provide a link to the interpreter with that name, you will have to
modify the scripts or re-run the setup.py script.

See the HTML documentation for details on setting up and using getmail.  It is
included in the docs subdirectory of the distribution tarball, and will be
installed in <PREFIX>/doc/getmail-<version>/ (by default).  10-second summary
for personal use:

  1. Install getmail
  2. mkdir -m 700 ~/.getmail
  3. Create ~/.getmail/getmailrc by following the instructions.
  4. Run `getmail`.

See docs/BUGS for instructions on reporting bugs in this software.