1 Notmuch 0.12 (2012-xx-xx)
2 =========================
9 "notmuch reply" has gained the ability to create a reply template
10 for replying just to the sender of the message, in addition to reply
11 to all. The feature is available through the new command line option
12 --reply-to=(all|sender).
16 Tags can be automatically excluded from search results by adding them
17 to the new 'search.exclude_tags' option in the Notmuch config file.
19 This behaviour can be overridden by explicitly including an excluded
20 tag in your query, for example:
22 notmuch search $your_query and tag:$excluded_tag
24 Existing users will probably want to run "notmuch setup" again to add
25 the new well-commented [search] section to the configuration file.
27 For new configurations, accepting the default setting will cause the
28 tags "deleted" and "spam" to be excluded, equivalent to running:
30 notmuch config set search.exclude_tags deleted spam
37 The Emacs interface has, with the new CLI support, gained the
38 ability to reply to sender in addition to reply to all. In both show
39 and search modes, 'r' has been bound to reply to sender, replacing
40 reply to all, which now has key binding 'R'.
47 notmuch_query_add_tag_exclude supports the new tag exclusion
53 Compatibility with GMime 2.6
55 It is now possible to build notmuch against both GMime 2.4 and 2.6.
56 However, a bug in current GMime 2.6 causes notmuch not to report
57 signatures where the signer key is unavailable (GNOME bug 668085).
59 Notmuch 0.11.1 (2012-02-03)
60 ===========================
65 Fix error handling in python bindings.
67 The python bindings in 0.11 failed to detect NULL pointers being
68 returned from libnotmuch functions and thus failed to raise
69 exceptions to indicate the error condition. Any subsequent calls
70 into libnotmuch caused segmentation faults.
72 Quote MML tags in replies
74 MML tags are text codes that Emacs uses to indicate attachments
75 (among other things) in messages being composed. The Emacs
76 interface did not quote MML tags in the quoted text of a reply.
77 User could be tricked into replying to a maliciously formatted
78 message and not editing out the MML tags from the quoted text. This
79 could lead to files from the user's machine being attached to the
80 outgoing message. The Emacs interface now quotes these tags in
81 reply text, so that they do not effect outgoing messages.
83 Notmuch 0.11 (2012-01-13)
84 =========================
86 Command-Line Interface
87 ----------------------
91 Hooks have been introduced to notmuch. Hooks are scripts that notmuch
92 invokes before and after certain actions. Initially, "notmuch new"
93 supports "pre-new" and "post-new" hooks that are run before and after
94 importing new messages into the database.
96 notmuch reply --decrypt bugfix
98 The "notmuch reply" command with --decrypt argument had a rarely
99 occurring bug that caused an encrypted message not to be decrypted
100 sometimes. This is now fixed.
105 Automatic tag query optimization
107 "notmuch tag" now automatically optimizes the user's query to
108 exclude messages whose tags won't change. In the past, we've
109 suggested that people do this by hand; this is no longer necessary.
111 Don't sort messages when creating a dump file
113 This speeds up tag dumps considerably, without any loss of
114 information. To replicate the old behavior of sorted output (for
115 example to compare two dump files), one can use e.g. sort(1).
120 Reduction of memory leaks
122 Two memory leaks when searching and showing messages were identified
123 and fixed in this release.
130 notmuch-show-advance (bound to the spacebar in notmuch-show-mode) had
131 a bug that caused it to always jump to the next message, even if it
132 should have scrolled down to show more of the current message instead.
135 Support "notmuch new" as a notmuch-poll-script
137 It's now possible to use "notmuch new" as a notmuch-poll-script
138 directly. This is also the new default. This allows taking better
139 advantage of the "notmuch new" hooks from emacs without intermediate
142 Improvements in saved search management
144 New saved searches are now appended to the list of saved searches,
145 not inserted in front. It's also possible to define a sort function
146 for displaying saved searches; alphabetical sort is provided.
148 Hooks for notmuch-hello
150 Two new hooks have been added: "notmuch-hello-mode-hook" (called after
151 entering notmuch-hello-mode) and "notmuch-hello-refresh-hook" (called
152 after updating a notmuch-hello buffer).
154 New face for crypto parts headers
156 Crypto parts used to be displayed with a hardcoded color. A new face
157 has been introduced to fix this: notmuch-crypto-part-header. It
158 defaults to the same value as before, but can be customized to match
161 Use space as default thousands separator
163 Large numbers in notmuch-hello are now displayed using a space as
164 thousands separator (e.g. "123 456" instead of "123,456"). This can be
165 changed by customizing "notmuch-hello-thousands-separator".
167 Call notmuch-show instead of notmuch-search when clicking on
168 buttonized id: links.
170 New function notmuch-show-advance
172 This new function advances through just the current thread, and is
173 less invasive than notmuch-show-advance-and-archive. It can easily
174 be bound to SPC with:
176 (define-key notmuch-show-mode-map " " 'notmuch-show-advance)
178 Various performance improvements.
183 The tool contrib/notmuch-deliver helps with initial delivery and
184 tagging of mail (replacing running notmuch new).
187 Notmuch 0.10.2 (2011-12-04)
188 ===========================
193 Fix crash in python bindings.
195 The python bindings did not call g_type_init, which caused crashes
196 for some, but not all users.
198 Notmuch 0.10.1 (2011-11-25)
199 ===========================
206 Argument processing changes in 0.10 introduced a bug where "notmuch
207 --help" crashed while "notmuch help" worked fine. This is fixed in
210 Notmuch 0.10 (2011-11-23)
211 =========================
213 New build and testing features
214 ------------------------------
216 Emacs tests are now done in dtach. This means that dtach is now
217 needed to run the notmuch test suite, at least until the checking for
218 prerequisites is improved.
220 Full test coverage of the stashing feature in Emacs.
222 New command-line features
223 -------------------------
225 Add "notmuch restore --accumulate" option
227 The --accumulate switch causes the union of the existing and new tags to be
228 applied, instead of replacing each message's tags as they are read in from
231 Add search terms to "notmuch dump"
233 The dump command now takes an optional search term much like notmuch
234 search/show/tag. The output file argument of dump is deprecated in
235 favour of using stdout.
237 Add "notmuch search" --offset and --limit options
239 The search command now takes options --offset=[-]N and --limit=N to limit
240 the number of results shown.
