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.
17 Automatic tag query optimization
19 "notmuch tag" now automatically optimizes the user's query to
20 exclude messages whose tags won't change. In the past, we've
21 suggested that people do this by hand; this is no longer necessary.
23 Don't sort messages when creating a dump file
25 This speeds up tag dumps considerably, without any loss of
26 information. To replicate the old behavior of sorted output (for
27 example to compare two dump files), one can use e.g. sort(1).
32 Reduction of memory leaks
34 Two memory leaks when searching and showing messages were identified
35 and fixed in this release.
42 notmuch-show-advance (bound to the spacebar in notmuch-show-mode) had
43 a bug that caused it to always jump to the next message, even if it
44 should have scrolled down to show more of the current message instead.
47 Support "notmuch new" as a notmuch-poll-script
49 It's now possible to use "notmuch new" as a notmuch-poll-script
50 directly. This is also the new default. This allows taking better
51 advantage of the "notmuch new" hooks from emacs without intermediate
54 Improvements in saved search management
56 New saved searches are now appended to the list of saved searches,
57 not inserted in front. It's also possible to define a sort function
58 for displaying saved searches; alphabetical sort is provided.
60 Hooks for notmuch-hello
62 Two new hooks have been added: "notmuch-hello-mode-hook" (called after
63 entering notmuch-hello-mode) and "notmuch-hello-refresh-hook" (called
64 after updating a notmuch-hello buffer).
66 New face for crypto parts headers
68 Crypto parts used to be displayed with a hardcoded color. A new face
69 has been introduced to fix this: notmuch-crypto-part-header. It
70 defaults to the same value as before, but can be customized to match
73 Use space as default thousands separator
75 Large numbers in notmuch-hello are now displayed using a space as
76 thousands separator (e.g. "123 456" instead of "123,456"). This can be
77 changed by customizing "notmuch-hello-thousands-separator".
79 Call notmuch-show instead of notmuch-search when clicking on
82 New function notmuch-show-advance
84 This new function advances through just the current thread, and is
85 less invasive than notmuch-show-advance-and-archive. It can easily
88 (define-key notmuch-show-mode-map " " 'notmuch-show-advance)
90 Various performance improvements.
95 The tool contrib/notmuch-deliver helps with initial delivery and
96 tagging of mail (replacing running notmuch new).
99 Notmuch 0.10.2 (2011-12-04)
100 ===========================
105 Fix crash in python bindings.
107 The python bindings did not call g_type_init, which caused crashes
108 for some, but not all users.
110 Notmuch 0.10.1 (2011-11-25)
111 ===========================
118 Argument processing changes in 0.10 introduced a bug where "notmuch
119 --help" crashed while "notmuch help" worked fine. This is fixed in
122 Notmuch 0.10 (2011-11-23)
123 =========================
125 New build and testing features
126 ------------------------------
128 Emacs tests are now done in dtach. This means that dtach is now
129 needed to run the notmuch test suite, at least until the checking for
130 prerequisites is improved.
132 Full test coverage of the stashing feature in Emacs.
134 New command-line features
135 -------------------------
137 Add "notmuch restore --accumulate" option
139 The --accumulate switch causes the union of the existing and new tags to be
140 applied, instead of replacing each message's tags as they are read in from
143 Add search terms to "notmuch dump"
145 The dump command now takes an optional search term much like notmuch
146 search/show/tag. The output file argument of dump is deprecated in
147 favour of using stdout.
149 Add "notmuch search" --offset and --limit options
151 The search command now takes options --offset=[-]N and --limit=N to limit
152 the number of results shown.
154 Add "notmuch count --output" option
156 The count command is now capable of counting threads in addition to
157 messages. This is selected using the new --output=(threads|messages) option.
159 New emacs UI features
160 ---------------------
162 Add tab-completion for notmuch-search and notmuch-search-filter
164 These functions now support completion tags for query parts
165 starting with "tag:".
167 Turn "id:MSG-ID" links into buttons associated with notmuch searches
169 Text of the form "id:MSG-ID" in mails is now a clickable button that
170 opens a notmuch search for the given message id.
