1 Notmuch 0.11 (201x-xx-xx)
2 =========================
4 New command-line features
5 -------------------------
9 Hooks have been introduced to notmuch. Hooks are scripts that notmuch
10 invokes before and after certain actions. Initially, "notmuch new"
11 supports "pre-new" and "post-new" hooks that are run before and after
12 importing new messages into the database.
19 notmuch-show-advance (bound to the spacebar in notmuch-show-mode) had
20 a bug that caused it to always jump to the next message, even if it
21 should have scrolled down to show more of the current message instead.
24 Support "notmuch new" as a notmuch-poll-script
26 It's now possible to use "notmuch new" as a notmuch-poll-script
27 directly. This is also the new default. This allows taking better
28 advantage of the "notmuch new" hooks from emacs without intermediate
31 Improvements in saved search management
33 New saved searches are now appended to the list of saved searches,
34 not inserted in front. It's also possible to define a sort function
35 for displaying saved searches; alphabetical sort is provided.
40 Automatic tag query optimization
42 "notmuch tag" now automatically optimizes the user's query to
43 exclude messages whose tags won't change. In the past, we've
44 suggested that people do this by hand; this is no longer necessary.
49 Reduction of memory leaks
51 Two memory leaks when searching and showing messages were identified
52 and fixed in this release.
57 The tool contrib/notmuch-deliver helps with initial delivery and
58 tagging of mail (replacing running notmuch new).
61 Notmuch 0.10.2 (2011-12-04)
62 ===========================
67 Fix crash in python bindings.
69 The python bindings did not call g_type_init, which caused crashes
70 for some, but not all users.
72 Notmuch 0.10.1 (2011-11-25)
73 ===========================
80 Argument processing changes in 0.10 introduced a bug where "notmuch
81 --help" crashed while "notmuch help" worked fine. This is fixed in
84 Notmuch 0.10 (2011-11-23)
85 =========================
87 New build and testing features
88 ------------------------------
90 Emacs tests are now done in dtach. This means that dtach is now
91 needed to run the notmuch test suite, at least until the checking for
92 prerequisites is improved.
94 Full test coverage of the stashing feature in Emacs.
96 New command-line features
97 -------------------------
99 Add "notmuch restore --accumulate" option
101 The --accumulate switch causes the union of the existing and new tags to be
102 applied, instead of replacing each message's tags as they are read in from
105 Add search terms to "notmuch dump"
107 The dump command now takes an optional search term much like notmuch
108 search/show/tag. The output file argument of dump is deprecated in
109 favour of using stdout.
111 Add "notmuch search" --offset and --limit options
113 The search command now takes options --offset=[-]N and --limit=N to limit
114 the number of results shown.
116 Add "notmuch count --output" option
118 The count command is now capable of counting threads in addition to
119 messages. This is selected using the new --output=(threads|messages) option.
121 New emacs UI features
122 ---------------------
124 Add tab-completion for notmuch-search and notmuch-search-filter
126 These functions now support completion tags for query parts
127 starting with "tag:".
129 Turn "id:MSG-ID" links into buttons associated with notmuch searches
131 Text of the form "id:MSG-ID" in mails is now a clickable button that
132 opens a notmuch search for the given message id.
134 Add keybinding ('c I') for stashing Message-ID's without an id: prefix
136 Reduces manual labour when stashing them for use outside notmuch.
138 Do not query on notmuch-search exit
140 It is harmless to kill the external notmuch process, so the user
141 is no longer interrogated when they interrupt a search.
146 Emacs now constructs large search buffers more efficiently
148 Search avoids opening and parsing message files
150 We now store more information in the database so search no longer
151 has to open every message file to get basic headers. This can
152 improve search speed by as much as 10X, but taking advantage of this
153 requires a database rebuild:
155 notmuch dump > notmuch.dump
156 # Backup, then remove notmuch database ($MAIL/.notmuch)
158 notmuch restore notmuch.dump
160 New collection of add-on tools
161 ------------------------------
163 The source directory "contrib" contains tools built on notmuch. These
164 tools are not part of notmuch, and you should check their individual
165 licenses. Feel free to report problems with them to the notmuch
168 nmbug - share tags with a given prefix
170 nmbug helps maintain a git repo containing all tags with a given
171 prefix (by default "notmuch::"). Tags can be shared by commiting
172 them to git in one location and restoring in another.
174 Notmuch 0.9 (2011-10-01)
175 ========================
177 New, general features
178 ---------------------
180 Correct handling of interruptions during "notmuch new"
182 "notmuch new" now operates as a series of small, self-consistent
183 transactions, so it can correctly resume after an interruption or
184 crash. Previously, interruption could lose existing tags, fail to
185 detect messages on resume, or leave the database in a state
186 temporarily or permanently inconsistent with the mail store.
193 notmuch_database_begin_atomic and notmuch_database_end_atomic allow
194 multiple database operations to be performed atomically.
196 notmuch_database_find_message_by_filename does exactly what it says.
200 notmuch_database_find_message (and n_d_f_m_by_filename) now return
201 a status indicator and uses an output parameter for the
202 message. This change required changing the SONAME of libnotmuch to
205 Python bindings changes
206 -----------------------
208 - Re-encode python unicode objects to utf-8 before passing back to
210 - Support Database().begin_atomic()/end_atomic()
211 - Support Database().find_message_by_filename()
212 NB! This needs a db opened in READ-WRITE mode currently, or it will crash
213 the python process. The is a limitation (=bug) of the underlying libnotmuch.
214 - Fixes where we would not throw NotmuchErrors when we should (Justus Winter)
215 - Update for n_d_find_message* API changes (see above).
217 Ruby bindings changes
218 ---------------------
220 - Wrap new library functions notmuch_database_{begin,end}_atomic.
221 - Add new exception Notmuch::UnbalancedAtomicError.
