Package: wnpp Severity: wishlist Owner: Frank Brokken <f.b.brok...@rug.nl> X-Debbugs-Cc: debian-devel@lists.debian.org
* Package name : filtermail Version : 1.02.00 Upstream Contact: Frank B. Brokken <f.b.brok...@rug.nl> * URL : https://fbb-git.gitlab.io/filtermail * License : GPL Programming Lang: C++ Description : Filtermail filters incoming e-mail as accepted, spam, or ignored Filtermail filters incoming e-mail as either accepted, spam, or ignored e-mail. It uses rule files, which are inspected in sequence until the incoming e-mail matches a rule. Once that happens the rule's associated action (accept, spam, or ignore) is executed. If the e-mail is not matched by any rule then the e-mail is accepted. Accepted e-mail normally is appended to the mail file which is used by the incoming mail server when receiving mail for the current user. E.g., if the user's username is frank then incoming mail is appended to the file /var/mail/frank. Users may also define directories to contain saved e-mails (e.g., ~/Mail), and filtermail can be configured to append e-mail considered as spam to, e.g., ~/Mail/spam. Likewise, e-mail matching the 'ignore' criteria could be appended to ~/Mail/ignore. Instead of appending the complete e-mail to its destination file the received e-mail's From: and Subject: headers can be appended to its destination file. Alternatively, such e-mail can also be ignored, losing it completely. Filtermail uses three types of files: * The configuration file contains values of options with are generally used (covered in the man-page's sections CONFIGURATION and OPTIONS); * Mail filtering rules are hierarchically ordered in the rules file: incoming mail is sequentially matched against the patterns defined in files specified in the rules file until a match is found. Once a match has been found the rule's action (accept, ignore or spam) is executed, ending the filtering process; * Each file specified in the rules file defines matching patterns, which are tested sequentially. Testing those patterns ends once the incoming mail matches a pattern. In addition to the filtermail program itself a small support program 'inspect' is part of filtermail: inspect expects a received e-mail file at its standard input. Mail handling programs (e.g., mutt(1)) allow its users to pipe an e-mail file to a program, inspecting the received e-mail. Depending on the content of the Received: headers inspect's output shows the domain name of the sender, its IP address, its country of origin and the cidr-range containing the received IP address. If the received e-mail is considered conspicuous (e.g., spam or mail to ignore) then the mail's details, e.g. its cidr range. could be added to the file recognizing spam-rated e-mail. - why is this package useful/relevant? The main reason for developing filtermail was the fact that I frequently receive mail which is either spam or which is completely irrelevant and annoying. Previously I used a bash-script to filter such mail, but that script eventually was hard to maintain. A compilable program offers, IMHO, better facilities for maintenance and modifications so I wrote filtermail. Over the past three months it performed its job as expected. E.g., of the about 300 e-mails I received in the category 'igored' were all correctly categorized. - it a dependency for another package? No, it's a stand-alone program - do you use it? Yes, I do - if there are other packages providing similar functionality, how does it compare? There exists a program 'mailfilter' focusing on handling pop-accounts and also offering ways to recognize e-mail as spam. Filtermail, on the other hand, uses the 'ignore' category in addition to the 'spam' category and primarily aims at categorizing (in various forms) incoming e-mail. - how do you plan to maintain it? I have a long history of building and maintaining programs, many of them are also registered as Debian packages. I handle the maintenance of the programs myself, and almost all my direct contact with Debian is via Tony Mancill (tmanc...@debian.org) who is a Debian developer. When there's a new version of one of my Debian provided programs I prepare the required update, upload it to salsa, and send Tony an e-mail asking him to verify the latest update. Filtermail's website is at https://fbb-git.gitlab.io/filtermail/ where you also find links to the man-pages, to its repository, and to a list of programs I developed, most of them are available as Debian packages. - do you need a sponsor? If I'm correct then the 'sponsor' is a Debian maintainer who's willing to adopt a program for Debian. If so, then yes, I do. I hope you like filtermail!