172 Add keybinding ('c I') for stashing Message-ID's without an id: prefix
174 Reduces manual labour when stashing them for use outside notmuch.
176 Do not query on notmuch-search exit
178 It is harmless to kill the external notmuch process, so the user
179 is no longer interrogated when they interrupt a search.
184 Emacs now constructs large search buffers more efficiently
186 Search avoids opening and parsing message files
188 We now store more information in the database so search no longer
189 has to open every message file to get basic headers. This can
190 improve search speed by as much as 10X, but taking advantage of this
191 requires a database rebuild:
193 notmuch dump > notmuch.dump
194 # Backup, then remove notmuch database ($MAIL/.notmuch)
196 notmuch restore notmuch.dump
198 New collection of add-on tools
199 ------------------------------
201 The source directory "contrib" contains tools built on notmuch. These
202 tools are not part of notmuch, and you should check their individual
203 licenses. Feel free to report problems with them to the notmuch
206 nmbug - share tags with a given prefix
208 nmbug helps maintain a git repo containing all tags with a given
209 prefix (by default "notmuch::"). Tags can be shared by commiting
210 them to git in one location and restoring in another.
212 Notmuch 0.9 (2011-10-01)
213 ========================
215 New, general features
216 ---------------------
218 Correct handling of interruptions during "notmuch new"
220 "notmuch new" now operates as a series of small, self-consistent
221 transactions, so it can correctly resume after an interruption or
222 crash. Previously, interruption could lose existing tags, fail to
223 detect messages on resume, or leave the database in a state
224 temporarily or permanently inconsistent with the mail store.
231 notmuch_database_begin_atomic and notmuch_database_end_atomic allow
232 multiple database operations to be performed atomically.
234 notmuch_database_find_message_by_filename does exactly what it says.
238 notmuch_database_find_message (and n_d_f_m_by_filename) now return
239 a status indicator and uses an output parameter for the
240 message. This change required changing the SONAME of libnotmuch to
243 Python bindings changes
244 -----------------------
246 - Re-encode python unicode objects to utf-8 before passing back to
248 - Support Database().begin_atomic()/end_atomic()
249 - Support Database().find_message_by_filename()
250 NB! This needs a db opened in READ-WRITE mode currently, or it will crash
251 the python process. The is a limitation (=bug) of the underlying libnotmuch.
252 - Fixes where we would not throw NotmuchErrors when we should (Justus Winter)
253 - Update for n_d_find_message* API changes (see above).
255 Ruby bindings changes
256 ---------------------
258 - Wrap new library functions notmuch_database_{begin,end}_atomic.
259 - Add new exception Notmuch::UnbalancedAtomicError.
260 - Rename destroy to destroy! according to Ruby naming conventions.
261 - Update for n_d_find_message* API changes (see above).
266 * Add gpg callback to crypto sigstatus buttons to retrieve/refresh
268 * Add notmuch-show-refresh-view function (and corresponding binding)
269 to refresh the view of a notmuch-show buffer.
271 Reply formatting cleanup
272 ------------------------
274 "notmuch reply" no longer includes notification that non-leafnode
275 MIME parts are being suppressed.
277 Notmuch 0.8 (2011-09-10)
278 ========================
280 Improved handling of message/rfc822 parts
282 Both in the CLI and the emacs interface. Output of rfc822 parts now
283 includes the primary headers, as well as the body and all subparts.
284 Output of the completely raw rfc822-formatted message, including all
285 headers, is unfortunately not yet supported (but hopefully will be
288 Improved Build system portability
290 Certain parts of the shell script generating notmuch.sym were
291 specific to the GNU versions of sed and nm. The new version should
292 be more portable to e.g. OpenBSD.
294 Documentation update for Ruby bindings
296 Added documentation, typo fixes, and improved support for rdoc.
298 Unicode, iterator, PEP8 changes for python bindings
300 - PEP8 (code formatting) changes for python files.
301 - Remove Tags.__len__ ; see 0.6 release notes for motivation.
302 - Decode headers as UTF8, encode (unicode) database paths as UTF8.