222 - Rename destroy to destroy! according to Ruby naming conventions.
223 - Update for n_d_find_message* API changes (see above).
228 * Add gpg callback to crypto sigstatus buttons to retrieve/refresh
230 * Add notmuch-show-refresh-view function (and corresponding binding)
231 to refresh the view of a notmuch-show buffer.
233 Reply formatting cleanup
234 ------------------------
236 "notmuch reply" no longer includes notification that non-leafnode
237 MIME parts are being suppressed.
239 Notmuch 0.8 (2011-09-10)
240 ========================
242 Improved handling of message/rfc822 parts
244 Both in the CLI and the emacs interface. Output of rfc822 parts now
245 includes the primary headers, as well as the body and all subparts.
246 Output of the completely raw rfc822-formatted message, including all
247 headers, is unfortunately not yet supported (but hopefully will be
250 Improved Build system portability
252 Certain parts of the shell script generating notmuch.sym were
253 specific to the GNU versions of sed and nm. The new version should
254 be more portable to e.g. OpenBSD.
256 Documentation update for Ruby bindings
258 Added documentation, typo fixes, and improved support for rdoc.
260 Unicode, iterator, PEP8 changes for python bindings
262 - PEP8 (code formatting) changes for python files.
263 - Remove Tags.__len__ ; see 0.6 release notes for motivation.
264 - Decode headers as UTF8, encode (unicode) database paths as UTF8.
266 Notmuch 0.7 (2011-08-01)
267 ========================
269 Vim interface improvements
270 --------------------------
272 Jason Woofenden provided a number of bug fixes for the Vim interface
274 * fix citation/signature fold lengths
275 * fix cig/cit parsing within multipart/*
276 * fix on-screen instructions for show-signature
277 * fix from list reformatting in search view
278 * fix space key: now archives (did opposite)
280 Uwe Kleine-König contributed
282 * use full path for sendmail/doc fix
283 * fix compose temp file name
285 Python Bindings changes
286 -----------------------
288 Sebastian Spaeth contributed two changes related to unicode and UTF8:
290 * message tags are now explicitly unicode
291 * query string is encoded as a UTF8 byte string
293 Build-System improvements
294 ------------------------
296 Generate notmuch.sym after the relevant object files
298 This fixes a bug in parallel building. Thanks to Thomas Jost for the
301 Notmuch 0.6.1 (2011-07-17)
302 ==========================
307 Re-export Xapian exception typeinfo symbols.
309 It turned out our aggressive symbol hiding caused problems for
310 people running gcc 4.4.5.
312 Notmuch 0.6 (2011-07-01)
313 =======================
314 New, general features
315 ---------------------
316 Folder-based searching
318 Notmuch queries can now include a search term to match the
319 directories in which mail files are stored (within the mail
320 storage). The syntax is as follows:
324 For example, one might use things such as:
330 to match any path containing a directory "spam", "work/todo", or
331 containing a directory starting with "2011-", respectively.
333 This feature is particularly useful for users of delivery-agent
334 software (such as procmail or maildrop) that is filtering mail and
335 delivering it to particular folders, or users of systems such as
336 Gmail that use filesystem directories to indicate message tags.
338 NOTE: Only messages that are newly indexed with this version of
339 notmuch will be searchable with folder: terms. In order to enable
340 this feature for all mail, the entire notmuch index will need to be
343 notmuch dump > notmuch.dump
344 # Backup, then remove notmuch database ($MAIL/.notmuch)
346 notmuch restore notmuch.dump
350 Both the command line interface and the emacs-interface have new
351 support for PGP/MIME, detailed below. Thanks to Daniel Kahn Gillmor
352 and Jameson Graef Rollins for making this happen.
354 New, automatic tags: "signed" and "encrypted"
356 These tags will automatically be applied to messages containing
357 multipart/signed and multipart/encrypted parts.
359 NOTE: Only messages that are newly indexed with this version of
360 notmuch will receive these tags.
362 New command-line features
363 -------------------------
364 Add new "notmuch show --verify" option for signature verification
366 This option instruct notmuch to verify the signature of
367 PGP/MIME-signed parts.
369 Add new "notmuch show --decrypt" and "notmuch reply --decrypt" options
371 This option instructs notmuch to decrypt PGP/MIME-encrypted parts.
372 Note that this feature currently requires gpg-agent and a passphrase entry
373 tool (e.g. pinentry-gtk or pinentry-curses).
375 Proper nesting of multipart parts in "notmuch show" output
377 MIME parts are now display with proper nesting to reflect original
378 MIME hierarchy of a message. This allows clients to correctly
379 analyze the MIME structure, (such as, for example, determining to
380 which parts a signature part applies).
382 Add new "notmuch show --part" option
384 This is a replacement for the older "notmuch part" command, (which
385 is now deprecated—it should still work as always, but is no longer
386 documented). Putting part output under "notmuch show" allows for all
387 of the "notmuch show" options to be applied when extracting a single
388 part, (such as --format=json for extracting a message part with JSON
391 Deprecate "notmuch search-tags", (in favor of "notmuch search --output=tags *")
393 The "notmuch search-tags" sub-command has been redundant since the
394 addition of the --output=tags option to "notmuch search". We now
395 make that more clear by deprecating "notmuch search-tags", (dropping
396 it from the documentation). We do continue to support the old syntax
397 by translating it internally to the new call.
399 Performance improvements
400 ------------------------
401 Faster searches (by doing fewer searches to construct threads)
403 Whenever a user asks for search results as threads, notmuch first
404 performs a search for messages matching the query, then performs
405 additional searches to find other messages in the resulting threads.
407 Removing inefficiencies and redundancies in these secondary searches
408 results in a measured speedups of 1.5x for a typical search.
410 Faster searches (by doing fewer passes to gather message data)
412 Optimizing Xapian data access patterns (using a single pass to get
413 all message-document data rather than a pass for each data type)
414 results in a measured speedup of 1.7x for a typical search.
