cmsend: chatmail sendmail tool for end-to-end encrypted messages

WORK IN PROGRESS: this is more an explorative study for now

To install use:

uv tool install cmsend

On platforms without a deltachat-rpc-server wheel, such as the BSDs, please build the server yourself from https://github.com/chatmail/core and put it on PATH.

To send and receive from a single chatmail relay:

cmsend --init nine.testrun.org   # <-- substitute with the domain you want to set as origin

The profile's display name is cmsend[HOSTNAME], so recipients see which host a message came from.

To setup a tagged chat using an invite link:

cmsend -t LOG --join "INVITELINK"       # <-- quotes are necessary because links contain "&"

To send a message to a tagged chat:

echo "hello" | cmsend -t LOG

To list all chats with tags:

cmsend -l

To send a message to a tagged chat with an attachment:

cmsend -t LOG -m "here is the file" -a README.md

Commands that use the network give up after 60 seconds and exit with an error, --timeout changes that limit.

To show help:

cmsend -h

Developing / Releasing cmsend

1. clone the git repository at https://github.com/chatmail/cmsend

2. install 'cmsend' in editing mode: uv pip install -e .

3. edit cmsend.py and test, finally commit your changes

chatmail/workflows defines py-checks for this repository. Run checks locally with uvx ruff check . and uvx ruff format --check .

To release, run the shared release script from a checkout of chatmail/workflows:

python ../workflows/scripts/make_new_release.py

It runs the checks, tests the built wheel, generates the CHANGELOG.md entry with git-cliff and opens it in your editor, then commits, tags vX.Y.Z and pushes. The release.yml workflow builds and publishes to PyPI via trusted publishing (OIDC); no local twine or PyPI token is involved.