Note: this is a review of some of the more interesting features in this release. For a complete list of changes please be sure to read the UPDATING file.
This is a very tiny release; barely bigger than a stable release. The only reason for the version bump is because it has a couple new features and some minor behaviour changes.
The last non-stable release was in Feburary 2022, where I noted I was stepping down from maintainership.. Fortunately, some new developers have recently volunteered to help. So this release is just to clear out the few changes in the master branch over the past four years, and pave the way for new regular releases again!
$socket_receive_timeout and $socket_send_timeout set a low-level socket option to cause a timeout after a number of seconds when reading or sending data.
This is a sledgehammer approach to solving network lockup problems in mutt, so I don't highly endorse it. However, if you have an unstable internet connection, and find mutt frequently locking up, it may be worth setting these timeouts to something like... 30, and see if it helps.
The folder browser now remembers the last directory for both file (attachment) and mailbox browsing. This is most helpful for IMAP users. It means when you browse mailboxes, the browser will remember the last IMAP directory you were in. But when you want to attach a file to an email you are composing, or save an attachment, mutt will remember the last place on your computer instead.
Version 2.0.0 introduced a feature to reconnect when an IMAP connection is lost. However, mutt only tried one more time before giving up completely.
This release has mutt try a little harder to reconnect to IMAP when the connection is lost, and allows the user to define how hard it should try.
$imap_reconnect_sleep controls how long mutt will wait between trying again, defaulting to five seconds. $imap_reconnect_tries controls how many times mutt will try to reconnect before giving up and closing the mailbox, defaulting to three times.