416 The benefits of this optimization combine with the preceding
417 optimization. With both in place, Austin Clements measured a speedup
418 of 2.5x for a search of all messages in his inbox (was 4.5s, now
419 1.8s). Thanks, Austin!
421 Faster initial indexing
423 More efficient indexing of new messages results in a measured
424 speedup of 1.4x for the initial indexing of 3 GB of mail (1h 14m
425 rather than 1h 46m). Thanks to Austin Clements and Michal Sojka.
427 Make "notmuch new" faster for unchanged directories
429 Optimizing to not do any further examinations of sub-directories
430 when the filesystem indicates that a directory is unchanged from the
431 last "notmuch new" results in measured speedups of 8.5 for the "No
432 new mail" case, (was 0.77s, now 0.09s). Thanks to Karel Zak.
434 New emacs-interface features
435 ----------------------------
437 Support for PGP/MIME (GnuPG)
439 Automatically indicate validity of signatures for multipart/signed
440 messages. Automatically display decrypted content for
441 multipart/encrypted messages. See the emacs variable
442 notmuch-crypto-process-mime for more information. Note that this
443 needs gpg-agent and a pinentry tool just as the command line tools.
444 Also note there is no support SMIME yet.
446 Output of pipe command is now displayed if pipe command fails
448 This is extremely useful in the common use case of piping a patch to
449 "git am". If git fails to cleanly merge the patch the error messages
450 from the failed merge are now clearly displayed to the user, (where
451 previously they were silently hidden from the user).
453 User-selectable From address
455 A user can choose which configured email addresses should be used as
456 the From address whenever composing a new message. To do so, simply
457 press C-u before the command which will open a new message. Emacs
458 will prompt for the from address to use.
460 The user can customize the "Notmuch Identities" setting in the
461 notmuch customize group in order to use addresses other than those in
462 the notmuch configuration file if desired.
464 The user can also choose to always be prompted for the from address
465 when composing a new message (without having to use C-u) by setting
466 the "Notmuch Always Prompt For Sender" option in the notmuch
469 Hiding of repeated subjects in collapsed thread view
471 In notmuch-show mode, if a collapsed message has the same subject as
472 its parent, the subject is not shown.
474 Automatic detection and hiding of original message in top-posted message
476 When a message contains a line looking something like:
478 ----- Original Message -----
480 emacs hides this and all subsequent lines as an "original message",
481 (allowing the user to click or press enter on the "original message"
482 button to display it again). This makes the handling of top-posted
483 citations work much like conventional citations.
485 New hooks for running code when tags are modified
487 Some users want to perform additional actions whenever a particular
488 tag is added/removed from a message. This could be used to, for
489 example, interface with some external spam-recognition training
490 tool. To facilitate this, two new hooks are added which can be
491 modified in the following settings of the notmuch customize group:
493 Notmuch Before Tag Hook
494 Notmuch After Tag Hook
496 New optional support for hiding some multipart/alternative parts
498 Many emails are sent with redundant content within a
499 multipart/alternative group (such as a text/plain part as well as a
500 text/html part). Users can configure the setting:
502 Notmuch Show All Multipart/Alternative Parts
504 to "off" in the notmuch customize group to have the interface
505 automatically hide some part alternatives (such as text/html
506 parts). This new part hiding is not configured by default yet
507 because there's not yet a simple way to re-display such a hidden
508 part if it is not actually redundant with a displayed part.
510 Better rendering of text/x-vcalendar parts
512 These parts are now displayed in a format suitable for use with the
515 Avoid getting confused by Subject and Author fields with newline characters
517 Replacing all characters with ASCII code less than 32 with a question mark.
519 Cleaner display of From line in email messages (remove double quotes,
520 and drop "name" if it's actually just a repeat of the email address).
522 Vim interface improvements
523 --------------------------
524 Felipe Contreras provided a number of updates for the vim interface:
526 * Using sendmail directly rather than mailx,
527 * Implementing archive in show view
528 * Add support to mark as read in show and search views
529 * Add delete commands
532 Bindings improvements
533 ---------------------
534 Ruby bindings are now much more complete
536 Including QUERY.sort, QUERY.to_s, MESSAGE.maildir_flags_to_tags,
537 MESSAGE.tags_to_maildir_flags, and MESSAGE.get_filenames
539 * Python bindings have been updated and extended
540 (docs online at http://packages.python.org/notmuch/)
543 - Message().get_filenames(),
544 - Message().tags_to_maildir_flags(),Message().maildir_flags_to_tags()
545 - list(Threads()) and list(Messages) works now
547 - Message().__cmp__() and __hash__()
548 These allow, for example:
551 As well as set arithmetic on Messages():
553 s1, s2= set(msgs1), set(msgs2)
558 - len(Messages()) as it exhausted the iterator.
559 Use len(list(Messages())) or
560 Query.count_messages() to get the length.
562 Added initial Go bindings in bindings/go
564 New build-system features
565 -------------------------
566 Added support for building in a directory other than the source directory
568 This can be used with the widely-supported idiom of simply running
569 the configure script from some other directory:
576 Fix to save configure options for future, implicit runs of configure
578 When a user updates the source (such as with "git pull") calling
579 "make" may cause an automatic re-run of the configure script. When
580 this happens, the configure script will automatically be called with
581 the same options the user originally passed in the most-recent
582 manual invocation of configure.
