How to get over Mutt's saga of "Unknown variables"

I have wrote an article about Mutt here . Now I have changed the system and trying to build it to different system and I am getting this errors:


bhaskar@GentooLinux_15:01:02_Tue Dec 06:~> mutt
Error in /home/bhaskar/.muttrc, line 12: imap_user: unknown variable
Error in /home/bhaskar/.muttrc, line 13: imap_pass: unknown variable
Error in /home/bhaskar/.muttrc, line 45: message_cachedir: unknown variable
Error in /home/bhaskar/.muttrc, line 58: smtp_url: unknown variable
Error in /home/bhaskar/.muttrc, line 59: smtp_pass: unknown variable
Error in /home/bhaskar/.muttrc, line 60: too few arguments


Pretty ordinary!! huh...no so..I was bemused for sometime then discover that when I pull in Mutt on Gentoo it failed to activate those flags and hence causing problem, here is the evidence of lacking those facilities:


bhaskar@GentooLinux_15:22:37_Tue Dec 06:~> mutt -v
Mutt 1.5.21 (2010-09-15, Gentoo 1.5.21-r1)
Copyright (C) 1996-2009 Michael R. Elkins and others.
Mutt comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY; for details type `mutt -vv'.
Mutt is free software, and you are welcome to redistribute it
under certain conditions; type `mutt -vv' for details.

System: Linux 3.0.6-gentoo (i686)
ncurses: ncurses 5.9.20110404 (compiled with 5.9)
hcache backend: GDBM version 1.8.3. 10/15/2002 (built Aug 2 2011 22:18:59)
Compile options:
-DOMAIN
-DEBUG
+HOMESPOOL -USE_SETGID +USE_DOTLOCK +DL_STANDALONE -USE_FCNTL +USE_FLOCK
-USE_POP -USE_NNTP -USE_IMAP -USE_SMTP
-USE_SSL_OPENSSL -USE_SSL_GNUTLS -USE_SASL -USE_GSS -HAVE_GETADDRINFO
-HAVE_REGCOMP +USE_GNU_REGEX +COMPRESSED
+HAVE_COLOR +HAVE_START_COLOR +HAVE_TYPEAHEAD +HAVE_BKGDSET
+HAVE_CURS_SET +HAVE_META +HAVE_RESIZETERM
+CRYPT_BACKEND_CLASSIC_PGP -CRYPT_BACKEND_CLASSIC_SMIME -CRYPT_BACKEND_GPGME
-EXACT_ADDRESS -SUN_ATTACHMENT
+ENABLE_NLS -LOCALES_HACK +HAVE_WC_FUNCS +HAVE_LANGINFO_CODESET +HAVE_LANGINFO_YESEXPR
+HAVE_ICONV -ICONV_NONTRANS -HAVE_LIBIDN +HAVE_GETSID +USE_HCACHE
-ISPELL
SENDMAIL="/usr/sbin/sendmail"
MAILPATH="Maildir"
PKGDATADIR="/usr/share/mutt"
SYSCONFDIR="/etc/mutt"
EXECSHELL="/bin/sh"
MIXMASTER="mixmaster"
To contact the developers, please mail to .
To report a bug, please visit http://bugs.mutt.org/.

dgc.subjrx
fg.smarttime
vvv.initials
vvv.quote
vvv.nntp
patch-1.5.20hg.pdmef.progress.vl.2
rr.compressed
patch-1.5.4.lpr.collapse_flagged Lukas P. Ruf


The minus(-) prepended variables are not activated..so I need to activate them,which is causing trouble.

Now I need to reinstall mutt with all those enabled..so here we go :

First I have to set some use flags in /etc/portage/package.use/mutt.use file:


mail-client/mutt imap smtp pop gnutls mbox gpg smime sasl


And off I go to fetch Mutt one more time with those flags enable:


bhaskar@GentooLinux_15:35:56_Tue Dec 06:~> sudo emerge -av mutt

These are the packages that would be merged, in order:

Calculating dependencies... done!
[ebuild R ] mail-client/mutt-1.5.21-r1 USE="berkdb crypt gdbm gnutls* gpg* imap* mbox* nls pop* sasl* smime* smtp* ssl -debug -doc -idn -nntp -qdbm -sidebar -tokyocabinet" 0 kB

Total: 1 package (1 reinstall), Size of downloads: 0 kB

Would you like to merge these packages? [Yes/No] y


Look at the asterix appended values,which is exactly I did mentioned in the mutt.use file.


Now I can access Mutt without problem :)

Hope this will help.

Cheers!
Bhaskar