Debian currently has 8.1.2-0.20040524 in unstable: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/mail/mailx Gentoo's mailx is 8.1.2.20021129, which doesn't support the -a option (and probably lots of other missing fixes) I'm not sure at this point whether it's better to get the upstream OpenBSD sources and patch them for Gentoo, or get the Debian sources and patch them for Gentoo. I haven't looked at the Debian patch carefully enough yet to determine if it contains things that are interesting to us.
this version isn't working under an hardened (grsecurity) system which disallow elf text relocations! I was asking myself why there exists a virtual/mailx category although there are no alternatives to the debian mailx client. Actually i'am trying to update the existing 2002 ebuild to work with the 2004 cvs branch!
There is net-mail/nail, which also provides virtual/mailx...
mailx bumped in CVS. Cheers, Ferdy