mini-mail-dev

mini-mail-dev

A alternative take on a development testing email server.

Why

Something something reinventing the wheel :^)

But besides the fun of reinventing the wheel I do have some reasons for making this. I used maildev before this and I have some annoyances with it. It's an awesome project and has improved my life, but after using it for many years I have also noticed it's not without its flaws. So here is mini-mail-dev, my take on a mail development server and with fixes for my maildev problems.

Here are things this project aims to improve / do different compared to maildev:

• Attachments not hidden behind a button
• By default a fixed max amount of emails and when exceeded old emails are removed. (So you can safely deploy this on a server without much storage or cpu as the server does not have to store a shitload of emails when sending a shitload of emails on a staging server hehe)
• Different server side language. Mail dev has a tendency to break when running it on a server and sending more than the "average" amound of mails (my experience is at around 5.000 emails). By applying the above and using a language that is better suited for these kinds of things I can deploy this on every potato in the world.

Install

Go Install

(you might not have the latest version if you have installed it earlier)

go install github.com/mjarkk/mini-mail-dev@latest
mini-mail-dev

Git clone & Go install

git clone https://github.com/mjarkk/mini-mail-dev
cd mini-mail-dev
go install
mini-mail-dev

Docker

docker build -t mini-mail-dev https://github.com/mjarkk/mini-mail-dev.git#main
docker run -it --rm -p 1080:1080 -p 1025:1025 mini-mail-dev

Git clone & Docker

git clone https://github.com/mjarkk/mini-mail-dev
cd mini-mail-dev
docker build -t mini-mail-dev .
docker run -it --rm -p 1080:1080 -p 1025:1025 mini-mail-dev

Usage

mini-mail-dev

Options:

Usage of mini-mail-dev
    --disable-web                 Disable the web interface
    --http string                 HTTP server address (default "localhost:1080")
    --http-pass string            HTTP server address, if empty no credentials required
    --http-user string            HTTP server username, if empty no credentials required
    --max-emails uint16           The max amount of emails to keep (default 200)
    --smtp string                 SMTP server address (default "localhost:1025")
    --smtp-domain string          SMTP server domain (default "localhost")
    --smtp-incoming-pass string   SMTP server password, if empty no credentials required
    --smtp-incoming-user string   SMTP server username, if empty no credentials required

Environment variables

These are used the same way as the arguments

DISABLE_WEB
HTTP_ADDR
HTTP_PASS
HTTP_USER
MAX_EMAILS
SMTP_ADDR
SMTP_DOMAIN
SMTP_INCOMING_PASS
SMTP_INCOMING_USER

Build & Run

Requirements:

• Golang v1.21.2 +
• Nodejs

# Build frontend
npm i
npm run build

# Build backend
go get
go build

Now you can start mini-mail-dev using

./mini-mail-dev

Dev

go run .
# In another terminal tab run:
npm run dev

# For sending a few testing mails to the server run
go run test/test_email.go

The javascript files are hot module reloaded only when going to localhost:3001, the go files are not reloaded on changes made