meli/BUILD.md

# Build `meli`

For a quick start, build and install locally:

```sh
 PREFIX=~/.local make install
```

Available subcommands for `make` are listed with `make help`.
The Makefile *should* be POSIX portable and not require a specific `make` version.

`meli` requires rust version 1.68.2 or later and rust's package manager, Cargo.
Information on how to get it on your system can be found here: <https://doc.rust-lang.org/cargo/getting-started/installation.html>

With Cargo available, the project can be built with `make` and the resulting binary will then be found under `target/release/meli`.
Run `make install` to install the binary and man pages.
This requires root, so I suggest you override the default paths and install it in your `$HOME`: `make PREFIX=${HOME}/.local install`.

You can build and run `meli` with one command: `cargo run --release`.

## Build features

Some functionality is held behind "feature gates", or compile-time flags. The following list explains each feature's purpose:

- `gpgme` enables GPG support via `libgpgme` (on by default)
- `dbus-notifications` enables showing notifications using `dbus` (on by default)
- `notmuch` provides support for using a notmuch database as a mail backend (on by default)
- `jmap` provides support for connecting to a jmap server and use it as a mail backend (on by default)
- `sqlite3` provides support for builting fast search indexes in local sqlite3 databases (on by default)
- `cli-docs` includes the manpage documentation compiled by either `mandoc` or `man` binary to plain text in `meli`'s command line. Embedded documentation can be viewed with the subcommand `meli man [PAGE]` (on by default).
- `regexp` provides experimental support for theming some e-mail fields based
  on regular expressions.
  It uses the `pcre2` library.
  Since it's actual use in the code is very limited, it is not recommended to use this (off by default).
- `static` and `*-static` bundle C libraries in dependencies so that you don't need them installed in your system (on by default).

## Build Debian package (*deb*)

Building with Debian's packaged cargo might require the installation of these two packages: `librust-openssl-sys-dev librust-libdbus-sys-dev`

A `*.deb` package can be built with `make deb-dist`

## Using notmuch

To use the optional notmuch backend feature, you must have `libnotmuch5` installed in your system.
In Debian-like systems, install the `libnotmuch5` packages.
`meli` detects the library's presence on runtime.
If it is not detected, you can use the `library_file_path` setting on your notmuch account to specify the absolute path of the library.

## Using GPG

To use the optional gpg feature, you must have `libgpgme` installed in your system.
In Debian-like systems, install the `libgpgme11` package.
`meli` detects the library's presence on runtime.

## Development

Development builds can be built and/or run with

```
cargo build
cargo run
```

There is a debug/tracing log feature that can be enabled by using the flag `--feature debug-tracing` after uncommenting the features in `Cargo.toml`.
The logs are printed in stderr when the env var `MELI_DEBUG_STDERR` is defined, thus you can run `meli` with a redirection (i.e `2> log`).

To trace network and protocol communications you can enable the following features:

- `imap-trace`
- `jmap-trace`
- `nntp-trace`
- `smtp-trace`