Introduction

Building Pine is not difficult. There are several advantages about building Pine that you can not get if you only get a precoompiled version. For example, you can fix a bug as soon as a patch is available. The price that you must pay in order to receive the advantages of compiling your own source code is usually minimal and we will try to explain how to build pine from scratch.

Getting the Source

The source code of Pine can be obtained from their ftp server at ftp://ftp.cac.washington.edu/pine/. There are a few mirror places, for example http://www.rge.com/pub/mail/pine/. A more extensive list of mirror sites can be found here.

Also note that you can get the binary precompiled for many versions of Pine. They do not however include SSL support.

What is the Latest Version of Pine?

The easiest way to determine what's the latest version and what improvements it contains is to visit this web page. The latest version is always at the top of the list.

What else do I Get by Compiling Pine?

A few other software is included when you build Pine from source code. Here is a list:

1. c-client.a, is the compiled version of the c-client libary. This library is located in the "/imap/c-client/c-client.a". You should know that library is used to compile the imap server (imapd) and Pine. We will talk about this library later.
2. imapd, is the IMAP server. It's source code is in "/imap/imapd/imapd.c"
3. mtest, this is a test mail client, you can learn how to use the c-client library just by reading its source code.
4. libpico.a is the Pico library. Used to compile Pico and Pine. It is located in "./pico/libpico.a".
5. Pico, this is an easy to use text editor, compiled using the libpico.a library.
6. Pilot, is a file browser, also compiled with the libpico.a library.
7. Pine, the main star. It's compiled with both the libpico and c-client library (in other words is huge!)
8. rpdump, a program used to copy configuration files kept in an imap server to a local file.
9. rpload, a program used to copy your configuration files to an imap server, so that you don't have to create a new pinerc file for every computer where you install Pine. The same configuration can be read from the IMAP server, no matter where you go.

How Do I build Pine

In order to build all of the above you must move into the directory that contains the source code of Pine and write a command of the form.

The only trick is to know what "xxx" is. Here is a table showing what you should write (Note that this list was obtained from the makefile of the c-client library. I can't test all of these claims. The actual codes in the build command for Pine is a much smaller set, but I decided to list all of these in the hope that if you can try them and make something out of it. It also explains the real set of codes that you can use to build Pine much better than the build script for Pine).

Code	Operative System	Remark
a32	AIX 3.2 for RS/6000
a41	AIX 4.1 for RS/6000
aix	AIX/370	not RS/6000
ami	AmigaDOS
am2	AmigaDOS with a 68020+
ama	AmigaDOS using AS225R2
amn	AmigaDOS with a 680x0	using "new" socket library
aos	AOS for RT
art	AIX 2.2.1 for RT
asv	Altos SVR4
aux	A/UX
bs3	BSD/i386 3.0 and higher
bsd	generic BSD 4.3
bsf	FreeBSD
bsi	BSD/i386
bso	OpenBSD
cvx	Convex
cyg	Cygwin
d-g	DG/UX prior to 5.4
d54	DG/UX 5.4
do4	Apollo Domain/OS sr10.4
dpx	Bull DPX/2 B.O.S.
drs	ICL DRS/NX
dyn	Dynix
epx	EP/IX
gas	GCC Altos SVR4
gh9	GCC HP-UX 9.x
ghp	GCC HP-UX 10.x
ghs	GCC HP-UX 10.x with Trusted Computer Base
go5	GCC 2.7.1 (95q4 from Skunkware _not_ 98q2!) SCO Open Server 5.0.x
gsc	GCC Santa Cruz Operation
gsg	GCC SGI
gso	GCC Solaris
gsu	GCC SUN-OS
gul	GCC RISC Ultrix (DEC-5000)
hpp	HP-UX 9.x
hpx	HP-UX 10.x
hxd	HP-UX 10.x with DCE security
isc	Interactive Systems
lnx	Linux	traditional passwords and crypt() in the C library
lnp	Linux	with Pluggable Authentication Modules (PAM)
lrh	RedHat Linux
lyn	LynxOS
mct	MachTen
mnt	Atari ST Mint
neb	NetBSD/FreeBSD
nec	NEC UX
nto	QNX Neutrine RTP
nxt	NEXTSTEP
nx3	NEXTSTEP 3.x
osf	OSF/1
os4	OSF/1 4	Digital UNIX
osx	Mac OS X
ptx	PTX
pyr	Pyramid
qnx	QNX 4
s40	SUN-OS 4.0	not Solaris
sc5	SCO Open Server 5.0.x
sco	Santa Cruz Operation
shp	HP-UX with Trusted Computer Base
sgi	Silicon Graphics IRIX
sg6	Silicon Graphics IRIX 6.5
sl4	Linux	using -lshadow to get the crypt() function
sl5	Linux	with shadow passwords, no extra libraries
slx	Linux	using -lcrypt to get the crypt() function
snx	Siemens Nixdorf SININX or Reliant UNIX
sol	Solaris	won't work unless "ucbcc" works -- use gso instead
sos	OSF/1 with SecureWare
ssn	SUN-OS	with shadow password security
sun	SUN-OS 4.1 or better	not Solaris
sv2	SVR2 on AT&T PC-7300	incomplete port
sv4	generic SVR4
ult	RISC Ultrix (DEC-5000)
uw2	UnixWare SVR4.2
vul	VAX Ultrix
vu2	VAX Ultrix 2.3	e.g. for VAXstation-2000 or similar old version