242 Add "notmuch count --output" option
244 The count command is now capable of counting threads in addition to
245 messages. This is selected using the new --output=(threads|messages) option.
247 New emacs UI features
248 ---------------------
250 Add tab-completion for notmuch-search and notmuch-search-filter
252 These functions now support completion tags for query parts
253 starting with "tag:".
255 Turn "id:MSG-ID" links into buttons associated with notmuch searches
257 Text of the form "id:MSG-ID" in mails is now a clickable button that
258 opens a notmuch search for the given message id.
260 Add keybinding ('c I') for stashing Message-ID's without an id: prefix
262 Reduces manual labour when stashing them for use outside notmuch.
264 Do not query on notmuch-search exit
266 It is harmless to kill the external notmuch process, so the user
267 is no longer interrogated when they interrupt a search.
272 Emacs now constructs large search buffers more efficiently
274 Search avoids opening and parsing message files
276 We now store more information in the database so search no longer
277 has to open every message file to get basic headers. This can
278 improve search speed by as much as 10X, but taking advantage of this
279 requires a database rebuild:
281 notmuch dump > notmuch.dump
282 # Backup, then remove notmuch database ($MAIL/.notmuch)
284 notmuch restore notmuch.dump
286 New collection of add-on tools
287 ------------------------------
289 The source directory "contrib" contains tools built on notmuch. These
290 tools are not part of notmuch, and you should check their individual
291 licenses. Feel free to report problems with them to the notmuch
294 nmbug - share tags with a given prefix
296 nmbug helps maintain a git repo containing all tags with a given
297 prefix (by default "notmuch::"). Tags can be shared by commiting
298 them to git in one location and restoring in another.
300 Notmuch 0.9 (2011-10-01)
301 ========================
303 New, general features
304 ---------------------
306 Correct handling of interruptions during "notmuch new"
308 "notmuch new" now operates as a series of small, self-consistent
309 transactions, so it can correctly resume after an interruption or
310 crash. Previously, interruption could lose existing tags, fail to
311 detect messages on resume, or leave the database in a state
312 temporarily or permanently inconsistent with the mail store.
319 notmuch_database_begin_atomic and notmuch_database_end_atomic allow
320 multiple database operations to be performed atomically.
322 notmuch_database_find_message_by_filename does exactly what it says.
326 notmuch_database_find_message (and n_d_f_m_by_filename) now return
327 a status indicator and uses an output parameter for the
328 message. This change required changing the SONAME of libnotmuch to
331 Python bindings changes
332 -----------------------
334 - Re-encode python unicode objects to utf-8 before passing back to
336 - Support Database().begin_atomic()/end_atomic()
337 - Support Database().find_message_by_filename()
338 NB! This needs a db opened in READ-WRITE mode currently, or it will crash
339 the python process. The is a limitation (=bug) of the underlying libnotmuch.
340 - Fixes where we would not throw NotmuchErrors when we should (Justus Winter)
341 - Update for n_d_find_message* API changes (see above).
343 Ruby bindings changes
344 ---------------------
346 - Wrap new library functions notmuch_database_{begin,end}_atomic.
347 - Add new exception Notmuch::UnbalancedAtomicError.
348 - Rename destroy to destroy! according to Ruby naming conventions.
349 - Update for n_d_find_message* API changes (see above).
354 * Add gpg callback to crypto sigstatus buttons to retrieve/refresh
356 * Add notmuch-show-refresh-view function (and corresponding binding)
357 to refresh the view of a notmuch-show buffer.
359 Reply formatting cleanup
360 ------------------------
362 "notmuch reply" no longer includes notification that non-leafnode
363 MIME parts are being suppressed.
365 Notmuch 0.8 (2011-09-10)
366 ========================
368 Improved handling of message/rfc822 parts
370 Both in the CLI and the emacs interface. Output of rfc822 parts now
371 includes the primary headers, as well as the body and all subparts.
372 Output of the completely raw rfc822-formatted message, including all
373 headers, is unfortunately not yet supported (but hopefully will be
376 Improved Build system portability
378 Certain parts of the shell script generating notmuch.sym were
379 specific to the GNU versions of sed and nm. The new version should
380 be more portable to e.g. OpenBSD.
382 Documentation update for Ruby bindings
384 Added documentation, typo fixes, and improved support for rdoc.
386 Unicode, iterator, PEP8 changes for python bindings
388 - PEP8 (code formatting) changes for python files.
389 - Remove Tags.__len__ ; see 0.6 release notes for motivation.
390 - Decode headers as UTF8, encode (unicode) database paths as UTF8.
392 Notmuch 0.7 (2011-08-01)
393 ========================
395 Vim interface improvements
396 --------------------------
398 Jason Woofenden provided a number of bug fixes for the Vim interface
400 * fix citation/signature fold lengths
401 * fix cig/cit parsing within multipart/*
402 * fix on-screen instructions for show-signature
403 * fix from list reformatting in search view
404 * fix space key: now archives (did opposite)
406 Uwe Kleine-König contributed
408 * use full path for sendmail/doc fix
409 * fix compose temp file name
411 Python Bindings changes
412 -----------------------
414 Sebastian Spaeth contributed two changes related to unicode and UTF8:
416 * message tags are now explicitly unicode
417 * query string is encoded as a UTF8 byte string
419 Build-System improvements
420 ------------------------
422 Generate notmuch.sym after the relevant object files
424 This fixes a bug in parallel building. Thanks to Thomas Jost for the
427 Notmuch 0.6.1 (2011-07-17)
428 ==========================
433 Re-export Xapian exception typeinfo symbols.
435 It turned out our aggressive symbol hiding caused problems for
436 people running gcc 4.4.5.
438 Notmuch 0.6 (2011-07-01)
439 =======================
440 New, general features
441 ---------------------
442 Folder-based searching
444 Notmuch queries can now include a search term to match the
445 directories in which mail files are stored (within the mail
446 storage). The syntax is as follows:
450 For example, one might use things such as:
456 to match any path containing a directory "spam", "work/todo", or
457 containing a directory starting with "2011-", respectively.
