[bug-mailutils] Using milutils from Guile?

[Chris Hall]

I recently downloaded Mailutils 0.4, and then spent a while getting all
the other libs and building and installing them, so that I could use
TLS, etc.  I am using Guile 1.6.4 (also 'freshly built') and running on
Debian GNU/Linux 2.4.bf18.

Mailutils is a wonderful idea, and you folks have obviously put a lot of
work into them - pthank you, and please continue the great work!

I'd really like to use them as a fetchmail/procmail replacement, but I
think a I need a little help first, and this is the only place I could
find to ask questions.

  * First, I can't seem to find a 'users' mailing list anywhere - are
    the libraries meant primarily for developers?

  * I'm having trouble figuring out a decent way to *develop* guile
    mailutil scripts:

    * 'guimb' is clearly not intended for interactive development, OK,
      but if did actually want to use it, *how* does one refer to the
      mailbox passed on the command line?

      For example: If I have a script guimb-test.scm, and I want it to
      just get my messages count.  I start it like so:

      guimb -M imap://address@hidden/mbox -d -s guimb-test.scm

      (mu-mailbox-messages-count ???URL???)
                                 ^^^^^^^^^^
                                     ^--- What goes here?

      Sure, I can parse the args and get the maibox name and do my own
      (mu-mailbox-open URL MODE) in the script - this works, I've tried
      it - but it seems guimb is opening it already?

    * If guimb is run with the '-d' flag, yep, I get a backtrace, but
      quite frankly, how truly useful is that, since guimb then exits?
      I can't interactively examine the stack, move to different frames,
      try different values, etc.?

    * If instead I (use-modules (mailutils)) from within an interactive
      guile session, it seems I can open *only* local, disk-based
      mailboxes, and then *only* if I leave any 'file:', 'imap:',
      etc. off of the 'URL'?  Example:

      * (mu-mailbox-open "/some/valid/path" "r") works,

      * (mu-mailbox-open "file:///some/valid/path" "r") and
        (mu-mailbox-open "file://some/valid/path" "r") don't, nor does
        it seem willing to even try a remote mailbox.

      I suspect that this might be related to the lack of a URL object
      in guile - at least a documented one?

      But then why does a "imap://" URL work in a 'guimb' script?
      And/or doesn't it work in guile?  Both were built on the same
      machine, using the same tool chain, about a week apart.

    * Am I doing something wrong here?
      guile> mb
      #<mailbox /home/slacker/mbox (4)>
      guile> (mu-mailbox-close mb)
      ERROR: Wrong number of arguments to #<procedure -print (result)>
      ABORT: (wrong-number-of-args)
      guile> mb
      #<mailbox  (0)>

As you can see, I am a little confused, and I suspect that I might be
missing something obvious, so I would truly appreciate any help anyone
might offer.

Thanks,
+Chris

-- 
We learn from history that we do not learn from history.
-- Georg Friedrich Wilhelm Hegel