304 Notmuch 0.7 (2011-08-01)
305 ========================
307 Vim interface improvements
308 --------------------------
310 Jason Woofenden provided a number of bug fixes for the Vim interface
312 * fix citation/signature fold lengths
313 * fix cig/cit parsing within multipart/*
314 * fix on-screen instructions for show-signature
315 * fix from list reformatting in search view
316 * fix space key: now archives (did opposite)
318 Uwe Kleine-König contributed
320 * use full path for sendmail/doc fix
321 * fix compose temp file name
323 Python Bindings changes
324 -----------------------
326 Sebastian Spaeth contributed two changes related to unicode and UTF8:
328 * message tags are now explicitly unicode
329 * query string is encoded as a UTF8 byte string
331 Build-System improvements
332 ------------------------
334 Generate notmuch.sym after the relevant object files
336 This fixes a bug in parallel building. Thanks to Thomas Jost for the
339 Notmuch 0.6.1 (2011-07-17)
340 ==========================
345 Re-export Xapian exception typeinfo symbols.
347 It turned out our aggressive symbol hiding caused problems for
348 people running gcc 4.4.5.
350 Notmuch 0.6 (2011-07-01)
351 =======================
352 New, general features
353 ---------------------
354 Folder-based searching
356 Notmuch queries can now include a search term to match the
357 directories in which mail files are stored (within the mail
358 storage). The syntax is as follows:
362 For example, one might use things such as:
368 to match any path containing a directory "spam", "work/todo", or
369 containing a directory starting with "2011-", respectively.
371 This feature is particularly useful for users of delivery-agent
372 software (such as procmail or maildrop) that is filtering mail and
373 delivering it to particular folders, or users of systems such as
374 Gmail that use filesystem directories to indicate message tags.
376 NOTE: Only messages that are newly indexed with this version of
377 notmuch will be searchable with folder: terms. In order to enable
378 this feature for all mail, the entire notmuch index will need to be
381 notmuch dump > notmuch.dump
382 # Backup, then remove notmuch database ($MAIL/.notmuch)
384 notmuch restore notmuch.dump
388 Both the command line interface and the emacs-interface have new
389 support for PGP/MIME, detailed below. Thanks to Daniel Kahn Gillmor
390 and Jameson Graef Rollins for making this happen.
392 New, automatic tags: "signed" and "encrypted"
394 These tags will automatically be applied to messages containing
395 multipart/signed and multipart/encrypted parts.
397 NOTE: Only messages that are newly indexed with this version of
398 notmuch will receive these tags.
400 New command-line features
401 -------------------------
402 Add new "notmuch show --verify" option for signature verification
404 This option instruct notmuch to verify the signature of
405 PGP/MIME-signed parts.
407 Add new "notmuch show --decrypt" and "notmuch reply --decrypt" options
409 This option instructs notmuch to decrypt PGP/MIME-encrypted parts.
410 Note that this feature currently requires gpg-agent and a passphrase entry
411 tool (e.g. pinentry-gtk or pinentry-curses).
413 Proper nesting of multipart parts in "notmuch show" output
415 MIME parts are now display with proper nesting to reflect original
416 MIME hierarchy of a message. This allows clients to correctly
417 analyze the MIME structure, (such as, for example, determining to
418 which parts a signature part applies).
420 Add new "notmuch show --part" option
422 This is a replacement for the older "notmuch part" command, (which
423 is now deprecated—it should still work as always, but is no longer
424 documented). Putting part output under "notmuch show" allows for all
425 of the "notmuch show" options to be applied when extracting a single
426 part, (such as --format=json for extracting a message part with JSON
429 Deprecate "notmuch search-tags", (in favor of "notmuch search --output=tags *")
431 The "notmuch search-tags" sub-command has been redundant since the
432 addition of the --output=tags option to "notmuch search". We now
433 make that more clear by deprecating "notmuch search-tags", (dropping
434 it from the documentation). We do continue to support the old syntax
435 by translating it internally to the new call.
437 Performance improvements
438 ------------------------
439 Faster searches (by doing fewer searches to construct threads)
441 Whenever a user asks for search results as threads, notmuch first
442 performs a search for messages matching the query, then performs
443 additional searches to find other messages in the resulting threads.
445 Removing inefficiencies and redundancies in these secondary searches
446 results in a measured speedups of 1.5x for a typical search.
