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@@ -0,0 +1,106 @@ + libESMTP, version 1.0 + -- oOo -- + Brian Stafford <brian@stafford.uklinux.net> + + +What is libESMTP? +----------------- + +LibESMTP is a library to manage posting (or submission of) electronic +mail using SMTP to a preconfigured Mail Transport Agent (MTA) such as +Exim or Postfix. It may be used as part of a Mail User Agent (MUA) or +another program that must be able to post electronic mail but where mail +functionality is not the program's primary purpose. + +LibESMTP is not intended to be used as part of a program that implements +a Mail Transport Agent. + +It is hoped that the availability of a lightweight library implementing +an SMTP client will both ease the task of coding for software authors +and improve the quality of the resulting code. + +Features +-------- + +Support for many SMTP extensions, notably PIPELINING (RFC 2920), +DSN (RFC 2554) and AUTH (RFC 2554). Also supported is the +sendmail specific XUSR extension which informs sendmail that the +message is an initial submission. + +SASL +---- + +AUTH is implemented using a SASL (RFC 2222) client library which is +currently integrated into libESMTP. It was felt that the Cyrus SASL +library was too complex for the needs of a client only SASL +implementation. + +If there is sufficient interest in a LGPL SASL library, the SASL client +API will be split off into a separate library in the future. There may +also be a case for implementing a server side SASL library along the +same lines as the client implementation. + +Installation +------------ + +Please refer to INSTALL for generic installation instructions. LibESMTP +has a few options when configuring; ./configure --help lists them. + +Dependencies +------------ + +dlsym: + +libESMTP requires that dlsym() is available on your system. This is +true of many modern systems but not all. An alternative is to download +and install libltdl which provides a functional equivalent. Libltdl is +distributed with GNU Libtool, which is available from +http://www.gnu.org/software/libtool/ + +getaddrinfo: + +You will need a modern resolver library providing the getaddrinfo API. +getaddrinfo is easier to use, protocol independent, thread-safe and +RFC 2553 and Posix standard. + +An emulation of this is provided for systems that do not have it, however +it is reccommended that the version provided in recent versions of GNU +libc or BIND is used. Most people will already at least one of these +(e.g. virtually every Linux distro). There is also support for the +lightweight resolver distributed with BIND 9. BIND may be downloaded +from the ISC (http://www.isc.org/). + +openssl: + +OpenSSL (http://www.openssl.org/) is required to build the SMTP STARTTLS +extension and the NTLM authentication module. If you have no need for +either of these features, you do not need OpenSSL. + + +Licence +------- + +LibESMTP is licensed under the GNU Lesser General Public License and the +example programs are under the GNU General Public Licence. Please refer +to COPYING.GPL and COPYING for full details. + +Obtaining libESMTP +------------------ + +LibESMTP may be obtained from: + http://www.stafford.uklinux.net/libesmtp/ + +Documentation +------------- + +LibESMTP documentation is available on the web at: + http://www.stafford.uklinux.net/libesmtp/api.html +This probably (definitely) lags behind the actual source code. + +What does the 'E' stand for? +-------------------------- + +The 'E' in libESMTP is there because support for a number of SMTP +extensions is built in to the library by design. + + |