584 New test-suite feature
585 ----------------------
586 Binary for bash for running test suite now located via PATH.
588 The notmuch test suite requires a fairly recent version of bash (>=
589 bash 4). As some systems supply an older version of bash at
590 /bin/bash, the test suite is now updated to search $PATH to locate
591 the bash binary. This allows users of systems with old /bin/bash to
592 simply install bash >= 4 somewhere on $PATH before /bin and then use
595 Support for testing output with a trailing newline.
597 Previously, some tests would fail to notice a difference in the
598 presence/absence of a trailing newline in a program output, (which
599 has led to bugs in the past). Now, carefully-written tests (using
600 test_expect_equal_file rather than test_expect_equal) will detect
601 any change in the presence/absence of a trailing newline. Many tests
602 are updated to take advantage of this.
604 Avoiding accessing user's $HOME while running test suite
606 The test suite now carefully creates its own HOME directory. This
607 allows the test suite to be run with no existing HOME directory, (as
608 some build systems apparently do), and avoids test-suite differences
609 due to configuration files in the users HOME directory.
614 Output *all* files for "notmuch search --output=files"
616 For the cases where multiple files have the same Message ID,
617 previous versions of notmuch would output only one such file. This
618 command is now fixed to correctly output all files.
620 Fixed spurious search results from "overlapped" indexing of addresses
622 This fixed a bug where a search for:
624 to:user@elsewhere.com
626 would incorrectly match a message sent:
628 To: user@example,com, someone@elsewhere.com
630 Fix --output=json when search has no results
632 A bug present since notmuch 0.4 had caused searches with no results
633 to produce an invalid json object. This is now fixed to cleanly
634 return a valid json object representing an empty array "[]" as
637 fix the automatic detection of the From address for "notmuch reply"
638 from the Received headers in some cases.
640 Fix core dump on DragonFlyBSD due to -1 return value from
641 sysconf(_SC_GETPW_R_SIZE_MAX).
643 Cleaned up several memory leaks
645 Eliminated a few, rare segmentation faults and a double-free.
647 Fix libnotmuch library to only export notmuch API functions
649 Previous release of the notmuch library also exported some Xapian
650 C++ exception type symbols. These were never part of the library
651 interface and were never intended to be exported.
653 Emacs-interface bug fixes
654 -------------------------
655 Display any unexpected output or errors from "notmuch search" invocations
657 Previously any misformatted output or trailing error messages were
658 silently ignored. This output is now clearly displayed. This fix was
659 very helpful in identifying and fixing the bug described below.
661 Fix bug where some threads would be missing from large search results
663 When a search returned a "large" number of results, the emacs
664 interface was incorrectly dropping one thread every time the output
665 of the "notmuch search" process spanned the emacs read-buffer. This
668 Avoid re-compression of .gz files (and similar) when saving attachment
670 Emacs was being too clever for its own good and trying to
671 re-compress pre-compressed .gz files when saving such attachments
672 (potentially corrupting the attachment). The emacs interface is
673 fixed to avoid this bug.
675 Fix hiding of a message when a previously-hidden citation is visible
677 Previously the citation would remain visible in this case. This is
678 fixed so that hiding a message hides all parts.
680 Notmuch 0.5 (2010-11-11)
681 ========================
682 New, general features
683 ---------------------
684 Maildir-flag synchronization
686 Notmuch now knows how to synchronize flags in maildir filenames with
687 tags in the notmuch database. The following flag/tag mappings are
696 'S' unread (added when 'S' flag is not present)
698 The synchronization occurs in both directions, (for example, adding
699 the 'S' flag to a file will cause the "unread" tag to be added, and
700 adding the "replied" tag to a message will cause the file to be
701 renamed with an 'R' flag).
703 This synchronization is enabled by default for users of the
704 command-line interface, (though only files in directories named
705 "cur" or "new" will be renamed). It can be disabled by setting the
706 new maildir.synchronize_flags option in the configuration file. For
709 notmuch config set maildir.synchronize_flags false
711 Users upgrading may also want to run "notmuch setup" once (just
712 accept the existing configuration) to get a new, nicely-commented
713 [maildir] section added to the configuration file.
715 For users of the notmuch library, the new synchronization
716 functionality is available with the following two new functions:
718 notmuch_message_maildir_flags_to_tags
719 notmuch_message_tags_to_maildir_flags
721 It is anticipated that future improvements to this support will
722 allow for safe synchronization of the 'T' flag with the "deleted"
723 tag, as well as support for custom flag/tag mappings.
727 Support for querying multiple filenames for a single message
729 It is common for the mailstore to contain multiple files with the
730 same message ID. Previously, notmuch would always hide these
731 duplicate files, (returning a single, arbitrary filename with
732 notmuch_message_get_filename).
734 With this release, library users can access all filenames for a
735 message with the new function:
737 notmuch_message_get_filenames
739 Together with notmuch_filenames_valid, notmuch_filenames_get, and
740 notmuch_filenames_move_to_next it is now possible to iterate over
741 all available filenames for a given message.
743 New command-line features
744 -------------------------
745 New "notmuch show --format=raw" for getting at original email contents
747 This new feature allows for a fully-functional email client to be
748 built on top of the notmuch command-line without needing any direct
749 access to the mail store itself.
751 For example, it's now possible to run "emacs -f notmuch" on a local
752 machine with only ssh access to the mail store/notmuch database. To
753 do this, simply set the notmuch-command variable in emacs to the
754 name of a script containing:
756 ssh user@host notmuch "$@"
758 If the ssh client has enabled connection sharing (ControlMaster
759 option in OpenSSH), the emacs interface can be quite responsive this
764 Fix "notmuch search" to print nothing when nothing matches
766 The 0.4 release had a bug in which:
768 notmuch search <expression-with-no-matches>
770 would produce a single blank line of output, (where previous
771 versions would produce no output. This fix also causes a change in
772 the --format=json output, (which would previously produce "[]" and
773 now produces nothing).