Will Pine Build on my System?

If your system is not in the above list, it may be possible to have Pine available in your system, but probably there must be a portability issue, and you will probably have to get it through a third party vendor.

What are the most common parameters that people need to consider before compiling Pine?

• Debug Files: The people that consider this option, usually disable this feature. If you want to disable debug, all you need to do is to edit the corresponding makefile for your system and delete -DDEBUG from the definition of the DEBUG variable. The rest of the information here will tell you what happens when you do not disable debugging.
   
  If you do not do what was mentioned in the above paragraph, Pine will be compiled with DEBUG support. What this means in practice is that not disabling this feature, will make that every time that you start Pine, Pine will create a file called ".pine-debug1", which will contain trace information of the program. If there is already a file called .pine-debug1, then pine will rename that file to be called .pine-debug2, and so on. The default is that there are only, at most 4 debug files. You can change the number of debug files that are kept by default by editing the file pine/os.h and changing the definition of
   
  #define NUMDEBUGFILES 4
   
  Debug files are never bigger than 200K in size; Pine stops writing to the debug files, once they reach this size.
   
  Pine documents only 9 debug levels, and 4 debug levels for imap, but in reality there are 11 debug levels for Pine and 5 debug levels for imap. The following table is taken from the source code of Pine. To start Pine at level 4, use the following command
   
  pine -d 4
   
  The default is that Pine will set the debug level at 2, and no imap debug information will be recorded. Remember that setting the debug level to any number has the effect of recording all debug information of lower level too, it does not only record the debug level that you set. Here are their meanings
   
  

       The default debug level to set (approximate meanings):
         0 disables debug for the current session
         1 logs only highest level events and errors
         2 logs events like file writes
         3
         4 logs each command
         5
         6
         7 logs details of command execution (7 is highest to run any production)
         8
         9 logs gross details of command execution
  

  Debug levels bigger than 9 produce a message starting Pine, which warns you that sensitive information is being recorded in the .pine-debug1 file.
   
  Level 10 records the entries in your password files and shows you which entry is being tested. The imap log is also complete, and with that information anyone can read your e-mail. You should never use this level, unless of course you forgot your password and you need it for something. Some information about your addressbook is also recorded, which does not have any importance for normal users.
   
  Level 11 records more detailed information of the processing of mailcap files, and records some information related to the address book, which is not relevant for users (only for programmers).
   
  Notice that if you are running Pine with a positive debug level, you can change the debug level by going to the main screen and entering the corresponfing debug level, so if you are running Pine in default debug level, then you can change it to debug level 9 by going to the main screen and pressing the number 9 key. You can not disable debugging in this form.
   
