Terminology

Alpine Mail on Windows is also known as…

• Windows Alpine and
• PC-⁠Alpine.

To learn about the Alpine mail and newsgroup client, see Infinite Ink’s #alpine-mail portal.

Prerequisites

This article assumes that Git Bash is installed¹ on your Windows device and that you know how to…

• use a Git Bash command line,
• switch between Windows Explorer windows and Git Bash terminal windows,
• use Windows Explorer to
  • unzip a .zip file and
  • copy, move, and rename files and directories.

My Windows Alpine History

After ~15 years of using Windows Alpine v2.01, which was released in 2009, I recently installed the latest Windows Alpine (v2.26).²

Steps to install Windows Alpine

Below are the steps I used to install Windows Alpine v2.26. Note that you do not need to have Git Bash on your system to install Windows Alpine. I use it because it makes a lot of things – for example gpg – easier.

Download

1. Use a web browser to go to the alpineapp.email website and download alpine-2.26.zip and windows-2.26.tar.xz.sig into the Downloads directory.

Launch Windows Explorer

2. Open the Downloads directory in Windows Explorer.

Launch Git Bash

3. In Windows Explorer, Right-click or Shift+Right-click on a blank region and choose Git Bash Here.

Check the SHA-256 checksum

4. In the Git Bash terminal, check the checksum of alpine-2.26.zip, by runnning the following:

   sha256sum alpine-2.26.zip
   

5. Visually check that the output of this command matches the checksum displayed on the alpineapp.email website. The 2022-June-2 alpine-2.26.zip has this SHA-256 checksum:

d754c781f84e4034ddbc6e33188deef5​b3566bdcd296945cad7ee955a070ae3b

Verify the GPG signature

To verify that the zip file was created by Eduardo Chappa, Alpine’s primary developer, do the following at a Git Bash prompt.

6. To import Eduardo’s GPG public key, run:

   gpg --import alpine.chappa\@yandex.com.gpg
   

7. To verify, run:

   gpg --verify windows-2.26.zip.sig alpine-2.26.zip
   

   
   Make sure the output of this command displays Good signature.

Unzip

8. In Windows Explorer, double click on alpine-2.26.zip and extract the zipped files into a directory named alpine-2.26. Inside this directory is a directory named alpine2_26.
9. Rename alpine2_26 to Alpine2_26 (because my personal style is to use an initial cap for directory names).

Move the Alpine2_26 directory

10. I put the Alpine2_26 directory in the root of the C: drive, but you can put it wherever you like. On my system, the directory structure now includes this:

C:\
└── Alpine2_26\
    ├── Certs\
    ├── alpine.exe
    ├── ldap32.dll
    ├── libcrypto-3.dll
    ├── libssl-3.dll
    ├── LICENSE
    └── NOTICE

Launch Alpine from Windows Explorer

11. To launch Windows Alpine from Windows Explorer, double click on alpine.exe

Alpine Configuration Setup dialog box

12. In the Alpine Configuration Setup dialog box, select the radio button labeled Use local configuration file and click OK.
13. Quit Alpine.

View the Alpine-created registry settings, files, and directories

14. Change the focus to a Git Bash window.

15. To view the changes Alpine made to your system, run these three commands at a Git Bash command prompt:

    /c/Alpine2_26/alpine.exe -registry dump
    
    ls -la /c/Alpine2_26
    
    ls -la $HOME/mail
    

    Note that Alpine updated the Windows registry and created these:

    /c/Alpine2_26/pinerc
    
    $HOME/mail/
    $HOME/mail/savemail
    $HOME/mail/sentmail
    

Launch Alpine from Git Bash

16. To launch Alpine again, run this at a Git Bash command prompt:

    /c/Alpine2_26/alpine.exe
    

Start configuring Alpine

17. At the prompt that says No inbox! Folder to open as inbox:, either click on ^C Cancel or type ^C.³
18. To go to the SETUP CONFIGURATION screen, type MSC, which means Main Menu, Setup, Config.
19. Arrow down to Inbox Path and press Enter.
20. At the Name of Inbox server prompt, fully specify your Inbox server. For example, for my Fastmail account, I specify:

    imap.fastmail.com/user=secret@fastmail.com/ssl
    

    with “secret” replaced with my actual Fastmail user name.
21. Press Enter.
22. At the Folder…to use for INBOX prompt, press Enter (to accept the default).
23. To exit Setup, type E.
24. To commit changes, type Y.

Steps 25+ coming soon

References

• Git Bash Is My Preferred Windows Shell
• Checking SHA-256 Checksums
• #alpine-mail Portal

Endnotes