459 This feature is particularly useful for users of delivery-agent
460 software (such as procmail or maildrop) that is filtering mail and
461 delivering it to particular folders, or users of systems such as
462 Gmail that use filesystem directories to indicate message tags.
464 NOTE: Only messages that are newly indexed with this version of
465 notmuch will be searchable with folder: terms. In order to enable
466 this feature for all mail, the entire notmuch index will need to be
469 notmuch dump > notmuch.dump
470 # Backup, then remove notmuch database ($MAIL/.notmuch)
472 notmuch restore notmuch.dump
476 Both the command line interface and the emacs-interface have new
477 support for PGP/MIME, detailed below. Thanks to Daniel Kahn Gillmor
478 and Jameson Graef Rollins for making this happen.
480 New, automatic tags: "signed" and "encrypted"
482 These tags will automatically be applied to messages containing
483 multipart/signed and multipart/encrypted parts.
485 NOTE: Only messages that are newly indexed with this version of
486 notmuch will receive these tags.
488 New command-line features
489 -------------------------
490 Add new "notmuch show --verify" option for signature verification
492 This option instruct notmuch to verify the signature of
493 PGP/MIME-signed parts.
495 Add new "notmuch show --decrypt" and "notmuch reply --decrypt" options
497 This option instructs notmuch to decrypt PGP/MIME-encrypted parts.
498 Note that this feature currently requires gpg-agent and a passphrase entry
499 tool (e.g. pinentry-gtk or pinentry-curses).
501 Proper nesting of multipart parts in "notmuch show" output
503 MIME parts are now display with proper nesting to reflect original
504 MIME hierarchy of a message. This allows clients to correctly
505 analyze the MIME structure, (such as, for example, determining to
506 which parts a signature part applies).
508 Add new "notmuch show --part" option
510 This is a replacement for the older "notmuch part" command, (which
511 is now deprecated—it should still work as always, but is no longer
512 documented). Putting part output under "notmuch show" allows for all
513 of the "notmuch show" options to be applied when extracting a single
514 part, (such as --format=json for extracting a message part with JSON
517 Deprecate "notmuch search-tags", (in favor of "notmuch search --output=tags *")
519 The "notmuch search-tags" sub-command has been redundant since the
520 addition of the --output=tags option to "notmuch search". We now
521 make that more clear by deprecating "notmuch search-tags", (dropping
522 it from the documentation). We do continue to support the old syntax
523 by translating it internally to the new call.
525 Performance improvements
526 ------------------------
527 Faster searches (by doing fewer searches to construct threads)
529 Whenever a user asks for search results as threads, notmuch first
530 performs a search for messages matching the query, then performs
531 additional searches to find other messages in the resulting threads.
533 Removing inefficiencies and redundancies in these secondary searches
534 results in a measured speedups of 1.5x for a typical search.
536 Faster searches (by doing fewer passes to gather message data)
538 Optimizing Xapian data access patterns (using a single pass to get
539 all message-document data rather than a pass for each data type)
540 results in a measured speedup of 1.7x for a typical search.
542 The benefits of this optimization combine with the preceding
543 optimization. With both in place, Austin Clements measured a speedup
544 of 2.5x for a search of all messages in his inbox (was 4.5s, now
545 1.8s). Thanks, Austin!
547 Faster initial indexing
549 More efficient indexing of new messages results in a measured
550 speedup of 1.4x for the initial indexing of 3 GB of mail (1h 14m
551 rather than 1h 46m). Thanks to Austin Clements and Michal Sojka.
553 Make "notmuch new" faster for unchanged directories
555 Optimizing to not do any further examinations of sub-directories
556 when the filesystem indicates that a directory is unchanged from the
557 last "notmuch new" results in measured speedups of 8.5 for the "No
558 new mail" case, (was 0.77s, now 0.09s). Thanks to Karel Zak.
560 New emacs-interface features
561 ----------------------------
563 Support for PGP/MIME (GnuPG)
565 Automatically indicate validity of signatures for multipart/signed
566 messages. Automatically display decrypted content for
567 multipart/encrypted messages. See the emacs variable
568 notmuch-crypto-process-mime for more information. Note that this
569 needs gpg-agent and a pinentry tool just as the command line tools.
570 Also note there is no support SMIME yet.
572 Output of pipe command is now displayed if pipe command fails
574 This is extremely useful in the common use case of piping a patch to
575 "git am". If git fails to cleanly merge the patch the error messages
576 from the failed merge are now clearly displayed to the user, (where
577 previously they were silently hidden from the user).
579 User-selectable From address
581 A user can choose which configured email addresses should be used as
582 the From address whenever composing a new message. To do so, simply
583 press C-u before the command which will open a new message. Emacs
584 will prompt for the from address to use.
586 The user can customize the "Notmuch Identities" setting in the
587 notmuch customize group in order to use addresses other than those in
588 the notmuch configuration file if desired.
590 The user can also choose to always be prompted for the from address
591 when composing a new message (without having to use C-u) by setting
592 the "Notmuch Always Prompt For Sender" option in the notmuch
595 Hiding of repeated subjects in collapsed thread view
597 In notmuch-show mode, if a collapsed message has the same subject as
598 its parent, the subject is not shown.
600 Automatic detection and hiding of original message in top-posted message
602 When a message contains a line looking something like:
604 ----- Original Message -----
606 emacs hides this and all subsequent lines as an "original message",
607 (allowing the user to click or press enter on the "original message"
608 button to display it again). This makes the handling of top-posted
609 citations work much like conventional citations.
611 New hooks for running code when tags are modified
613 Some users want to perform additional actions whenever a particular
614 tag is added/removed from a message. This could be used to, for
615 example, interface with some external spam-recognition training
616 tool. To facilitate this, two new hooks are added which can be
617 modified in the following settings of the notmuch customize group:
619 Notmuch Before Tag Hook
620 Notmuch After Tag Hook
622 New optional support for hiding some multipart/alternative parts
624 Many emails are sent with redundant content within a
625 multipart/alternative group (such as a text/plain part as well as a
626 text/html part). Users can configure the setting:
628 Notmuch Show All Multipart/Alternative Parts
630 to "off" in the notmuch customize group to have the interface
631 automatically hide some part alternatives (such as text/html
632 parts). This new part hiding is not configured by default yet
633 because there's not yet a simple way to re-display such a hidden
634 part if it is not actually redundant with a displayed part.
