Export MH mail files and folders into other mailbox formats, for example in preparation for uploading them to an IMAP server
The MH Message Handling System stores each mailbox message in a separate file. Some other mail-handling tools instead store entire message folders in a single file, using the MMDF or mboxrd file formats.
This Perl script packs the list of MH message files or folders
provided on the command line into a single MMDF or mboxrd file, which
it then sends to standard output. (The MH tool packf serves a
similar purpose but lacks a number of important features that can lead
to a loss of information.)
If you want to migrate your MH folders onto an IMAP server, first use
this tool to prepare an MMDF mailbox file, which you can then upload
via IMAP using the mailutil copy tool from the University of
Washington IMAP distribution.
Example:
$ mh-export ~/Mail/path/to/mh/folder >~/folder.mmdf && \
> mailutil copy folder.mmdf {imap.hermes.cam.ac.uk/ssl/user=crsid}new-folder
This will create new-folder on the IMAP server and will fill it with
all messages found in ~/Mail/path/to/mh/folder/. The IMAP folder
new-folder must not already exist. (If you want to append messages
to an existing folder, first upload them to a temporary new folder,
then use any IMAP client to move them over to the intended destination
and delete the uploaded and now empty temporary folder.)
This repository contains just a single executable script file
mh-export. Copy it to wherever you want. There are no dependencies
other than Perl.
I personally have $HOME/local/bin in my $PATH environment variable
and I install git repositories that contain just one or more script
files, like this one, using
stow, like this:
$ mkdir -p ~/local/bin/stow
$ cd ~/local/bin/stow
$ git clone https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/git/mh-export
$ stow mh-export
For the complete documentation:
$ perldoc mh-export
Markus Kuhn, Computer Laboratory, University of Cambridge