BunchMail

What is it?

It is a very simple command line utility to combine several Maildir folders into one.

Is it any good?

NO!. I wrote it because I needed to combine several gmail accounts and other miscellaneous mail accounts reaching back to 1999 into a single Maildir. This is essentially throwaway code. I’m only making it public in case

• I need it again later and I can’t find it in the mess that is my hard drive,
• someone else may have a similar use-case and might make use of it

So, it is a brittle, not very optimized (but fast enough) utility that worked for me, YMMV.

Features

• Collates all mail by you into the target Sent folder.
  • You need to give all email identities (addresses) you use, or have ever used; and it will use them to decide which messages were sent by you.
• Ability to select which source maildirs get combined into the final inbox, and which ones are going to get sent to the final Archives maildir.
• Can deduplicate messages across many source Maildirs (based on Message-ID).
  • Can be turned on with the --nodupes flag.
  • In case of duplicate messages destined to the target Inbox and Archive, the copy kept is placed in the Inbox.
• Infers the date/time each message was sent by parsing Received: headers if they exist.
  • Adjusts the base name and ctime/mtime of each message file according to this timestamp.

How do I use it?

Usage of bunchmail:
  -archives value
        Comma separated list of Archive maildir paths
  -bunchpath string
        The directory path to the bunch maildir
  -domain string
        the domain to use for message files (default "bunchmail.local")
  -identities value
        Comma separated list of all mail addresses you use(d) to send mail (for sent mail collation)
  -inboxes value
        Comma delimited list of Inbox paths
  -nodupes
        If true, duplicate messages are discarded
  -removeflags string
        Flags to remove from mail (e.g. "FRT")

Note: When using the comma separated lists of paths (e.g. for –inboxes) do not trust shell expansions ( ~/foo etc.). Either write the full path or use variables (.e.g. $HOME/foo)