Are there any good maildir manipulation utilities out there?

[Cameron Simpson]

On 08Apr2021 08:40, Chris Green <cl at isbd.net> wrote:
>On Thu, Apr 08, 2021 at 08:43:48AM +1000, Cameron Simpson wrote:
>> It's also not particularly well suited
>> to Chris' requirement, which includes preserving the source tree shape
>> in the archiving process.
>>
>Yes, that was just one typical requirement.  The other major
>requirement is rather different.  I have (for example) lots of
>messages about orders from Screwfix which are currently spread around
>in various sub-directories of 'shopping'.  For suppliers like Screwfix
>from whom I buy a lot of rather mixed up sort of items it now makes
>sense to me to keep them all in a Screwfix directory.  So the
>requirement is to find all messages from Screwfix and put them in one
>directory.

Note that there's no fundamental reason you can't link the same message 
into many Maildirs. So link them all into a screwfix folder, and also 
where they naturally land courtesy of other filing rules.

Also, didn't you put some work into tagging messages. A search on 
tag=screwfix might go well.

>> I suspect Chris may need to roll his own. I'd imagine something like:
>>
>>     find message paths using mairix \
>>     | move message files sideways, making sure there's no conflicts
>>
>Yes, I think it may have to be a roll my own something like this.
>It's just that mairix doesn't provide a very good 'handle' to use.

I'm using notmuch. In particular, this:

    notmuch search --output=files -- search terms ...

emits message pathnames. That gets you the folder structure with alittle 
path fiddling. So my "notmuch-search" script (aliased as "++") goes:

    if [ $dothreads ]
    then
      notmuch search --output=threads -- "$@" \
      | while read -r tid
        do  notmuch search --output=files -- "$tid"
        done
    else
      notmuch search --output=files -- "$@"
    fi \
    | egrep '/(new|cur)/[^/]+$' \
    | sort -u \
    | xxargs arg1 -end "$mdir/new" set-x ln -i -s \

at the bottom:
- find the messages
- winnow some noise - probably unnecessary
- "sort -u" to remove duplicates
- make symlinks to all the messages in the search result maildir's "new" 
  subdir

Then it fires up mutt on the result maildir.

I would think you could shoehorn the above logic a bit to achieve your 
"keep the hierachy shape" thing.

Cheers,
Cameron Simpson <cs at cskk.id.au>