[pkg-fetchmail-maint] Bug#530749: fetchmail: Please add option to make "no mail" not an error condition

[Reuben Thomas]

Package: fetchmail
Version: 6.3.9~rc2-4
Severity: wishlist


When using fetchmail in a cron job to fetch mail regularly (because
daemon mode is still not reliable, and yes, I've reported it and tried
and failed to help fix it), it's annoying that "no mail", which is a
perfectly normal condition, returns an error code, as it means I have to
write a wrapper script (or a very long cron job line!) to differentiate
between that and a "real" error.

Hence, an option to return exit code 0 in the case where there is no new
mail would be most handy.

-- System Information:
Debian Release: 5.0.1
  APT prefers stable
  APT policy: (500, 'stable')
Architecture: i386 (i686)

Kernel: Linux 2.6.26-2-686 (SMP w/1 CPU core)
Locale: LANG=en_GB.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_GB.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/bash

Versions of packages fetchmail depends on:
ii  adduser         3.110                    add and remove users and groups
ii  debianutils     2.30                     Miscellaneous utilities specific t
ii  libc6           2.7-18                   GNU C Library: Shared libraries
ii  libcomerr2      1.41.3-1                 common error description library
ii  libkrb53        1.6.dfsg.4~beta1-5lenny1 MIT Kerberos runtime libraries
ii  libssl0.9.8     0.9.8g-15+lenny1         SSL shared libraries
ii  lsb-base        3.2-20                   Linux Standard Base 3.2 init scrip

Versions of packages fetchmail recommends:
ii  ca-certificates               20080809   Common CA certificates

Versions of packages fetchmail suggests:
pn  fetchmailconf                 <none>     (no description available)
ii  postfix [mail-transport-agent 2.5.5-1.1  High-performance mail transport ag
ii  resolvconf                    1.42       name server information handler

-- no debconf information