Installing NeoMutt

NeoMutt is a command line email client (Mail User Agent). It's fast, powerful and flexible.

The simplest way to obtain NeoMutt is to use your OS's package. See the distro page to see if there's one for you.

Obtaining the Source

The source can be downloaded from our project site on GitHub. It's available as a git repository or a 'tar.gz' archive.

Git

Clone the NeoMutt repository:

git clone https://github.com/neomutt/neomutt

It's recommended to use the latest tagged version. The 'main' branch is used for development and may not be as stable.

Source Archive

The latest release of NeoMutt can be found, here:

• https://github.com/neomutt/neomutt/releases/latest

All source releases are signed for security. See Signing Releases for details.

Building NeoMutt

To build NeoMutt, you will need, at the very minimum:

• A C99 compiler such as gcc or clang
• SysV-compatible curses library: ncurses
• Some common libraries, such as iconv and regex
• DocBook XSL stylesheets and DTDs (for building the docs)

NeoMutt's build system uses Autosetup. It depends on Tcl and Jim to run its test scripts. If they aren't available, Autosetup will use a version bundled with NeoMutt.

Configure

Autosetup's configure.autosetup performs two tasks. It allows the user to enable/disable certain features of NeoMutt and it checks that all the build dependencies are present.

For a list of the currently supported options and a brief help text, run: ./configure.autosetup --help

Configure option	Path	Notes
--with-ncurses=path		Location of ncurses
--gpgme	Path	GPG Made Easy
--gnutls	Path	Gnu TLS (SSL)
--gss	Path	Generic Security Services
--sasl	Path	Simple Authentication and Security Layer
--ssl	Path	OpenSSL
--fmemopen		Optional Feature (Dangerous)
--lua	Path	Optional Feature
--notmuch	Path	Optional Feature
--mixmaster		Optional Feature
--bdb	Path	Header cache backend
--gdbm	Path	Header cache backend
--kyotocabinet	Path	Header cache backend
--lmdb	Path	Header cache backend
--qdbm	Path	Header cache backend
--tokyocabinet	Path	Header cache backend
--with-lock=CHOICE		Select 'fcntl' or 'flock'
--locales-fix		Workaround for broken locales
--disable-nls	Path	National Language Support (translations)
--disable-pgp	Path	Pretty Good Privacy
--disable-smime	Path	Secure/Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions
--disable-idn	Path	Internationalised domain names
--with-domain=DOMAIN		Default email domain
--with-mailpath	Path	Location of spooled mail
--homespool	Path	Spooled mail is in user's home dir
--prefix	Path	Target directory for build (default: /usr)
--disable-doc		Don't build the docs
--full-doc		Document disabled features
--quiet		Only show the summary

The options marked "Path" have either take a path, or have an extra option for specifying the library path. e.g. ./configure --notmuch --with-notmuch=/usr/local/lib/notmuch

The parameter --prefix is used to specify both the default search path for headers and libraries and the final directory structure of the installed files. These are often the same: if you have your dependencies installed in /usr/include and /usr/lib, you also probably want the NeoMutt executable to end up in /usr/bin and its documentation in /usr/share/doc. This behavior can be tweaked by specifying where 3rd party dependencies are to be found. This is done on a per-dependency basis using the --with-<dep>=path family of options. As an example, a GPGME installation in /opt can be looked up using the arguments --gpgme --with-gpgme=/opt.

The build can be adjusted by setting any of six environment variables:

• CC - set the compiler
• CFLAGS - replace all the compiler flags
• EXTRA_CFLAGS - append flags to the default compiler flags
• LD - set the linker
• LDFLAGS - replace all the linker flags
• EXTRA_LDFLAGS - append flags to the default linker flags

e.g. make EXTRA_CFLAGS=-g

Here are the sample commands to configure and build NeoMutt:

./configure --gnutls --gpgme --gss --sasl --tokyocabinet
make

Install / Uninstall

NeoMutt will be installed into the directory configured with --prefix. This can be modified using the DESTDIR make variable, for example when doing staged builds. DESTDIR is prepended to the install path.

To install NeoMutt to the configured location, run:

make install

To override the root directory, use the DESTDIR make variable, e.g.

make DESTDIR=$HOME/install install'

To uninstall NeoMutt from the configured location, run:

make uninstall

To override the root directory, use the DESTDIR make variable, e.g.

make DESTDIR=$HOME/install uninstall'