448 Faster searches (by doing fewer passes to gather message data)
450 Optimizing Xapian data access patterns (using a single pass to get
451 all message-document data rather than a pass for each data type)
452 results in a measured speedup of 1.7x for a typical search.
454 The benefits of this optimization combine with the preceding
455 optimization. With both in place, Austin Clements measured a speedup
456 of 2.5x for a search of all messages in his inbox (was 4.5s, now
457 1.8s). Thanks, Austin!
459 Faster initial indexing
461 More efficient indexing of new messages results in a measured
462 speedup of 1.4x for the initial indexing of 3 GB of mail (1h 14m
463 rather than 1h 46m). Thanks to Austin Clements and Michal Sojka.
465 Make "notmuch new" faster for unchanged directories
467 Optimizing to not do any further examinations of sub-directories
468 when the filesystem indicates that a directory is unchanged from the
469 last "notmuch new" results in measured speedups of 8.5 for the "No
470 new mail" case, (was 0.77s, now 0.09s). Thanks to Karel Zak.
472 New emacs-interface features
473 ----------------------------
475 Support for PGP/MIME (GnuPG)
477 Automatically indicate validity of signatures for multipart/signed
478 messages. Automatically display decrypted content for
479 multipart/encrypted messages. See the emacs variable
480 notmuch-crypto-process-mime for more information. Note that this
481 needs gpg-agent and a pinentry tool just as the command line tools.
482 Also note there is no support SMIME yet.
484 Output of pipe command is now displayed if pipe command fails
486 This is extremely useful in the common use case of piping a patch to
487 "git am". If git fails to cleanly merge the patch the error messages
488 from the failed merge are now clearly displayed to the user, (where
489 previously they were silently hidden from the user).
491 User-selectable From address
493 A user can choose which configured email addresses should be used as
494 the From address whenever composing a new message. To do so, simply
495 press C-u before the command which will open a new message. Emacs
496 will prompt for the from address to use.
498 The user can customize the "Notmuch Identities" setting in the
499 notmuch customize group in order to use addresses other than those in
500 the notmuch configuration file if desired.
502 The user can also choose to always be prompted for the from address
503 when composing a new message (without having to use C-u) by setting
504 the "Notmuch Always Prompt For Sender" option in the notmuch
507 Hiding of repeated subjects in collapsed thread view
509 In notmuch-show mode, if a collapsed message has the same subject as
510 its parent, the subject is not shown.
512 Automatic detection and hiding of original message in top-posted message
514 When a message contains a line looking something like:
516 ----- Original Message -----
518 emacs hides this and all subsequent lines as an "original message",
519 (allowing the user to click or press enter on the "original message"
520 button to display it again). This makes the handling of top-posted
521 citations work much like conventional citations.
523 New hooks for running code when tags are modified
525 Some users want to perform additional actions whenever a particular
526 tag is added/removed from a message. This could be used to, for
527 example, interface with some external spam-recognition training
528 tool. To facilitate this, two new hooks are added which can be
529 modified in the following settings of the notmuch customize group:
531 Notmuch Before Tag Hook
532 Notmuch After Tag Hook
534 New optional support for hiding some multipart/alternative parts
536 Many emails are sent with redundant content within a
537 multipart/alternative group (such as a text/plain part as well as a
538 text/html part). Users can configure the setting:
540 Notmuch Show All Multipart/Alternative Parts
542 to "off" in the notmuch customize group to have the interface
543 automatically hide some part alternatives (such as text/html
544 parts). This new part hiding is not configured by default yet
545 because there's not yet a simple way to re-display such a hidden
546 part if it is not actually redundant with a displayed part.
548 Better rendering of text/x-vcalendar parts
550 These parts are now displayed in a format suitable for use with the
553 Avoid getting confused by Subject and Author fields with newline characters
555 Replacing all characters with ASCII code less than 32 with a question mark.
557 Cleaner display of From line in email messages (remove double quotes,
558 and drop "name" if it's actually just a repeat of the email address).
