Erik Christiansen <dvalin@internode.on.net> wrote:
Seriously, it just keeps on working, so the talk on the procmail ML in 2010, of doing some further development, was probably premature.
I agree. As I remember, though, from the LWN article, the code has a reputation for being difficult to understand, which discourages contributions as much as the reliability and general degree of user satisfaction with the current version. Maildrop offers (arguably) better syntax, syntax checking of scripts prior to execution, reduced memory consumption for long messages, and probably other benefits that I've forgotten. If I were advising a new Linux user right now, I'd say that Maildrop is probably better, but Procmail is extremely reliable, better supported with examples and tutorials, and more widely used. A good place for beginners to start is still "An introduction to mail filtering with a focus on procmail" by Nancy McGough http://www.ii.com/internet/robots/procmail/qs/ which is a much updated version of the document from which I first learned Procmail.