636 Better rendering of text/x-vcalendar parts
638 These parts are now displayed in a format suitable for use with the
641 Avoid getting confused by Subject and Author fields with newline characters
643 Replacing all characters with ASCII code less than 32 with a question mark.
645 Cleaner display of From line in email messages (remove double quotes,
646 and drop "name" if it's actually just a repeat of the email address).
648 Vim interface improvements
649 --------------------------
650 Felipe Contreras provided a number of updates for the vim interface:
652 * Using sendmail directly rather than mailx,
653 * Implementing archive in show view
654 * Add support to mark as read in show and search views
655 * Add delete commands
658 Bindings improvements
659 ---------------------
660 Ruby bindings are now much more complete
662 Including QUERY.sort, QUERY.to_s, MESSAGE.maildir_flags_to_tags,
663 MESSAGE.tags_to_maildir_flags, and MESSAGE.get_filenames
665 * Python bindings have been updated and extended
666 (docs online at http://packages.python.org/notmuch/)
669 - Message().get_filenames(),
670 - Message().tags_to_maildir_flags(),Message().maildir_flags_to_tags()
671 - list(Threads()) and list(Messages) works now
673 - Message().__cmp__() and __hash__()
674 These allow, for example:
677 As well as set arithmetic on Messages():
679 s1, s2= set(msgs1), set(msgs2)
684 - len(Messages()) as it exhausted the iterator.
685 Use len(list(Messages())) or
686 Query.count_messages() to get the length.
688 Added initial Go bindings in bindings/go
690 New build-system features
691 -------------------------
692 Added support for building in a directory other than the source directory
694 This can be used with the widely-supported idiom of simply running
695 the configure script from some other directory:
702 Fix to save configure options for future, implicit runs of configure
704 When a user updates the source (such as with "git pull") calling
705 "make" may cause an automatic re-run of the configure script. When
706 this happens, the configure script will automatically be called with
707 the same options the user originally passed in the most-recent
708 manual invocation of configure.
710 New test-suite feature
711 ----------------------
712 Binary for bash for running test suite now located via PATH.
714 The notmuch test suite requires a fairly recent version of bash (>=
715 bash 4). As some systems supply an older version of bash at
716 /bin/bash, the test suite is now updated to search $PATH to locate
717 the bash binary. This allows users of systems with old /bin/bash to
718 simply install bash >= 4 somewhere on $PATH before /bin and then use
721 Support for testing output with a trailing newline.
723 Previously, some tests would fail to notice a difference in the
724 presence/absence of a trailing newline in a program output, (which
725 has led to bugs in the past). Now, carefully-written tests (using
726 test_expect_equal_file rather than test_expect_equal) will detect
727 any change in the presence/absence of a trailing newline. Many tests
728 are updated to take advantage of this.
730 Avoiding accessing user's $HOME while running test suite
732 The test suite now carefully creates its own HOME directory. This
733 allows the test suite to be run with no existing HOME directory, (as
734 some build systems apparently do), and avoids test-suite differences
735 due to configuration files in the users HOME directory.
740 Output *all* files for "notmuch search --output=files"
742 For the cases where multiple files have the same Message ID,
743 previous versions of notmuch would output only one such file. This
744 command is now fixed to correctly output all files.
746 Fixed spurious search results from "overlapped" indexing of addresses
748 This fixed a bug where a search for:
750 to:user@elsewhere.com
752 would incorrectly match a message sent:
754 To: user@example,com, someone@elsewhere.com
756 Fix --output=json when search has no results
758 A bug present since notmuch 0.4 had caused searches with no results
759 to produce an invalid json object. This is now fixed to cleanly
760 return a valid json object representing an empty array "[]" as
763 fix the automatic detection of the From address for "notmuch reply"
764 from the Received headers in some cases.
766 Fix core dump on DragonFlyBSD due to -1 return value from
767 sysconf(_SC_GETPW_R_SIZE_MAX).
769 Cleaned up several memory leaks
771 Eliminated a few, rare segmentation faults and a double-free.
773 Fix libnotmuch library to only export notmuch API functions
775 Previous release of the notmuch library also exported some Xapian
776 C++ exception type symbols. These were never part of the library
777 interface and were never intended to be exported.
779 Emacs-interface bug fixes
780 -------------------------
781 Display any unexpected output or errors from "notmuch search" invocations
783 Previously any misformatted output or trailing error messages were
784 silently ignored. This output is now clearly displayed. This fix was
785 very helpful in identifying and fixing the bug described below.
787 Fix bug where some threads would be missing from large search results
789 When a search returned a "large" number of results, the emacs
790 interface was incorrectly dropping one thread every time the output
791 of the "notmuch search" process spanned the emacs read-buffer. This
794 Avoid re-compression of .gz files (and similar) when saving attachment
796 Emacs was being too clever for its own good and trying to
797 re-compress pre-compressed .gz files when saving such attachments
798 (potentially corrupting the attachment). The emacs interface is
799 fixed to avoid this bug.
801 Fix hiding of a message when a previously-hidden citation is visible
803 Previously the citation would remain visible in this case. This is
804 fixed so that hiding a message hides all parts.
806 Notmuch 0.5 (2010-11-11)
807 ========================
808 New, general features
809 ---------------------
810 Maildir-flag synchronization
812 Notmuch now knows how to synchronize flags in maildir filenames with
813 tags in the notmuch database. The following flag/tag mappings are
822 'S' unread (added when 'S' flag is not present)
824 The synchronization occurs in both directions, (for example, adding
825 the 'S' flag to a file will cause the "unread" tag to be added, and
826 adding the "replied" tag to a message will cause the file to be
827 renamed with an 'R' flag).
829 This synchronization is enabled by default for users of the
830 command-line interface, (though only files in directories named
831 "cur" or "new" will be renamed). It can be disabled by setting the
832 new maildir.synchronize_flags option in the configuration file. For
835 notmuch config set maildir.synchronize_flags false
837 Users upgrading may also want to run "notmuch setup" once (just
838 accept the existing configuration) to get a new, nicely-commented
839 [maildir] section added to the configuration file.
841 For users of the notmuch library, the new synchronization
842 functionality is available with the following two new functions:
844 notmuch_message_maildir_flags_to_tags
845 notmuch_message_tags_to_maildir_flags
847 It is anticipated that future improvements to this support will
848 allow for safe synchronization of the 'T' flag with the "deleted"
849 tag, as well as support for custom flag/tag mappings.