560 Vim interface improvements
561 --------------------------
562 Felipe Contreras provided a number of updates for the vim interface:
564 * Using sendmail directly rather than mailx,
565 * Implementing archive in show view
566 * Add support to mark as read in show and search views
567 * Add delete commands
570 Bindings improvements
571 ---------------------
572 Ruby bindings are now much more complete
574 Including QUERY.sort, QUERY.to_s, MESSAGE.maildir_flags_to_tags,
575 MESSAGE.tags_to_maildir_flags, and MESSAGE.get_filenames
577 * Python bindings have been updated and extended
578 (docs online at http://packages.python.org/notmuch/)
581 - Message().get_filenames(),
582 - Message().tags_to_maildir_flags(),Message().maildir_flags_to_tags()
583 - list(Threads()) and list(Messages) works now
585 - Message().__cmp__() and __hash__()
586 These allow, for example:
589 As well as set arithmetic on Messages():
591 s1, s2= set(msgs1), set(msgs2)
596 - len(Messages()) as it exhausted the iterator.
597 Use len(list(Messages())) or
598 Query.count_messages() to get the length.
600 Added initial Go bindings in bindings/go
602 New build-system features
603 -------------------------
604 Added support for building in a directory other than the source directory
606 This can be used with the widely-supported idiom of simply running
607 the configure script from some other directory:
614 Fix to save configure options for future, implicit runs of configure
616 When a user updates the source (such as with "git pull") calling
617 "make" may cause an automatic re-run of the configure script. When
618 this happens, the configure script will automatically be called with
619 the same options the user originally passed in the most-recent
620 manual invocation of configure.
622 New test-suite feature
623 ----------------------
624 Binary for bash for running test suite now located via PATH.
626 The notmuch test suite requires a fairly recent version of bash (>=
627 bash 4). As some systems supply an older version of bash at
628 /bin/bash, the test suite is now updated to search $PATH to locate
629 the bash binary. This allows users of systems with old /bin/bash to
630 simply install bash >= 4 somewhere on $PATH before /bin and then use
633 Support for testing output with a trailing newline.
635 Previously, some tests would fail to notice a difference in the
636 presence/absence of a trailing newline in a program output, (which
637 has led to bugs in the past). Now, carefully-written tests (using
638 test_expect_equal_file rather than test_expect_equal) will detect
639 any change in the presence/absence of a trailing newline. Many tests
640 are updated to take advantage of this.
642 Avoiding accessing user's $HOME while running test suite
644 The test suite now carefully creates its own HOME directory. This
645 allows the test suite to be run with no existing HOME directory, (as
646 some build systems apparently do), and avoids test-suite differences
647 due to configuration files in the users HOME directory.
652 Output *all* files for "notmuch search --output=files"
654 For the cases where multiple files have the same Message ID,
655 previous versions of notmuch would output only one such file. This
656 command is now fixed to correctly output all files.
658 Fixed spurious search results from "overlapped" indexing of addresses
660 This fixed a bug where a search for:
662 to:user@elsewhere.com
664 would incorrectly match a message sent:
666 To: user@example,com, someone@elsewhere.com
668 Fix --output=json when search has no results
670 A bug present since notmuch 0.4 had caused searches with no results
671 to produce an invalid json object. This is now fixed to cleanly
672 return a valid json object representing an empty array "[]" as
675 fix the automatic detection of the From address for "notmuch reply"
676 from the Received headers in some cases.
678 Fix core dump on DragonFlyBSD due to -1 return value from
679 sysconf(_SC_GETPW_R_SIZE_MAX).
681 Cleaned up several memory leaks
683 Eliminated a few, rare segmentation faults and a double-free.
685 Fix libnotmuch library to only export notmuch API functions
687 Previous release of the notmuch library also exported some Xapian
688 C++ exception type symbols. These were never part of the library
689 interface and were never intended to be exported.
691 Emacs-interface bug fixes
692 -------------------------
693 Display any unexpected output or errors from "notmuch search" invocations
695 Previously any misformatted output or trailing error messages were
696 silently ignored. This output is now clearly displayed. This fix was
697 very helpful in identifying and fixing the bug described below.