775 Emacs interface improvements
776 ----------------------------
777 Fix to allow pipe ('|') command to work when using notmuch over ssh
779 Fix count of lines in hidden signatures.
781 Omit repeated subject lines in (collapsed) thread display.
783 Display current thread subject in a header line.
785 Provide a "c i" binding to copy a thread ID from the search view.
787 Allow for notmuch-fcc-dirs to have a value of nil.
789 Also, the more complex form of notmuch-fcc-dirs now has a slightly
790 different format. It no longer has a special first-element, fallback
791 string. Instead it's now a list of cons cells where the car of each
792 cell is a regular expression to be matched against the sender
793 address, and the cdr is the name of a folder to use for an FCC. So
794 the old fallback behavior can be achieved by including a final cell
795 of (".*" . "default-fcc-folder").
797 Vim interface improvements
798 --------------------------
799 Felipe Contreras provided a number of updates for the vim interface.
801 These include optimizations, support for newer versions of vim, fixed
802 support for sending mail on modern systems, new commands, and
807 Added initial ruby bindings in bindings/ruby
809 Notmuch 0.4 (2010-11-01)
810 ========================
811 New command-line features
812 -------------------------
813 notmuch search --output=(summary|threads|messages|tags|files)
815 This new option allows for particular items to be returned from
816 notmuch searches. The "summary" option is the default and behaves
817 just as "notmuch search" has historically behaved.
819 The new option values allow for thread IDs, message IDs, lists of
820 tags, and lists of filenames to be returned from searches. It is
821 expected that this new option will be very useful in shell
822 scripts. For example:
824 for file in $(notmuch search --output=files <search-terms>); do
825 <operations-on> "$file"
828 notmuch show --format=mbox <search-specification>
830 This new option allows for the messages matching a search
831 specification to be presented as an mbox. Specifically the "mboxrd"
832 format is used which allows for reversible quoting of lines
833 beginning with "From ". A reader should remove a single '>' from the
834 beginning of all lines beginning with one or more '>' characters
835 followed by the 5 characters "From ".
837 notmuch config [get|set] <section>.<item> [value ...]
839 The new top-level "config" command allows for any value in the
840 notmuch configuration file to be queried or set to a new value. Both
841 single-valued and multi-valued items are supported, as our any
842 custom items stored in the configuration file.
844 Avoid setting Bcc header in "notmuch reply"
846 We decided that this was a bit heavy-handed as the actual mail
847 user-agent should be responsible for setting any Bcc option. Also,
848 see below for the notmuch/emacs user-agent now setting an Fcc by
849 default rather than Bcc.
853 Add notmuch_query_get_query_string and notmuch_query_get_sort
855 These are simply functions for querying properties of a
856 notmuch_query_t object.
860 Enable Fcc of all sent messages by default (to "sent" directory)
862 All messages sent from the emacs interface will now be saved to the
863 notmuch mail store where they will be incorporated to the database
864 by the next "notmuch new". By default, messages are saved to the
865 "sent" directory at the top-level of the mail store. This directory
866 can be customized by means of the "Notmuch Fcc Dirs" option in the
867 notmuch customize interface.
869 Ability to all open messages in a thread to a pipe
871 Historically, the '|' keybinding allows for piping a single message
872 to an external command. Now, by prefixing this key with a prefix
873 argument, (for example, by pressing "Control-U |"), all open
874 messages in the current thread will be sent to the external command.
876 Optional support for detecting inline patches
878 This hook is disabled by default but can be enabled with a checkbox
879 under "Notmuch Show Insert Text/Plain Hook" in the notmuch customize
880 interface. It allows for inline patches to be detected and treated
881 as if they were attachments, (with context-sensitive highlighting).
883 Automatically tag messages as "replied" when sending a reply
885 Messages replied to within the emacs interface will now be tagged as
886 "replied". This feature can easily be customized to add or remove
887 other tags as well. For example, a user might use a tag of
888 "needs-reply" and can configure this feature to automatically remove
889 that tag when replying. See "Notmuch Message Mark Replied" in the
890 notmuch customize interface.
892 Allow search-result color specifications to overlay each other
894 For example, one tag can specify the background color of matching
895 lines, while another can specify the foreground. With this change,
896 both settings will now be visible simultaneously, (which was not the
897 case in previous releases). See "Notmuch Search Line Faces" in the
898 notmuch customize interface.
900 Make hidden author names still available for incremental search.
902 When there is insufficient space to display all authors of a thread
903 in search results, the names of hidden authors are now still made
904 available to emacs' incremental search commands. As the user
905 searches, matching lines will temporarily expand to show the hidden
908 New binding of Control-TAB (works like TAB in reverse)
910 Many notmuch nodes already use TAB to navigate forward through
911 various items allowing actions, (message headers, email attachments,
912 etc.). The new Control-TAB binding operates similarly but in the
915 New build-system features
916 -------------------------
917 Various portability fixes have been applied
919 These include fixes for build failures on at least Solaris, FreeBSD,
920 and Fedora systems. We're hopeful that the notmuch code base is now
921 more portable than ever before.
923 Arrange for libnotmuch to be found automatically after make install
925 The notmuch build system is now careful to help the user avoid
926 errors of the form "libnotmuch.so could not be found" immediately
927 after installing. This support takes two forms:
929 1. If the library is installed to a system directory,
930 (configured in /etc/ld.so.conf), then "make install" will
931 automatically run ldconfig.
933 2. If the library is installed to a non-system directory, the
934 build system adds a DR_RUNPATH entry to the final binary
935 pointing to the directory to which the library is installed.
937 When this support works, the user should be able to run notmuch
938 immediately after "make install", without any errors trying to find
939 the notmuch library, and without having to manually set environment
940 variables such as LD_LIBRARY_PATH.
942 Check compiler/linker options before using them
944 The configure script now carefully checks that any desired
945 compilation options, (whether for enabling compiler warnings, or for
946 embedding rpath, etc.), are supported. Only supported options are
947 used in the resulting Makefile.