853 Support for querying multiple filenames for a single message
855 It is common for the mailstore to contain multiple files with the
856 same message ID. Previously, notmuch would always hide these
857 duplicate files, (returning a single, arbitrary filename with
858 notmuch_message_get_filename).
860 With this release, library users can access all filenames for a
861 message with the new function:
863 notmuch_message_get_filenames
865 Together with notmuch_filenames_valid, notmuch_filenames_get, and
866 notmuch_filenames_move_to_next it is now possible to iterate over
867 all available filenames for a given message.
869 New command-line features
870 -------------------------
871 New "notmuch show --format=raw" for getting at original email contents
873 This new feature allows for a fully-functional email client to be
874 built on top of the notmuch command-line without needing any direct
875 access to the mail store itself.
877 For example, it's now possible to run "emacs -f notmuch" on a local
878 machine with only ssh access to the mail store/notmuch database. To
879 do this, simply set the notmuch-command variable in emacs to the
880 name of a script containing:
882 ssh user@host notmuch "$@"
884 If the ssh client has enabled connection sharing (ControlMaster
885 option in OpenSSH), the emacs interface can be quite responsive this
890 Fix "notmuch search" to print nothing when nothing matches
892 The 0.4 release had a bug in which:
894 notmuch search <expression-with-no-matches>
896 would produce a single blank line of output, (where previous
897 versions would produce no output. This fix also causes a change in
898 the --format=json output, (which would previously produce "[]" and
899 now produces nothing).
901 Emacs interface improvements
902 ----------------------------
903 Fix to allow pipe ('|') command to work when using notmuch over ssh
905 Fix count of lines in hidden signatures.
907 Omit repeated subject lines in (collapsed) thread display.
909 Display current thread subject in a header line.
911 Provide a "c i" binding to copy a thread ID from the search view.
913 Allow for notmuch-fcc-dirs to have a value of nil.
915 Also, the more complex form of notmuch-fcc-dirs now has a slightly
916 different format. It no longer has a special first-element, fallback
917 string. Instead it's now a list of cons cells where the car of each
918 cell is a regular expression to be matched against the sender
919 address, and the cdr is the name of a folder to use for an FCC. So
920 the old fallback behavior can be achieved by including a final cell
921 of (".*" . "default-fcc-folder").
923 Vim interface improvements
924 --------------------------
925 Felipe Contreras provided a number of updates for the vim interface.
927 These include optimizations, support for newer versions of vim, fixed
928 support for sending mail on modern systems, new commands, and
933 Added initial ruby bindings in bindings/ruby
935 Notmuch 0.4 (2010-11-01)
936 ========================
937 New command-line features
938 -------------------------
939 notmuch search --output=(summary|threads|messages|tags|files)
941 This new option allows for particular items to be returned from
942 notmuch searches. The "summary" option is the default and behaves
943 just as "notmuch search" has historically behaved.
945 The new option values allow for thread IDs, message IDs, lists of
946 tags, and lists of filenames to be returned from searches. It is
947 expected that this new option will be very useful in shell
948 scripts. For example:
950 for file in $(notmuch search --output=files <search-terms>); do
951 <operations-on> "$file"
954 notmuch show --format=mbox <search-specification>
956 This new option allows for the messages matching a search
957 specification to be presented as an mbox. Specifically the "mboxrd"
958 format is used which allows for reversible quoting of lines
959 beginning with "From ". A reader should remove a single '>' from the
960 beginning of all lines beginning with one or more '>' characters
961 followed by the 5 characters "From ".
963 notmuch config [get|set] <section>.<item> [value ...]
965 The new top-level "config" command allows for any value in the
966 notmuch configuration file to be queried or set to a new value. Both
967 single-valued and multi-valued items are supported, as our any
968 custom items stored in the configuration file.
970 Avoid setting Bcc header in "notmuch reply"
972 We decided that this was a bit heavy-handed as the actual mail
973 user-agent should be responsible for setting any Bcc option. Also,
974 see below for the notmuch/emacs user-agent now setting an Fcc by
975 default rather than Bcc.
979 Add notmuch_query_get_query_string and notmuch_query_get_sort
981 These are simply functions for querying properties of a
982 notmuch_query_t object.
986 Enable Fcc of all sent messages by default (to "sent" directory)
988 All messages sent from the emacs interface will now be saved to the
989 notmuch mail store where they will be incorporated to the database
990 by the next "notmuch new". By default, messages are saved to the
991 "sent" directory at the top-level of the mail store. This directory
992 can be customized by means of the "Notmuch Fcc Dirs" option in the
993 notmuch customize interface.
995 Ability to all open messages in a thread to a pipe
997 Historically, the '|' keybinding allows for piping a single message
998 to an external command. Now, by prefixing this key with a prefix
999 argument, (for example, by pressing "Control-U |"), all open
1000 messages in the current thread will be sent to the external command.
1002 Optional support for detecting inline patches
1004 This hook is disabled by default but can be enabled with a checkbox
1005 under "Notmuch Show Insert Text/Plain Hook" in the notmuch customize
1006 interface. It allows for inline patches to be detected and treated
1007 as if they were attachments, (with context-sensitive highlighting).
1009 Automatically tag messages as "replied" when sending a reply
1011 Messages replied to within the emacs interface will now be tagged as
1012 "replied". This feature can easily be customized to add or remove
1013 other tags as well. For example, a user might use a tag of
1014 "needs-reply" and can configure this feature to automatically remove
1015 that tag when replying. See "Notmuch Message Mark Replied" in the
1016 notmuch customize interface.
1018 Allow search-result color specifications to overlay each other
1020 For example, one tag can specify the background color of matching
1021 lines, while another can specify the foreground. With this change,
1022 both settings will now be visible simultaneously, (which was not the
1023 case in previous releases). See "Notmuch Search Line Faces" in the
1024 notmuch customize interface.
1026 Make hidden author names still available for incremental search.
1028 When there is insufficient space to display all authors of a thread
1029 in search results, the names of hidden authors are now still made
1030 available to emacs' incremental search commands. As the user
1031 searches, matching lines will temporarily expand to show the hidden
1034 New binding of Control-TAB (works like TAB in reverse)
1036 Many notmuch nodes already use TAB to navigate forward through
1037 various items allowing actions, (message headers, email attachments,
1038 etc.). The new Control-TAB binding operates similarly but in the
1041 New build-system features
1042 -------------------------
1043 Various portability fixes have been applied
1045 These include fixes for build failures on at least Solaris, FreeBSD,
1046 and Fedora systems. We're hopeful that the notmuch code base is now
1047 more portable than ever before.