699 Fix bug where some threads would be missing from large search results
701 When a search returned a "large" number of results, the emacs
702 interface was incorrectly dropping one thread every time the output
703 of the "notmuch search" process spanned the emacs read-buffer. This
706 Avoid re-compression of .gz files (and similar) when saving attachment
708 Emacs was being too clever for its own good and trying to
709 re-compress pre-compressed .gz files when saving such attachments
710 (potentially corrupting the attachment). The emacs interface is
711 fixed to avoid this bug.
713 Fix hiding of a message when a previously-hidden citation is visible
715 Previously the citation would remain visible in this case. This is
716 fixed so that hiding a message hides all parts.
718 Notmuch 0.5 (2010-11-11)
719 ========================
720 New, general features
721 ---------------------
722 Maildir-flag synchronization
724 Notmuch now knows how to synchronize flags in maildir filenames with
725 tags in the notmuch database. The following flag/tag mappings are
734 'S' unread (added when 'S' flag is not present)
736 The synchronization occurs in both directions, (for example, adding
737 the 'S' flag to a file will cause the "unread" tag to be added, and
738 adding the "replied" tag to a message will cause the file to be
739 renamed with an 'R' flag).
741 This synchronization is enabled by default for users of the
742 command-line interface, (though only files in directories named
743 "cur" or "new" will be renamed). It can be disabled by setting the
744 new maildir.synchronize_flags option in the configuration file. For
747 notmuch config set maildir.synchronize_flags false
749 Users upgrading may also want to run "notmuch setup" once (just
750 accept the existing configuration) to get a new, nicely-commented
751 [maildir] section added to the configuration file.
753 For users of the notmuch library, the new synchronization
754 functionality is available with the following two new functions:
756 notmuch_message_maildir_flags_to_tags
757 notmuch_message_tags_to_maildir_flags
759 It is anticipated that future improvements to this support will
760 allow for safe synchronization of the 'T' flag with the "deleted"
761 tag, as well as support for custom flag/tag mappings.
765 Support for querying multiple filenames for a single message
767 It is common for the mailstore to contain multiple files with the
768 same message ID. Previously, notmuch would always hide these
769 duplicate files, (returning a single, arbitrary filename with
770 notmuch_message_get_filename).
772 With this release, library users can access all filenames for a
773 message with the new function:
775 notmuch_message_get_filenames
777 Together with notmuch_filenames_valid, notmuch_filenames_get, and
778 notmuch_filenames_move_to_next it is now possible to iterate over
779 all available filenames for a given message.
781 New command-line features
782 -------------------------
783 New "notmuch show --format=raw" for getting at original email contents
785 This new feature allows for a fully-functional email client to be
786 built on top of the notmuch command-line without needing any direct
787 access to the mail store itself.
789 For example, it's now possible to run "emacs -f notmuch" on a local
790 machine with only ssh access to the mail store/notmuch database. To
791 do this, simply set the notmuch-command variable in emacs to the
792 name of a script containing:
794 ssh user@host notmuch "$@"
796 If the ssh client has enabled connection sharing (ControlMaster
797 option in OpenSSH), the emacs interface can be quite responsive this
802 Fix "notmuch search" to print nothing when nothing matches
804 The 0.4 release had a bug in which:
806 notmuch search <expression-with-no-matches>
808 would produce a single blank line of output, (where previous
809 versions would produce no output. This fix also causes a change in
810 the --format=json output, (which would previously produce "[]" and
811 now produces nothing).
813 Emacs interface improvements
814 ----------------------------
815 Fix to allow pipe ('|') command to work when using notmuch over ssh
817 Fix count of lines in hidden signatures.
819 Omit repeated subject lines in (collapsed) thread display.
821 Display current thread subject in a header line.
823 Provide a "c i" binding to copy a thread ID from the search view.
825 Allow for notmuch-fcc-dirs to have a value of nil.
827 Also, the more complex form of notmuch-fcc-dirs now has a slightly
828 different format. It no longer has a special first-element, fallback
829 string. Instead it's now a list of cons cells where the car of each
830 cell is a regular expression to be matched against the sender
831 address, and the cdr is the name of a folder to use for an FCC. So
832 the old fallback behavior can be achieved by including a final cell
833 of (".*" . "default-fcc-folder").