949 New test-suite features
950 -----------------------
951 New modularization of test suite.
953 Thanks to a gracious relicensing of the test-suite infrastructure
954 from the git project, notmuch now has a modular test suite. This
955 provides the ability to run individual sections of the test suite
956 rather than the whole things. It also provides better summary of
957 test results, with support for tests that are expected to fail
958 (BROKEN and FIXED) in addition to PASS and FAIL. Finally, it makes
959 it easy to run the test suite within valgrind (pass --valgrind to
960 notmuch-test or to any sub-script) which has been very useful.
962 New testing of emacs interface.
964 The test suite has been augmented to allow automated testing of the
965 emacs interfaces. So far, this includes basic searches, display of
966 threads, and tag manipulation. This also includes a test that a new
967 message can successfully be sent out through a (dummy) SMTP server
968 and that said message is successfully integrated into the notmuch
969 database via the FCC setting.
973 Fix potential corruption of database when "notmuch new " is interrupted.
975 Previously, an interruption of "notmuch new" would (rarely) result
976 in a corrupt database. The corruption would manifest itself by a
977 persistent error of the form:
979 document ID of 1234 has no thread ID
981 The message-adding code has been carefully audited and reworked to
982 avoid this sort of corruption regardless of when it is interrupted.
984 Fix failure with extremely long message ID headers.
986 Previously, a message with an extremely long message ID, (say, more
987 than 300 characters), would fail to be added to notmuch, (triggering
988 Xapian exceptions). This has now been fixed.
990 Fix for messages with "charset=unknown-8bit"
992 Previously, messages with this charset would cause notmuch to emit a
993 GMime warning, (which would then trip up emacs or other interfaces
994 parsing the notmuch results).
996 Fix notmuch_query_search_threads function to return NULL on any exception
998 Fix "notmuch search" to return non-zero if notmuch_query_search_threads fails
1000 Previously, this command could confusingly report a Xapian
1001 exception, yet still return an error code of 0. It now correctly
1002 returns a failing error code of 1 in this case.
1006 Fix to handle a message with a subject containing, for example "[1234]"
1008 Previously, a message subject containing a sequence of digits within
1009 square brackets would cause the emacs interface to mis-parse the
1010 output of "notmuch search". This would result in the message being
1011 mis-displayed and prevent the user from manipulating the message in
1012 the emacs interface.
1014 Fix to correctly handle message IDs containing ".."
1016 The emacs interface now properly quotes message IDs to avoid a
1017 Xapian bug in which the ".." within a message ID would be
1018 misinterpreted as a numeric range specification.
1020 Python-binding fixes
1021 --------------------
1022 The python bindings for notmuch have been updated to work with python3.
1024 Debian-specific fixes
1025 ---------------------
1026 Fix emacs initialization so "M-x notmuch" works for users by default.
1028 Now, a new Debian user can immediately run "emacs -f notmuch" after
1029 "apt-get install notmuch". Previously, the user would have had to
1030 edit the ~/.emacs file to add "(require 'notmuch)" before this would
1033 Notmuch 0.3.1 (2010-04-27)
1034 ==========================
1037 Fix an infinite loop in "notmuch reply"
1039 This bug could be triggered by replying to a message where the
1040 user's primary email address did not appear in the To: header and
1041 the user had not configured any secondary email addresses. The bug
1042 was a simple re-use of the same iterator variable in nested loops.
1044 Fix a potential SEGV in "notmuch search"
1046 This bug could be triggered by an author name ending in a ','.
1047 Admittedly - that's almost certainly a spam email, but we never
1048 want notmuch to crash.
1052 Fix calculations for line wrapping in the primary "notmuch" view.
1054 Fix Fcc support to prompt to create a directory if the specified Fcc
1055 directory does not exist.
1059 Fix build on OpenSolaris (at least) due to missing 'extern "C"' block.
1061 Without this, the C++ sources could not find strcasestr and the
1062 final linking of notmuch would fail.
1064 Notmuch 0.3 (2010-04-27)
1065 ========================
1066 New command-line features
1067 -------------------------
1068 User-configurable tags for new messages
1070 A new "new.tags" option is available in the configuration file to
1071 determine which tags are applied to new messages. Run "notmuch
1072 setup" to generate new documentation within ~/.notmuch-config on how
1073 to specify this value.
1075 Threads search results named based on subjects that match search
1077 This means that when new mails arrived to a thread you've previously
1078 read, and the new mails have a new subject, you will see that
1079 subject in the search results rather than the old subject.
1081 Faster operation of "notmuch tag" (avoid unneeded sorting)
1083 Since the user just wants to tag all matching messages, we can make
1084 things perform a bit faster by avoiding the sort.
1086 Even Better guessing of From: header for "notmuch reply"
1088 Notmuch now looks at a number of headers when trying to figure out
1089 the best From: header to use in a reply. This is helpful if you have
1090 several configured email addresses, and you also subscribe to various
1091 mailing lists with different addresses, (so that mails you are
1092 replying to won't always include your subscribed address in the To:
1095 Indication of author names that match a search
1097 When notmuch displays threads as the result of a search, it now
1098 lists the authors that match the search before listing the other
1099 authors in the thread. It inserts a pipe '|' symbol between the last
1100 matching and first non-matching author. This is especially useful in
1101 a search that includes tag:unread. Now the authors of the unread
1102 messages in the thread are listed first.
1104 New: Python bindings
1105 --------------------
1106 Sebastian Spaeth has contributed his python bindings for the notmuch
1107 library to the central repository. These bindings were previously
1108 known as "cnotmuch" within python but have now been renamed to be
1109 accessible with a simple, and more official-looking "import notmuch".
1111 The bindings have already proven very useful as people proficient in
1112 python have been able to easily develop programs to do notmuch-based
1113 searches for email-address completion, maildir-flag synchronization,
1116 These bindings are available within the bindings/python directory, but
1117 are not yet integrated into the top-level Makefiles, nor the top-level
1118 package-building scripts. Improvements are welcome.