1049 Arrange for libnotmuch to be found automatically after make install
1051 The notmuch build system is now careful to help the user avoid
1052 errors of the form "libnotmuch.so could not be found" immediately
1053 after installing. This support takes two forms:
1055 1. If the library is installed to a system directory,
1056 (configured in /etc/ld.so.conf), then "make install" will
1057 automatically run ldconfig.
1059 2. If the library is installed to a non-system directory, the
1060 build system adds a DR_RUNPATH entry to the final binary
1061 pointing to the directory to which the library is installed.
1063 When this support works, the user should be able to run notmuch
1064 immediately after "make install", without any errors trying to find
1065 the notmuch library, and without having to manually set environment
1066 variables such as LD_LIBRARY_PATH.
1068 Check compiler/linker options before using them
1070 The configure script now carefully checks that any desired
1071 compilation options, (whether for enabling compiler warnings, or for
1072 embedding rpath, etc.), are supported. Only supported options are
1073 used in the resulting Makefile.
1075 New test-suite features
1076 -----------------------
1077 New modularization of test suite.
1079 Thanks to a gracious relicensing of the test-suite infrastructure
1080 from the git project, notmuch now has a modular test suite. This
1081 provides the ability to run individual sections of the test suite
1082 rather than the whole things. It also provides better summary of
1083 test results, with support for tests that are expected to fail
1084 (BROKEN and FIXED) in addition to PASS and FAIL. Finally, it makes
1085 it easy to run the test suite within valgrind (pass --valgrind to
1086 notmuch-test or to any sub-script) which has been very useful.
1088 New testing of emacs interface.
1090 The test suite has been augmented to allow automated testing of the
1091 emacs interfaces. So far, this includes basic searches, display of
1092 threads, and tag manipulation. This also includes a test that a new
1093 message can successfully be sent out through a (dummy) SMTP server
1094 and that said message is successfully integrated into the notmuch
1095 database via the FCC setting.
1099 Fix potential corruption of database when "notmuch new " is interrupted.
1101 Previously, an interruption of "notmuch new" would (rarely) result
1102 in a corrupt database. The corruption would manifest itself by a
1103 persistent error of the form:
1105 document ID of 1234 has no thread ID
1107 The message-adding code has been carefully audited and reworked to
1108 avoid this sort of corruption regardless of when it is interrupted.
1110 Fix failure with extremely long message ID headers.
1112 Previously, a message with an extremely long message ID, (say, more
1113 than 300 characters), would fail to be added to notmuch, (triggering
1114 Xapian exceptions). This has now been fixed.
1116 Fix for messages with "charset=unknown-8bit"
1118 Previously, messages with this charset would cause notmuch to emit a
1119 GMime warning, (which would then trip up emacs or other interfaces
1120 parsing the notmuch results).
1122 Fix notmuch_query_search_threads function to return NULL on any exception
1124 Fix "notmuch search" to return non-zero if notmuch_query_search_threads fails
1126 Previously, this command could confusingly report a Xapian
1127 exception, yet still return an error code of 0. It now correctly
1128 returns a failing error code of 1 in this case.
1132 Fix to handle a message with a subject containing, for example "[1234]"
1134 Previously, a message subject containing a sequence of digits within
1135 square brackets would cause the emacs interface to mis-parse the
1136 output of "notmuch search". This would result in the message being
1137 mis-displayed and prevent the user from manipulating the message in
1138 the emacs interface.
1140 Fix to correctly handle message IDs containing ".."
1142 The emacs interface now properly quotes message IDs to avoid a
1143 Xapian bug in which the ".." within a message ID would be
1144 misinterpreted as a numeric range specification.
1146 Python-binding fixes
1147 --------------------
1148 The python bindings for notmuch have been updated to work with python3.
1150 Debian-specific fixes
1151 ---------------------
1152 Fix emacs initialization so "M-x notmuch" works for users by default.
1154 Now, a new Debian user can immediately run "emacs -f notmuch" after
1155 "apt-get install notmuch". Previously, the user would have had to
1156 edit the ~/.emacs file to add "(require 'notmuch)" before this would
1159 Notmuch 0.3.1 (2010-04-27)
1160 ==========================
1163 Fix an infinite loop in "notmuch reply"
1165 This bug could be triggered by replying to a message where the
1166 user's primary email address did not appear in the To: header and
1167 the user had not configured any secondary email addresses. The bug
1168 was a simple re-use of the same iterator variable in nested loops.
1170 Fix a potential SEGV in "notmuch search"
1172 This bug could be triggered by an author name ending in a ','.
1173 Admittedly - that's almost certainly a spam email, but we never
1174 want notmuch to crash.
1178 Fix calculations for line wrapping in the primary "notmuch" view.
1180 Fix Fcc support to prompt to create a directory if the specified Fcc
1181 directory does not exist.
1185 Fix build on OpenSolaris (at least) due to missing 'extern "C"' block.
1187 Without this, the C++ sources could not find strcasestr and the
1188 final linking of notmuch would fail.
1190 Notmuch 0.3 (2010-04-27)
1191 ========================
1192 New command-line features
1193 -------------------------
1194 User-configurable tags for new messages
1196 A new "new.tags" option is available in the configuration file to
1197 determine which tags are applied to new messages. Run "notmuch
1198 setup" to generate new documentation within ~/.notmuch-config on how
1199 to specify this value.
1201 Threads search results named based on subjects that match search
1203 This means that when new mails arrived to a thread you've previously
1204 read, and the new mails have a new subject, you will see that
1205 subject in the search results rather than the old subject.
1207 Faster operation of "notmuch tag" (avoid unneeded sorting)
1209 Since the user just wants to tag all matching messages, we can make
1210 things perform a bit faster by avoiding the sort.