  Now let's talk about the debug levels for imap, Here are their meanings:

  	0 no recording is done, this is the default
  	1 
  	2 only attempts of connections and their outcomes are recorded
  	3 records the results of checking for mail in external folders.
  	4 records almost all session, including what was broadcasted through
  	  the wire between Pine and the server (set by debug level 9)
  	5 Full imap information, includes the passwords that were attempted
  	  to connect to the server (set by debug level 10)
  

  You can start Pine at level 3, say by starting Pine with the command:
   
  pine -d imap=3
   
  You can also combine these two debug levels, and start Pine with a command like
   
  pine -d 3 -d imap=5
   
  New in version 4.50 is the ability to see your debug file at any level without quitting Pine. This can not be done in all platforms, it may require recompilation of Pine. In general this is done by adding the -DDEBUGJOURNAL option to the corresponding makefile for Pine under the DEBUG= definition.
• Unix Proto: This corresponds to the default format that Pine will use to create new folders. In the default configuration of Pine, this format is set to be the Berkeley format, called here, the Unix format. It is the most common format in use today in Unix systems. It distiguishes from other formats in that the first line of each message begins with the "From " string. Here you can find more information about this format.
   
  Sometimes groups of people decide to share folders, and the Unix format, which does no allow this, is insufficient. In this case, people use another format called mbx, and one can force Pine to create folders in this format by default.
   
  If you ever need to do this, all you need to do is to edit the file imap/src/osdep/unix/Makefile and change the value of CREATEPROTO to be mbxproto.
   
  
• Mbox Driver: This is a controversial driver, and in my personal opinion if you had a choice as an administrator, disable it, before it's too late.
   
  The mbox driver is another name for your INBOX. The difference is that mail will be put in the $HOME directory of your account, not in the spool, not kept in the server, but transfered to your (unix) account.
   
  If you are a system administrator, that sounds great, because users will not be filling up the spool, which is a shared space. Here are the bad news. Regardless of which IMAP/POP3 server that you use, your users may complain to you that they have lost their mail!. The bigger the environment (or the smaller it is), if you need to support e-mail, this may turn out to be a nightmare, so it's best not to deal with it.
   
  First, let's see what are the conditions to activate this driver. In the first place you need to support some kind of Unix system (or Linux), and users must have a file called mbox in their $HOME directory. That file may be there, because before your users decided to use Pine, they may have used other programs (like Unix mail) that used the mbox file to store saved messages, for example.
   
  If the above file is in Unix format, then Pine (or the server) may use it to transfer messages saved in the spool (or the server) to the mbox file, where messages will be appended to the existing messages there. This process succeeds if you create an empty file called mbox in your $HOME directory. Whenever this is done, Pine adjusts its INBOX path to point out to the mbox file, so Pine users won't see lost mail.
   
  This sounds great, because it's a nice scheme for reading e-mail. The drawback is the following. Say you allow your users local and remote access to their INBOX, for example, local access when they are logged in in the office and remote from home. Now say that they have the mbox file in their directory, and they use Pine to read e-mail in the office. Silently, without the user noticing, that e-mail is sitting in the mbox file. Now say the user wants to connect from home, and the server installed in your system is not any of the UW-IMAP/POP3 servers, then when the user open his/her INBOX s/he will see no mail, because the server is looking for e-mail in the spool directory, and not in the $HOME directory of the user.
   
  This is specially bad if your user is your boss who left home to reply to a message later from home, and not only they find that they can not do it, but also that their e-mail is lost!
   
  If you choose to disable the mbox driver, you can do it when compiling Pine (or the UW-IMAP/POP3 servers). Edit the file imap/src/osdep/unix/Makefile and delete the value of EXTRADRIVERS, so that it will look EXTRADRIVERS=
   
  Some other (partial) solutions are possible too, if you forgot to disable this driver at compilation time. You can edit your system wide Pine configuration file (pine.conf), and add the following line:
   
  disable-these-drivers=mbox
   
  If you decide not to do this, users can add the above line in their own .pinerc files to disable this driver.
   
  Be careful, the above means that the mbox driver will be disabled for local reading only, if a user disables the mbox driver for reading e-mail in the above mentioned way, and you use the UW-IMAP/POP3 server, then again users may find that they lost e-mail. This is because, as in the above example, if your user reads e-mail from home through a remote connection, that person will see all his/her e-mail in the mbox file, so when that person comes back to office all his/her mail will be gone, because the mbox driver is disabled.
   
  It's a no win situation.
   
  You can however fix this by either always making users connect remotely to the server (and always or never using the UW-IMAP/POP3 servers), or always only allowing local access (even if this means through a telnet connection). Even then, those users who do not want to have their mail sitting in their $HOME directory will go to big pain to synchronize their INBOX (in the spool and in their $HOME directory), if they ever have an mbox file in their $HOME directory, since as we saw before we can disable it for local access, but regardless of what you do, you can not disable this driver for remote access. In other words, there's no much one can do to fight against this behavior, once it is compiled in.
   
