Build a command line daemon/proxy that will sit between Apple Mail and an IMAP server on port 143. The goal is to resolve a bug in Apple Mail that prevents IMAP updates.
Problem:
When Apple Mail connects to some IMAP servers, it can not maintain IDLE status. My understanding is that Apple Mail does not fully support RFC 3501 section 7. What will happen, is on first launch of Apple Mail, new IMAP mail will come in. For a brief period of time, new mails arrive, with no user intervention at all.
Eventually, this will break, Apple Mail will go deaf. The IMAP connections are still kept alive to the server, but no new emails will come in. You must quit Apple Mail, and launch it again in order to have your emails come in. Clicking “Get Mail” does not work either.
I believe most email servers have this issue, and have provided a work around in their server software. The server I have access to will never provide such a workaround.
Solution:
I am looking for a small simple proxy that does one thing. I will need a proxy app/daemon. You can implement it however you desire. All that matters, is that it will intercept whatever is going wrong, and fix it, or notice whatever is lacking, and solve it.
The proxy should run all the time, started from launchd. it will be fine to be only OS X 10.5 compatible, though I do not see a reason why it will not run on lower OS’s.
Notes:
You should have access to OS X and Apple Mail of course. I will provide you an IMAP account for testing. I imagine this can be solved in perl, or bash, though you can use whatever tools you desire, as long as this proxy can be distributed and run standalone.