fetchmail/sendmail/procmail alternative

Question

is there a program out there that can download mail from an imap account to a local machine for local reading with a program like mutt? I'm finding the whole fetchmail/sendmail/procmail pipeline setup to be a bit much, but I still want to use the maildir or mbox format that unix is designed around. I also don't want to use the built in imap code mutt has because I don't want to have mutt running constantly just to check my mail.

thanks.

Answer 1

There is no alternative. The only thing you can do is to eliminate Sendmail. Fetchmail and procmail is everything you need. See this excellent post on how to accomplish this: http://www.ioncannon.net/system-administration/97/using-fetchmail-and-procmail-for-maildir-style-storage-from-a-pop3-account/

Important edit:

There is an alternative called getmail.