1212 Even Better guessing of From: header for "notmuch reply"
1214 Notmuch now looks at a number of headers when trying to figure out
1215 the best From: header to use in a reply. This is helpful if you have
1216 several configured email addresses, and you also subscribe to various
1217 mailing lists with different addresses, (so that mails you are
1218 replying to won't always include your subscribed address in the To:
1221 Indication of author names that match a search
1223 When notmuch displays threads as the result of a search, it now
1224 lists the authors that match the search before listing the other
1225 authors in the thread. It inserts a pipe '|' symbol between the last
1226 matching and first non-matching author. This is especially useful in
1227 a search that includes tag:unread. Now the authors of the unread
1228 messages in the thread are listed first.
1230 New: Python bindings
1231 --------------------
1232 Sebastian Spaeth has contributed his python bindings for the notmuch
1233 library to the central repository. These bindings were previously
1234 known as "cnotmuch" within python but have now been renamed to be
1235 accessible with a simple, and more official-looking "import notmuch".
1237 The bindings have already proven very useful as people proficient in
1238 python have been able to easily develop programs to do notmuch-based
1239 searches for email-address completion, maildir-flag synchronization,
1242 These bindings are available within the bindings/python directory, but
1243 are not yet integrated into the top-level Makefiles, nor the top-level
1244 package-building scripts. Improvements are welcome.
1246 Emacs interface improvements
1247 ----------------------------
1248 An entirely new initial view for notmuch, (friendly yet powerful)
1250 Some of us call the new view "notmuch hello" but you can get at it
1251 by simply calling "emacs -f notmuch". The new view provides a search
1252 bar where new searches can be performed. It also displays a list of
1253 recent searches, along with a button to save any of these, giving it
1254 a new name as a "saved search". Many people find these "saved
1255 searches" one of the most convenient ways of organizing their mail,
1256 (providing all of the features of "folders" in other mail clients,
1257 but without any of the disadvantages).
1259 Finally, this view can also optionally display all of the tags that
1260 exist in the database, along with a count for each tag, and a custom
1261 search of messages with that tag that's simply a click (or keypress)
1264 Note: For users that liked the original mode of "emacs -f notmuch"
1265 immediately displaying a particular search result, we
1266 recommend instead running something like:
1268 emacs --eval '(notmuch search "tag:inbox" t)'
1270 The "t" means to sort the messages in an "oldest first" order,
1271 (as notmuch would do previously by default). You can also
1272 leave that off to have your search results in "newest first"
1275 Full-featured "customize" support for configuring notmuch
1277 Notmuch now plugs in well to the emacs "customize" mode to make it
1278 much simpler to find things about the notmuch interface that can be
1279 tweaked by the user.
1281 You can get to this mode by starting at the main "Customize" menu in
1282 emacs, then browsing through "Applications", "Mail", and
1283 "Notmuch". Or you can go straight to "M-x customize-group"
1286 Once you're at the customize screen, you'll see a list of documented
1287 options that can be manipulated along with checkboxes, drop-down
1288 selectors, and text-entry boxes for configuring the various
1291 Support for doing tab-completion of email addresses
1293 This support currently relies on an external program,
1294 (notmuch-addresses), that is not yet shipped with notmuch
1295 itself. But multiple, suitable implementations of this program have
1296 already been written that generate address completions by doing
1297 notmuch searches of your email collection. For example, providing
1298 first those addresses that you have composed messages to in the
1301 One such program (implemented in python with the python bindings to
1302 notmuch) is available via:
1304 git clone http://jkr.acm.jhu.edu/git/notmuch_addresses.git
1306 Install that program as notmuch-addresses on your PATH, and then
1307 hitting TAB on a partial email address or name within the To: or Cc:
1308 line of an email message will provide matching completions.
1310 Support for file-based (Fcc) delivery of sent messages to mail store
1312 This isn't yet enabled by default. To enable this, one will have to
1313 set the "Notmuch Fcc Dirs" setting within the notmuch customize
1314 screen, (see its documentation there for details). We anticipate
1315 making this automatic in a future release.
1317 New 'G' key binding to trigger mail refresh (G == "Get new mail")
1319 The 'G' key works wherever '=' works. Before refreshing the screen
1320 it calls an external program that can be used to poll email servers,
1321 run notmuch new and setup specific tags for the new emails. The
1322 script to be called should be configured with the "Notmuch Poll
1323 Script" setting in the customize interface. This script will
1324 typically invoke "notmuch new" and then perhaps several "notmuch
1327 Implement emacs message display with the JSON output from notmuch.
1329 This is much more robust than the previous implementation, (where
1330 some HTML mails and mail quoting the notmuch code with the delimiter
1331 characters in it would cause the parser to fall over).
1333 Better handling of HTML messages and MIME attachments (inline images!)
1335 Allow for any MIME parts that emacs can display to be displayed
1336 inline. This includes inline viewing of image attachments, (provided
1337 the window is large enough to fit the image at its natural size).
1339 Much more robust handling of HTML messages. Currently both text/plain
1340 and text/html alternates will be rendered next to each other. In a
1341 future release, users will be able to decide to see only one or the
1342 other representation.
1344 Each attachment now has its own button so that attachments can be
1345 saved individually (the 'w' key is still available to save all
1348 Customizable support for tidying of text/plain message content
1350 Many new functions are available for tidying up message
1351 content. These include options such as wrapping long lines,
1352 compressing duplicate blank lines, etc.
1354 Most of these are disabled by default, but can easily be enabled by
1355 clicking the available check boxes under the "Notmuch Show Insert
1356 Text/Plain Hook" within the notmuch customize screen.
1358 New support for searchable citations (even when hidden)
1360 When portions of overly-long citations are hidden, the contents of
1361 these citations will still be available for emacs' standard
1362 "incremental search" functions. When the search matches any portion
1363 of a hidden citation, the citation will become visible temporarily
1364 to display the search result.
1366 More flexible handling of header visibility
1368 As an answer to complaints from many users, the To, Cc, and Date
1369 headers of messages are no longer hidden by default. For those users
1370 that liked that these were hidden, a new "Notmuch Messages Headers
1371 Visible" option in the customize interface can be set to nil. The
1372 visibility of headers can still be toggled on a per-message basis
1373 with the 'h' keybinding.
1375 For users that don't want to see some subset of those headers, the
1376 new "Notmuch Message Headers" variable can be customized to list
1377 only those headers that should be present in the display of a message.