  There is a patch, however, which can be used to disable this driver if your user connects remotely from a unix system.
   
  My advice is disable this driver before it's too late.
   
  
• mbx INBOX: In the same way that the ~/mbox file is your INBOX, the file ~/INBOX, if it exists and it is in mbx format, will serve as your local INBOX. This is normally not a problem, since by definition of the mbx format, no empty file can be in mbx format.

Defining a Password file

A password file allows users to save their passwords in a file, so that they do not have to enter them every time that they connect to their e-mail server.

You can only enable password file support when you build Pine. This is not binding, in the sense that even if you enable it you must still create the password file in order to be able to use it. The only sure way to define a password file is to edit the file pine/pine.h and add the following line to it:

#define PASSFILE "path/to/password/file"

and after this, build Pine (again if necessary). I usually enter the above definition normally almost at the top of the file, around the area where the Pine version is defined. This is a change in the source code of Pine, not in the configuration of Pine.

If you are using a version of Pine older than Pine4.41, then the path specified above is relative to the directory where the pinerc file of the user using Pine is located (this is normally the $HOME directory, but it may be a different place). You can also specify a full path if you like.

At this time the password file feature was thought to be used only by the person compiling pine, not for use in a system, that means that if you want to use this system, you will have to compile your own version of Pine.

Starting in version 4.43, PC-Pine allows you to define any path for the password file, and all you need to do is to start PC-Pine as

Pine -passfile C:\full\path\to\location\passfile.pwd

Once you have a working version of Pine with password file support, if you are using version 4.55 or later you can change the location of the default location (defined by the PASSFILE variable), by using the -passfile command line.

If you want to use the passfile option as a user, you need to create an empty file with the name as specified in the PASSFILE variable as discussed above. When Pine is started, Pine removes all permissions for group and world to access your password file, so that your password file can not be read by other users in your system.

When Pine finds a match on the server and username it uses the password found in the password file. If no good password is found, or none exists in the password file, you will be prompted to enter your password, and later be offered to save the password in the password file. You can avoid that Pine saves your password in the password file if you use the option -nowrite_passfile when you start Pine.
 
See Also:

• Forgot your password? See how to recover your password, in the information about debug.

About Fixing Bugs

Fixing a bug requires recompiling Pine, that's no news. Sometimes, for unknown reasons to me, bugs are fixed but not publicized, and this is especially true when the bug is in the imap part of the code of Pine (that is to say the c-client library).

Given that many times patches are not distributed to fix bugs, all I can recommend is that you try to upgrade the imap part of the code in Pine. In order to do this, try removing the imap/ directory from the distribution of pine and replacing this directory by a new imap directory (with the same name as before) from the distribution of the server code at

About Header Files

How Do I Build Pine in...

• RedHat 9.0 You can build a non ssl version of pine with the command "build slx", but if you need to access a secure server this command will not be enough for you, so if you want to build a secure version you need to decide if you want to use Kerberos or not. The above is because RedHat messed up and made SSL include Kerberos support!.
  • Without Kerberos Support (recommended, specially if you don't know what this is). Use the command
    ./build EXTRACFLAGS='-DOPENSSL_NO_KRB5' lrh
  • With Kerberos Support Use the command:
    ./build EXTRACFLAGS='-I/usr/kerberos/include' \ EXTRALDFLAGS='-I/usr/kerberos/lib' lrh
• Debian (Woody) In order to build secure version of Pine (one thtat supports SSL), try to use the following command:
  ./build SSLCERTS=/etc/ssl/certs SSLINCLUDE=/usr/include/openssl \ SSLLIB=/usr/lib lnp
• FreeBSD It was reported by Nancy McGough that the following command could be used to build Pine on FreeBSD-5.3-RELEASE #0
  ./build SSLCERTS=/usr/src/crypto/openssl/certs SSLINCLUDE=/usr/include/openssl SSLLIB=/usr/lib bsf
  These directions are based on directions that can be found here
• Debian (version 4.64) You may want to install libpam0g-dev. The Debian package lists as build dependencies: libncurses5-dev, libldap2-dev, libssl-dev.