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Claws-Mail an Installer for PowerPC Macs (Primarily Tiger)

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Forest Expertise

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jun 21, 2025
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Claws-Mail is an email client that works with PowerPC Macs. Thanks to @barracuda156, it has been available through PowerPC ports for quite some time. However, some people on this forum expressed an interest in being able to to use claws-mail without having to install PowerPC ports (which does require the one-time hassle and almost gigabyte of space of setting up Xcode CLI tools). Ergo, I made this installer over the last three weeks. To use with Gmail, do the following:
0. Make sure you have an X11 server installed! The one from the Tiger install CDs works fine, as do various servers from Macports/PowerPC ports.
1. Download and mount disk2.dmg from https://filebin.net/i19kjt3wwcd3p3kw
2. Double click on the claws-mail-4.3.1.mpkg
3. Choose Custom install.
4. Deselect db48, fftw-3, freetype, icu, libde265, libevent, python313
5. Proceed to install.
6. Go back and install the pkg files for db48, fftw-3, freetype, icu, libde265, libevent, python313 separately (Macports broke the mpkg code for Tiger before PowerPC ports forked from it, and I didn't get around to fixing it properly, hence the awkwardness)
7. Using finder, find opt/clawsmail/bin/claws-mail
8. ctrl click (or right click) on opt/clawsmail/bin/claws-mail and select open with X11
9. Follow directions on https://bkhome.org/news/202511/gmail-app-password-with-claws.html
10. Select Get Mail and realize you don't clean out your inbox nearly often enough.
11. Tell me how the claws-mail is working for you on this thread.

I will probably get this on Macintosh Garden if it is working for people here. I may go back and try to fix the mpkg code so that the install process is easier, but that isn't high priority, this already took three weeks. If you are adventurous, claws-mail supports OAUTH2 so you could set it up that way, but I found the app password process much easier. License information and source code are in the .tar.gz file
 
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barracuda156 said:
Provisionally it should work just to add /opt/clawsmail/bin to the PATH variable in shell config, and then launch the executable directly from command line as `claws-mail`.
Click to expand...
Yes, and you can also run opt/clawsmail/bin/claws-mail on the command line with Tiger's X11 open. Lots of approaches work.
 
Note: Should you want to use PowerPC ports later (perhaps if you get frustrated with the limitations of Tiger's included X11 server), if you build from source you can use the curl included in this installation as your external curl, and it works great!
 
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Forest Expertise said:
I have yet to test on Leopard, but I would assume so. I am also not sure where to get a functional X11 server for Leopard other than Macports/PowerPC ports.
Click to expand...

1. Isn’t it included? While it is generally advisable to remove Apple X11 if one uses MacPorts/PPCPorts, as long as one does not, should be safe.
2. With the same caveat of poisoning MacPorts/PPCPorts builds, the latest official versions are here: https://www.xquartz.org/releases/archive.html

P. S. I had an idea for a while to make a standalone installation for X server, since it is annoying to activate/deactivate the port every time, and keeping it active is not an option if you build anything in a sane manner (ports will opportunistically picks some X11 stuff when not needed, we get broken installations). I might just do that. (Update. Ah, that needs a modern gcc, and building it three times on 2.3 sucks…)
 
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Tried it on sorbet leopard, it starts installing and after a couple of seconds (around aom?) it gives me Install failed . The source media that you are installing from is damaged.
Downloaded again and the same. download used aquafox
 
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skinniezinho said:
Tried it on sorbet leopard, it starts installing and after a couple of seconds (around aom?) it gives me Install failed . The source media that you are installing from is damaged.
Downloaded again and the same. download used aquafox
Click to expand...
Thank you for testing and letting me know, I will see if I can replicate on stock leopard. Possibly I will need to add a few more separate packages.
 
skinniezinho said:
Tried it on sorbet leopard, it starts installing and after a couple of seconds (around aom?) it gives me Install failed . The source media that you are installing from is damaged.
Downloaded again and the same. download used aquafox
Click to expand...
So apparently some of the included packages do not work on Leopard when built on Tiger, including Aom, Iso-codes, jbig2dec, jbigkit, libcroco, libdeflate, libelf, libepoxy, libgcc-9.0, libgcc13, libgcc14, openssl, orc, pcre2
It's possible this is just due to buggy mpkg code, in which case I will build them as separate packages and ask people to deselect them during the custom install and then install them separately. If that is possible, look for it in about two weeks, or sooner if someone determines the problem also affects Tiger (in which case the culprit is probably bad compression in the dmg)
If it is due to those packages looking for libs that are no longer available in Leopard, them the only solution would be to build the packages on Leopard with matching versions. I am not likely to do that.
On the plus side, you can deselect the above mentioned packages and still have some fun open source software to play with. Just not an email client.
 
skinniezinho said:
Tried it on sorbet leopard, it starts installing and after a couple of seconds (around aom?) it gives me Install failed . The source media that you are installing from is damaged.
Downloaded again and the same. download used aquafox
Click to expand...

On 10.5.8 you can just use normal ports, that should work. Tiger is problematic, so workarounds there make sense.
 
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