1. Installation

dependencies

Alot depends on recent versions of notmuch and urwid. Note that due to restrictions on argparse and subprocess, you need to run `3.0` > python ≥ `2.7` (see faq). A full list of dependencies is below:

Note

urwidtrees was only recently detached from alot and is not widely available as a separate package. You can install it e.g., via pip directly from github:

pip install --user https://github.com/pazz/urwidtrees/archive/master.zip

On debian/ubuntu the rest are packaged as:

python-setuptools python-magic python-configobj python-twisted python-notmuch python-urwid python-gpgme

On fedora/redhat these are packaged as:

python-setuptools python-magic python-configobj python-twisted python-notmuch python-urwid pygpgme

Alot uses mailcap to look up mime-handler for inline rendering and opening of attachments. For a full description of the maicap protocol consider the manpage mailcap(5) or RFC 1524. To avoid surprises you should at least have an inline renderer (copiousoutput) set up for text/html, i.e. have something like this in your ~/.mailcap:

text/html;  w3m -dump -o document_charset=%{charset} '%s'; nametemplate=%s.html; copiousoutput

get and install alot

You can use pip to install directly from GitHub:

$ pip install --user https://github.com/pazz/alot/archive/master.zip

Don’t have pip installed? Just download and extract, then run:

python setup.py install --user

Make sure ~/.local/bin is in your PATH. For system-wide installation omit the --user flag and call with the respective permissions.

generate manual and manpage

To generate the documentation you need sphinx, ≥ 1.07 installed. Go to docs/ and do a:

make html
make man

to generate the user manual and a man page. Both will end up in their respective subfolders in docs/build.