I thought I’d quickly help anyone who may be having troubles setting up Google’s GMail IMAP server through Alpine as it took me a little bit of messing around to come up with a solid answer. It’s a pretty easy setup if you know Gmail’s IMAP server addresses and especially easy if you’ve used IMAP in the past.

Simply replace the following variables in your .pinerc configuration file (in your home directory):
# Over-rides your full name from Unix password file. Required for PC-Alpine.
personal-name=YOUR NAME

# Sets domain part of From: and local addresses in outgoing mail.
user-domain=gmail.com

# List of SMTP servers for sending mail. If blank: Unix Alpine uses sendmail.
smtp-server=smtp.gmail.com/submit/user=YOUR USER NAME@gmail.com/novalidate-cert

# Path of (local or remote) INBOX, e.g. ={mail.somewhere.edu}inbox
# Normal Unix default is the local INBOX (usually /usr/spool/mail/$USER).
inbox-path={imap.gmail.com/user=YOUR USER NAME@gmail.com/ssl/novalidate-cert}Inbox

Of course this is just the tip of the iceberg. I’d strongly suggest checking out this page as well as it’s full of useful information on using alpine and other tips and tricks.