Local Dovecot Starter Kit

This repository contains instructions and configuration for setting up a kick-ass local Dovecot IMAP server that synchronizes with your remote IMAP server.

These instructions use GMail as a remote IMAP server and assume you're on a Mac, but they can easily be adapted to other platforms and configurations.

Strategy

Build and install Dovecot with powerful search/indexing capability enabled
Use Dovecot's super-efficient mdbox mail storage format
Use mbsync to keep your local and remote mailboxes in sync.
Run a daemon that uses IMAP IDLE to be notified of changes to the remote mailbox requiring a sync.

Packages

On some platforms (e.g. MacPorts and Homebrew, as of this writing, the official build recipes and packages are not enough to create the system described here. Details below.

MacPorts

If you're using MacPorts, you'll want to set up a local portfile repository. The [instructions](](http://guide.macports.org/chunked/development.local-repositories.html) suggest that you put the repository below your home directory, but that will lead either to great frustration with permissions, or to you unnecessarily relaxing permissions, potentially compromising security.

Adding the following line before the default repository in /opt/local/etc/macports/sources.conf will tell MacPorts to look first in a local repository at /Library/Portfiles/localhost:

file:///Library/Portfiles/localhost

I set mine up this way:

sudo mkdir -p /Library/Portfiles/localhost
chown -R "${USER}:everyone" /Library/Portfiles

For my convenience, I also added a symlink as follows (totally optional):

ln -s /opt/local/var/macports/sources/rsync.macports.org/release/tarballs/ports \
   /Library/Portfiles/rsync.macports.org

Then you'll want to copy mail/dovecot2 (), mail/isync, and textproc/libstemmer from my personal Portfile repository to the corresponding locations under /Library/Portfiles/, and then, in that directory, execute

portindex

And finally (anywhere),

sudo port install dovecot2 +lucene +libstemmer
sudo port install isync-devel

For the rest of these instructions, you should read $PREFIX as /opt/local.

Note: MacPorts tickets for the updated Portfiles are here: dovecot, isync, libstemmer

Homebrew

I am not currently using Homebrew for this, but I did create the necessary Formulae at one point:

IMAP Idle

Idle is the feature that notifies us when something changes on the IMAP server. We use it to get timely updates when there are changes.