mcds is a command line tool primarily used as a search query plugin for mutt to query a CardDav server.

• C compiler
• Curl
• LibXML2
• Optionally GPGME

If building from a source release package, e.g. the tarball shipped from https://github.com/t-brown/mcds/releases, skip to the next section.

mcds relies on the GNU build system autoconf and automake.

To use the autotools, invoke:

autoreconf -vi

This will recreate the configure script and other auxiliary files required for the build.

Continue with the instructions in the next section.

To install mcds with the default options (this includes GPGME support):

./configure
make
make install

This will install the binary tool in /usr/local/bin and man pages in /usr/local/man. To specify a different installation prefix, use the --prefix option to configure:

./configure --prefix=/opt
make
make install

Will install mcds in /opt/{bin,man}.

The utility mcds queries a CardDav server. For example to query all email address of people called Fred in your addressbook at the URL https://example.org/addressbook:

mcds -u https://example.org/addressbook Fred

If you had an entry for Fred Smith it would return a result like:

[email protected]   Fred Smith

mcds can make use of an rc file (${HOME}/.mcdsrc). Please read the accompanying man page for more examples and the specifications of the rc file.

The typical URL to query for various CardDav servers.

• Davical https://example.org/caldav.php/username/addresses

• Owncloud http://example.org/remote.php/carddav/addressbooks/username/contacts

• Nextcloud http://example.org/remote.php/dav/addressbooks/users/username/contacts

• Gmail https://www.googleapis.com/carddav/v1/principals/[email protected]/lists/default where one needs to subsitute your email address for [email protected].

• Baikal https://example.org/dav.php/addressbooks/username/default/