Re: getmail with python 3 adpatations

$NAME <[email protected]> wrote:
> 
> So I gave it a try to adapt it such that it works for both Python 3 and
> Python 2.7.

Thank you.  I will have a look at this.

> I have read somewhere that you have reduced your efforts to basic
> maintenance.

getmail has essentially been in maintenance mode for a long, long time.  

Part of that is just because internet mail - at least the transport parts of
it that getmail deals with - haven't changed much; the only real new stuff in
mail since the advent of IMAP v4r1 have been higher in the stack (mail UIs,
SPF, DKIM, etc).  So there's no real need for continuing development of new
features.

Part of it is due to getmail's age - the first version (not publicly released)
I wrote in 1998 - so there simply isn't a lot of bugs left or other things
that need working on.

And partly because it's not terribly interesting to me any more.  Any codebase
you've been staring at for 20 years is likely to be somewhat uninteresting,
but in my case it's additionally because I don't actually use POP3 or IMAP4
any more, and haven't for a long, long time.  All my mail arrives via SMTP
through a mail server I run (and which hosts this list, among others).

> Would that include taking over the changes I made?

I will look at it (haven't yet).  If I like it, and your license is compatible
(or you dedicate it to the public domain or otherwise resolve any licensing
issues), then yes, I certainly could include it in a future release.

I've wanted to do a proper rewrite/refactoring of getmail for years, and
started a bit of it.  That work would involve making getmail v.future Python 3
only (probably 3.6 minimum) and some other changes to modernize it - dropping
support for POP, probably, and dropping support for unencrypted IMAP
(IMAP-over-TLS or STARTTLS only).  I have a very rough working version of
that, but it's nowhere near releasable.

getmail just doesn't get a lot of my time; things have changed in 22 years.  I
have too many other calls on my time for a lot of (unsponsored) getmail work.

Charles
-- 
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Charles Cazabon
GPL'ed software available at:               http://pyropus.ca/software/
-----------------------------------------------------------------------