One of the things I really miss about my old job is we had a default mutt configuration available for folks to use as a starting point which was really awesome. Additionally, we had a custom build of “muttng”, mutt “next generation”, a now long-dead fork of mutt which contains lots of super-hot extra features. I decided it was time to make my mutt “whole again”, so what follows are the steps for getting an awesome mutt configuration on Debian Linux.
So first off, I thought I would have to apply all these crazy patches and things, and build my own mutt package. Gladly, this is not the case. Most of the muttng patches have now been applied to the original mutt source. Also, to my joyful surprise, most (if not all) of the patches that weren’t merged in are available in Debian by installing the “mutt-patched” in addition to (or instead of) “mutt”. This includes the much-loved “sidebar patch”, among others.
After I got that figured out, I got to just muck with my .muttrc file. The docs I referenced are available here and the wiki is here. Now for your configuring pleasure, here is an “anonymized” version of my configuration, I hope it has some helpful ideas for you seasoned mutt users out there.