Re: [Nmh-workers] nmh dependence on metamail

[Ken Hornstein]

>Ubuntu 12.04 includes a package for nmh but none for metamail. Someone
>noted this in a bug report. Debian seems to have abandoned metamail.
>In Ubuntu 10.xx I was able to make it work from source.
>The source that I have for metamail 2.7 will not compile on my upgraded
>system and I am not knowledgeable enough to try to fix it.

Dale,

There's no need to send something to nmh-workers, exmh-users, _and_ me,
because I'm on both lists :-)

Let me explain the state of the world as I know it:

- nmh has no dependencies on metamail.  Zero, zip, nada.  If a packaging
  system lists nmh as having a dependency on metamail, that's an error.
- exmh does have a dependency on metamail, sort of.  It uses mmencode to
  decode quoted-printable and base64.  It can use another program (which
  I forget the name of but comes on some Linux systems) instead.  It also
  has an internal decoder for those things, but in my experience that
  has a file descriptor leak (that may be fixed).

I really think exmh needs a new release that removes any mention of
metamail, because that package is really long in the tooth nowadays.

--Ken