1120 Emacs interface improvements
1121 ----------------------------
1122 An entirely new initial view for notmuch, (friendly yet powerful)
1124 Some of us call the new view "notmuch hello" but you can get at it
1125 by simply calling "emacs -f notmuch". The new view provides a search
1126 bar where new searches can be performed. It also displays a list of
1127 recent searches, along with a button to save any of these, giving it
1128 a new name as a "saved search". Many people find these "saved
1129 searches" one of the most convenient ways of organizing their mail,
1130 (providing all of the features of "folders" in other mail clients,
1131 but without any of the disadvantages).
1133 Finally, this view can also optionally display all of the tags that
1134 exist in the database, along with a count for each tag, and a custom
1135 search of messages with that tag that's simply a click (or keypress)
1138 Note: For users that liked the original mode of "emacs -f notmuch"
1139 immediately displaying a particular search result, we
1140 recommend instead running something like:
1142 emacs --eval '(notmuch search "tag:inbox" t)'
1144 The "t" means to sort the messages in an "oldest first" order,
1145 (as notmuch would do previously by default). You can also
1146 leave that off to have your search results in "newest first"
1149 Full-featured "customize" support for configuring notmuch
1151 Notmuch now plugs in well to the emacs "customize" mode to make it
1152 much simpler to find things about the notmuch interface that can be
1153 tweaked by the user.
1155 You can get to this mode by starting at the main "Customize" menu in
1156 emacs, then browsing through "Applications", "Mail", and
1157 "Notmuch". Or you can go straight to "M-x customize-group"
1160 Once you're at the customize screen, you'll see a list of documented
1161 options that can be manipulated along with checkboxes, drop-down
1162 selectors, and text-entry boxes for configuring the various
1165 Support for doing tab-completion of email addresses
1167 This support currently relies on an external program,
1168 (notmuch-addresses), that is not yet shipped with notmuch
1169 itself. But multiple, suitable implementations of this program have
1170 already been written that generate address completions by doing
1171 notmuch searches of your email collection. For example, providing
1172 first those addresses that you have composed messages to in the
1175 One such program (implemented in python with the python bindings to
1176 notmuch) is available via:
1178 git clone http://jkr.acm.jhu.edu/git/notmuch_addresses.git
1180 Install that program as notmuch-addresses on your PATH, and then
1181 hitting TAB on a partial email address or name within the To: or Cc:
1182 line of an email message will provide matching completions.
1184 Support for file-based (Fcc) delivery of sent messages to mail store
1186 This isn't yet enabled by default. To enable this, one will have to
1187 set the "Notmuch Fcc Dirs" setting within the notmuch customize
1188 screen, (see its documentation there for details). We anticipate
1189 making this automatic in a future release.
1191 New 'G' key binding to trigger mail refresh (G == "Get new mail")
1193 The 'G' key works wherever '=' works. Before refreshing the screen
1194 it calls an external program that can be used to poll email servers,
1195 run notmuch new and setup specific tags for the new emails. The
1196 script to be called should be configured with the "Notmuch Poll
1197 Script" setting in the customize interface. This script will
1198 typically invoke "notmuch new" and then perhaps several "notmuch
1201 Implement emacs message display with the JSON output from notmuch.
1203 This is much more robust than the previous implementation, (where
1204 some HTML mails and mail quoting the notmuch code with the delimiter
1205 characters in it would cause the parser to fall over).
1207 Better handling of HTML messages and MIME attachments (inline images!)
1209 Allow for any MIME parts that emacs can display to be displayed
1210 inline. This includes inline viewing of image attachments, (provided
1211 the window is large enough to fit the image at its natural size).
1213 Much more robust handling of HTML messages. Currently both text/plain
1214 and text/html alternates will be rendered next to each other. In a
1215 future release, users will be able to decide to see only one or the
1216 other representation.
1218 Each attachment now has its own button so that attachments can be
1219 saved individually (the 'w' key is still available to save all
1222 Customizable support for tidying of text/plain message content
1224 Many new functions are available for tidying up message
1225 content. These include options such as wrapping long lines,
1226 compressing duplicate blank lines, etc.
1228 Most of these are disabled by default, but can easily be enabled by
1229 clicking the available check boxes under the "Notmuch Show Insert
1230 Text/Plain Hook" within the notmuch customize screen.
1232 New support for searchable citations (even when hidden)
1234 When portions of overly-long citations are hidden, the contents of
1235 these citations will still be available for emacs' standard
1236 "incremental search" functions. When the search matches any portion
1237 of a hidden citation, the citation will become visible temporarily
1238 to display the search result.
1240 More flexible handling of header visibility
1242 As an answer to complaints from many users, the To, Cc, and Date
1243 headers of messages are no longer hidden by default. For those users
1244 that liked that these were hidden, a new "Notmuch Messages Headers
1245 Visible" option in the customize interface can be set to nil. The
1246 visibility of headers can still be toggled on a per-message basis
1247 with the 'h' keybinding.
1249 For users that don't want to see some subset of those headers, the
1250 new "Notmuch Message Headers" variable can be customized to list
1251 only those headers that should be present in the display of a message.
1253 The Return key now toggles message visibility anywhere
1255 Previously this worked only on the first summary-line of a message.
1257 Customizable formatting of search results
1259 The user can easily customize the order, width, and formatting of
1260 the various fields in a "notmuch search" buffer. See the "Notmuch
1261 Search Result Format" section of the customize interface.
1263 Generate nicer names for search buffers when using a saved search.
1265 Add a notmuch User-Agent header when sending mail from notmuch/emacs.
1267 New keybinding (M-Ret) to open all collapsed messages in a thread.
1271 Provide a new NOTMUCH_SORT_UNSORTED value for queries
1273 This can be somewhat faster when sorting simply isn't desired. For
1274 example when collecting a set of messages that will all be
1275 manipulated identically, (adding a tag, removing a tag, deleting the
1276 messages), then there's no advantage to sorting the messages by
1281 Fix to compile against GMime 2.6
1283 Previously notmuch insisted on being able to find GMime 2.4, (even
1284 though GMime 2.6 would have worked all along).
