sievec(1) - Pigeonhole's Sieve script compiler

SYNOPSIS

sievec [options] script-file [out-file]

DESCRIPTION

The sievec command is part of Pigeonhole (pigeonhole(7)), which adds Sieve (RFC 5228) and ManageSieve (RFC 5804) support to Dovecot (dovecot(1)).

Using the sievec command, Sieve scripts can be compiled into a binary representation. The resulting binary can be used directly to process e-mail messages during the delivery process. The delivery of mail messages and - by means of the LDA Sieve plugin - also the execution of Sieve scripts is performed by Dovecot's local delivery agent (LDA) called dovecot-lda(1).

Usually, it is not necessary to compile the Sieve script manually using sievec, because dovecot-lda(1) will do this automatically if the binary is missing. However, in some cases dovecot-lda(1) does not have permission to write the compiled binary to disk, forcing it to recompile the script every time it is executed. Using the sievec tool, this can be performed manually by an authorized user to increase performance.

The Pigeonhole Sieve implementation recognizes files with a .sieve extension as Sieve scripts and corresponding files with a .svbin extension as the associated compiled binary. This means for example that Dovecot's LDA process will first look for a binary file "dovecot.svbin" when it needs to execute "dovecot.sieve". It will compile a new binary when it is missing or outdated.

The sievec command is also useful to verify Sieve scripts before using. Additionally, with the -d option it can output a textual (and thus human-readable) dump of the generated Sieve code to the specified file. The output is then identical to what the sieve-dump(1) command produces for a stored binary file. This output is mainly useful to find bugs in the compiler that yield corrupt binaries.

OPTIONS

-c\ config-file

Alternative Dovecot configuration file path.

-d

Don't write the binary to out-file, but write a textual dump of the binary instead. In this context, the out-file value '-' has special meaning: it causes the textual dump to be written to stdout. The out-file argument may also be omitted, which has the same effect as '-'. The output is identical to what the sieve-dump(1) command produces for a compiled Sieve binary file. Note that this option is not allowed when the out-file argument is a directory.

-D

Enable Sieve debugging.

ARGUMENTS

script-file

Specifies the script to be compiled. If the script-file argument is a directory, all files in that directory with a .sieve extension are compiled into a corresponding .svbin binary file. The compilation is not halted upon errors; it attempts to compile as many scripts in the directory as possible. Note that the -d option and the out-file argument are not allowed when the script-file argument is a directory.

out-file

Specifies where the (binary) output is to be written. This argument is optional. If this argument is omitted, a binary compiled from <scriptname>.sieve is saved as <scriptname>.svbin. If this argument is omitted and -b is specified, the binary dump is output to stdout.

EXIT STATUS

sievec will exit with one of the following values:

0

Compile was successful. (EX_OK, EXIT_SUCCESS)

1

Operation failed. This is returned for almost all failures. (EXIT_FAILURE)

64

Invalid parameter given. (EX_USAGE)

67

User does not exist.

68

Input file, address or other resource does not exist.

73

Cannot create output file.

77

Permission error.

78

Configuration error.

127

Unknown error.

FILES

/etc/dovecot/dovecot.conf

Dovecot's main configuration file.

/etc/dovecot/conf.d/90-sieve.conf

Sieve interpreter settings (included from Dovecot's main

configuration file)

SEE ALSO

dovecot(1), dovecot-lda(1), sieve-dump(1), sieve-filter(1), sieve-test(1), pigeonhole(7)