Building Mutt with the sidebar patch.

gistfile1.txt

# install dependencies if you want to use gpg, tls, or any other options
sudo apt-get install libgpgme11 libgpgme11-dev libgnutls-dev libsasl2-dev libgdbm-dev libncursesw5-dev

# grab the source. I use 1.5.21 because it is the latest compatible w/ sidebar
wget -q -O - ftp://ftp.mutt.org/mutt/devel/mutt-1.5.21.tar.gz | tar xvfz -
cd ./mutt-1.5.21

# apply sidebar patch to avoid endlessly switching views to check different
# folders. Use not-quite-the-latest version to avoid a bug where the first
# column of characters in the sidebar is nixed
wget -q -O - http://lunar-linux.org/~tchan/mutt/patch-1.5.21.sidebar.20120829.txt | patch -p1
                                                                                                                                                             
# This link was helpful for configuring the build. gpg, imap, smtp and other
# useful things are not turned on by default
# http://unixbhaskar.blogspot.com/2011/12/how-to-get-over-mutts-saga-of-unknown.html
./configure --enable-hcache --enable-smtp --enable-imap --enable-gpgme --with-gnutls --with-sasl

make
sudo make install