1286 Fix configure script to accept (and ignore) various standard options.
1288 For example, those that the Gentoo build scripts expect configure to
1289 accept are now all accepted.
1293 A large number of new tests for the many new features.
1295 Better display of output from failed tests.
1297 Now shows failures with diff rather than forcing the user to gaze at
1298 complete actual and expected output looking for deviation.
1300 Notmuch 0.2 (2010-04-16)
1301 ========================
1302 This is the second release of the notmuch mail system, with actual
1303 detailed release notes this time!
1305 This release consists of a number of minor new features that make
1306 notmuch more pleasant to use, and a few fairly major bug fixes.
1308 We didn't quite hit our release target of "about a week" from the 0.1
1309 release, (0.2 is happening 11 days after 0.1), but we hope to do
1310 better for next week. Look forward to some major features coming to
1311 notmuch in subsequent releases.
1317 Better guessing of From: header.
1319 Notmuch now tries harder to guess which configured address should be
1320 used as the From: line in a "notmuch reply". It will examine the
1321 Received: headers if it fails to find any configured address in To:
1322 or Cc:. This allows it to often choose the correct address even when
1323 replying to a message sent to a mailing list, and not directly to a
1326 Make "notmuch count" with no arguments count all messages
1328 Previously, it was hard to construct a search term that was
1329 guaranteed to match all messages.
1331 Provide a new special-case search term of "*" to match all messages.
1333 This can be used in any command accepting a search term, such as
1334 "notmuch search '*'". Note that you'll want to take care that the
1335 shell doesn't expand * against the current files. And note that the
1336 support for "*" is a special case. It's only meaningful as a single
1337 search term and loses its special meaning when combined with any
1340 Automatically detect thread connections even when a parent message is
1343 Previously, if two or more message were received with a common
1344 parent, but that parent was not received, then these messages would
1345 not be recognized as belonging to the same thread. This is now fixed
1346 so that such messages are properly connected in a thread.
1350 Fix potential data loss in "notmuch new" with SIGINT
1352 One code path in "notmuch new" was not properly handling
1353 SIGINT. Previously, this could lead to messages being removed from
1354 the database (and their tags being lost) if the user pressed
1355 Control-C while "notmuch new" was working.
1357 Fix segfault when a message includes a MIME part that is empty.
1359 Fix handling of non-ASCII characters with --format=json
1361 Previously, characters outside the range of 7-bit ASCII were
1362 silently dropped from the JSON output. This led to corrupted display
1363 of utf-8 content in the upcoming notmuch web-based frontends.
1365 Fix headers to be properly decoded in "notmuch reply"
1367 Previously, the user might see:
1369 Subject: Re: =?iso-8859-2?q?Rozlu=E8ka?=
1373 Subject: Re: Rozlučka
1375 The former text is properly encoded to be RFC-compliant SMTP, will
1376 be sent correctly, and will be properly decoded by the
1377 recipient. But the user trying to edit the reply would likely be
1378 unable to read or edit that field in its encoded form.
1380 Emacs client features
1381 ---------------------
1382 Show the last few lines of citations as well as the first few lines.
1384 It's often the case that the last sentence of a citation is what is
1385 being replied to directly, so the last few lines are often much more
1386 important. The number of lines shown at the beginning and end of any
1387 citation can be configured, (notmuch-show-citation-lines-prefix and
1388 notmuch-show-citation-lines-suffix).
1390 The '+' and '-' commands in the search view can now add and remove
1393 Selective bulk tagging is now possible by selecting a region of
1394 threads and then using either the '+' or '-' keybindings. Bulk
1395 tagging is still available for all threads matching the current
1396 search with the '*' binding.
1398 More meaningful buffer names for thread-view buffers.
1400 Notmuch now uses the Subject of the thread as the buffer
1401 name. Previously it was using the thread ID, which is a meaningless
1404 Provide for customized colors of threads in search view based on tags.
1406 See the documentation of notmuch-search-line-faces, (or us "M-x
1407 customize" and browse to the "notmuch" group within "Applications"
1408 and "Mail"), for details on how to configure this colorization.
1410 Build-system features
1411 ---------------------
1412 Add support to properly build libnotmuch on Darwin systems (OS X).
1414 Add support to configure for many standard options.
1416 We include actual support for:
1418 --includedir --mandir --sysconfdir
1420 And accept and silently ignore several more:
1422 --build --infodir --libexecdir --localstatedir
1423 --disable-maintainer-mode --disable-dependency-tracking
1425 Install emacs client in "make install" rather than requiring a
1426 separate "make install-emacs".
1428 Automatically compute versions numbers between releases.
1430 This support uses the git-describe notation, so a version such as
1431 0.1-144-g43cbbfc indicates a version that is 144 commits since the
1432 0.1 release and is available as git commit "43cbbfc".
1434 Add a new "make test" target to run the test suite and actually verify
1437 Notmuch 0.1 (2010-04-05)
1438 ========================
1439 This is the first release of the notmuch mail system.
1441 It includes the libnotmuch library, the notmuch command-line
1442 interface, and an emacs-based interface to notmuch.
1444 Note: Notmuch will work best with Xapian 1.0.18 (or later) or Xapian
1445 1.1.4 (or later). Previous versions of Xapian (whether 1.0 or 1.1) had
1446 a performance bug that made notmuch very slow when modifying
1447 tags. This would cause distracting pauses when reading mail while
1448 notmuch would wait for Xapian when removing the "inbox" and "unread"
1449 tags from messages in a thread.