before there was mutt, the email client that “sucked less”. However, after discovering Sup mail, yet another curses based (plain text) terminal application, there was no turning back. With IMAP Maildir labeling, combined with incoming inbox or archive assignment, and intelligent Gmail conversation threading, it is email consumption as it should be for distraction free management of large volumes of mail (yes, I subscribe to too many lists..).
Sup doesn’t gem install easily on Debian because Xapian is a gem install requirement—and it is already part of the Debian core install, hence, the conflict when the gem install of Xapian is attempted. Fortunately, there is a Debian package for Sup to satisfy its dependencies. Unfortunately, it is built from the master branch which does not provide IMAP Maildir sync.
As I use OfflineImap and IMAPFilter extensively for managing my IMAP accounts across all my computers, I copy the Sup development fork from Edward Yang to provide IMAP Maildir sync. A very minor patch is required to util.rb which, quite likely, is a Debian/RVM rubygems issue specific to my system..
sed -i '1i\
require "iconv"' util.rb
To run the Sup fork with the sources copied to the /opt/sup/ directory..
ruby -I/opt/sup/lib /opt/sup/bin/sup
And when using RVM1.9.1..
ruby -I/opt/sup/lib -I/usr/lib/ruby/1.9.1/x86_64-linux -I/usr/lib/ruby/1.9.1 /opt/sup/bin/sup