1379 The Return key now toggles message visibility anywhere
1381 Previously this worked only on the first summary-line of a message.
1383 Customizable formatting of search results
1385 The user can easily customize the order, width, and formatting of
1386 the various fields in a "notmuch search" buffer. See the "Notmuch
1387 Search Result Format" section of the customize interface.
1389 Generate nicer names for search buffers when using a saved search.
1391 Add a notmuch User-Agent header when sending mail from notmuch/emacs.
1393 New keybinding (M-Ret) to open all collapsed messages in a thread.
1397 Provide a new NOTMUCH_SORT_UNSORTED value for queries
1399 This can be somewhat faster when sorting simply isn't desired. For
1400 example when collecting a set of messages that will all be
1401 manipulated identically, (adding a tag, removing a tag, deleting the
1402 messages), then there's no advantage to sorting the messages by
1407 Fix to compile against GMime 2.6
1409 Previously notmuch insisted on being able to find GMime 2.4, (even
1410 though GMime 2.6 would have worked all along).
1412 Fix configure script to accept (and ignore) various standard options.
1414 For example, those that the Gentoo build scripts expect configure to
1415 accept are now all accepted.
1419 A large number of new tests for the many new features.
1421 Better display of output from failed tests.
1423 Now shows failures with diff rather than forcing the user to gaze at
1424 complete actual and expected output looking for deviation.
1426 Notmuch 0.2 (2010-04-16)
1427 ========================
1428 This is the second release of the notmuch mail system, with actual
1429 detailed release notes this time!
1431 This release consists of a number of minor new features that make
1432 notmuch more pleasant to use, and a few fairly major bug fixes.
1434 We didn't quite hit our release target of "about a week" from the 0.1
1435 release, (0.2 is happening 11 days after 0.1), but we hope to do
1436 better for next week. Look forward to some major features coming to
1437 notmuch in subsequent releases.
1443 Better guessing of From: header.
1445 Notmuch now tries harder to guess which configured address should be
1446 used as the From: line in a "notmuch reply". It will examine the
1447 Received: headers if it fails to find any configured address in To:
1448 or Cc:. This allows it to often choose the correct address even when
1449 replying to a message sent to a mailing list, and not directly to a
1452 Make "notmuch count" with no arguments count all messages
1454 Previously, it was hard to construct a search term that was
1455 guaranteed to match all messages.
1457 Provide a new special-case search term of "*" to match all messages.
1459 This can be used in any command accepting a search term, such as
1460 "notmuch search '*'". Note that you'll want to take care that the
1461 shell doesn't expand * against the current files. And note that the
1462 support for "*" is a special case. It's only meaningful as a single
1463 search term and loses its special meaning when combined with any
1466 Automatically detect thread connections even when a parent message is
1469 Previously, if two or more message were received with a common
1470 parent, but that parent was not received, then these messages would
1471 not be recognized as belonging to the same thread. This is now fixed
1472 so that such messages are properly connected in a thread.
1476 Fix potential data loss in "notmuch new" with SIGINT
1478 One code path in "notmuch new" was not properly handling
1479 SIGINT. Previously, this could lead to messages being removed from
1480 the database (and their tags being lost) if the user pressed
1481 Control-C while "notmuch new" was working.
1483 Fix segfault when a message includes a MIME part that is empty.
1485 Fix handling of non-ASCII characters with --format=json
1487 Previously, characters outside the range of 7-bit ASCII were
1488 silently dropped from the JSON output. This led to corrupted display
1489 of utf-8 content in the upcoming notmuch web-based frontends.
1491 Fix headers to be properly decoded in "notmuch reply"
1493 Previously, the user might see:
1495 Subject: Re: =?iso-8859-2?q?Rozlu=E8ka?=
1499 Subject: Re: Rozlučka
1501 The former text is properly encoded to be RFC-compliant SMTP, will
1502 be sent correctly, and will be properly decoded by the
1503 recipient. But the user trying to edit the reply would likely be
1504 unable to read or edit that field in its encoded form.
1506 Emacs client features
1507 ---------------------
1508 Show the last few lines of citations as well as the first few lines.
1510 It's often the case that the last sentence of a citation is what is
1511 being replied to directly, so the last few lines are often much more
1512 important. The number of lines shown at the beginning and end of any
1513 citation can be configured, (notmuch-show-citation-lines-prefix and
1514 notmuch-show-citation-lines-suffix).
1516 The '+' and '-' commands in the search view can now add and remove
1519 Selective bulk tagging is now possible by selecting a region of
1520 threads and then using either the '+' or '-' keybindings. Bulk
1521 tagging is still available for all threads matching the current
1522 search with the '*' binding.
1524 More meaningful buffer names for thread-view buffers.
1526 Notmuch now uses the Subject of the thread as the buffer
1527 name. Previously it was using the thread ID, which is a meaningless
1530 Provide for customized colors of threads in search view based on tags.
1532 See the documentation of notmuch-search-line-faces, (or us "M-x
1533 customize" and browse to the "notmuch" group within "Applications"
1534 and "Mail"), for details on how to configure this colorization.
1536 Build-system features
1537 ---------------------
1538 Add support to properly build libnotmuch on Darwin systems (OS X).
1540 Add support to configure for many standard options.
1542 We include actual support for:
1544 --includedir --mandir --sysconfdir
1546 And accept and silently ignore several more:
1548 --build --infodir --libexecdir --localstatedir
1549 --disable-maintainer-mode --disable-dependency-tracking
1551 Install emacs client in "make install" rather than requiring a
1552 separate "make install-emacs".
1554 Automatically compute versions numbers between releases.
1556 This support uses the git-describe notation, so a version such as
1557 0.1-144-g43cbbfc indicates a version that is 144 commits since the
1558 0.1 release and is available as git commit "43cbbfc".
1560 Add a new "make test" target to run the test suite and actually verify
1563 Notmuch 0.1 (2010-04-05)
1564 ========================
1565 This is the first release of the notmuch mail system.
1567 It includes the libnotmuch library, the notmuch command-line
1568 interface, and an emacs-based interface to notmuch.
1570 Note: Notmuch will work best with Xapian 1.0.18 (or later) or Xapian
1571 1.1.4 (or later). Previous versions of Xapian (whether 1.0 or 1.1) had
1572 a performance bug that made notmuch very slow when modifying
1573 tags. This would cause distracting pauses when reading mail while
1574 notmuch would wait for Xapian when removing the "inbox" and "unread"
1575 tags from messages in a thread.