835 Vim interface improvements
836 --------------------------
837 Felipe Contreras provided a number of updates for the vim interface.
839 These include optimizations, support for newer versions of vim, fixed
840 support for sending mail on modern systems, new commands, and
845 Added initial ruby bindings in bindings/ruby
847 Notmuch 0.4 (2010-11-01)
848 ========================
849 New command-line features
850 -------------------------
851 notmuch search --output=(summary|threads|messages|tags|files)
853 This new option allows for particular items to be returned from
854 notmuch searches. The "summary" option is the default and behaves
855 just as "notmuch search" has historically behaved.
857 The new option values allow for thread IDs, message IDs, lists of
858 tags, and lists of filenames to be returned from searches. It is
859 expected that this new option will be very useful in shell
860 scripts. For example:
862 for file in $(notmuch search --output=files <search-terms>); do
863 <operations-on> "$file"
866 notmuch show --format=mbox <search-specification>
868 This new option allows for the messages matching a search
869 specification to be presented as an mbox. Specifically the "mboxrd"
870 format is used which allows for reversible quoting of lines
871 beginning with "From ". A reader should remove a single '>' from the
872 beginning of all lines beginning with one or more '>' characters
873 followed by the 5 characters "From ".
875 notmuch config [get|set] <section>.<item> [value ...]
877 The new top-level "config" command allows for any value in the
878 notmuch configuration file to be queried or set to a new value. Both
879 single-valued and multi-valued items are supported, as our any
880 custom items stored in the configuration file.
882 Avoid setting Bcc header in "notmuch reply"
884 We decided that this was a bit heavy-handed as the actual mail
885 user-agent should be responsible for setting any Bcc option. Also,
886 see below for the notmuch/emacs user-agent now setting an Fcc by
887 default rather than Bcc.
891 Add notmuch_query_get_query_string and notmuch_query_get_sort
893 These are simply functions for querying properties of a
894 notmuch_query_t object.
898 Enable Fcc of all sent messages by default (to "sent" directory)
900 All messages sent from the emacs interface will now be saved to the
901 notmuch mail store where they will be incorporated to the database
902 by the next "notmuch new". By default, messages are saved to the
903 "sent" directory at the top-level of the mail store. This directory
904 can be customized by means of the "Notmuch Fcc Dirs" option in the
905 notmuch customize interface.
907 Ability to all open messages in a thread to a pipe
909 Historically, the '|' keybinding allows for piping a single message
910 to an external command. Now, by prefixing this key with a prefix
911 argument, (for example, by pressing "Control-U |"), all open
912 messages in the current thread will be sent to the external command.
914 Optional support for detecting inline patches
916 This hook is disabled by default but can be enabled with a checkbox
917 under "Notmuch Show Insert Text/Plain Hook" in the notmuch customize
918 interface. It allows for inline patches to be detected and treated
919 as if they were attachments, (with context-sensitive highlighting).
921 Automatically tag messages as "replied" when sending a reply
923 Messages replied to within the emacs interface will now be tagged as
924 "replied". This feature can easily be customized to add or remove
925 other tags as well. For example, a user might use a tag of
926 "needs-reply" and can configure this feature to automatically remove
927 that tag when replying. See "Notmuch Message Mark Replied" in the
928 notmuch customize interface.
930 Allow search-result color specifications to overlay each other
932 For example, one tag can specify the background color of matching
933 lines, while another can specify the foreground. With this change,
934 both settings will now be visible simultaneously, (which was not the
935 case in previous releases). See "Notmuch Search Line Faces" in the
936 notmuch customize interface.
938 Make hidden author names still available for incremental search.
940 When there is insufficient space to display all authors of a thread
941 in search results, the names of hidden authors are now still made
942 available to emacs' incremental search commands. As the user
943 searches, matching lines will temporarily expand to show the hidden
946 New binding of Control-TAB (works like TAB in reverse)
948 Many notmuch nodes already use TAB to navigate forward through
949 various items allowing actions, (message headers, email attachments,
950 etc.). The new Control-TAB binding operates similarly but in the
953 New build-system features
954 -------------------------
955 Various portability fixes have been applied
957 These include fixes for build failures on at least Solaris, FreeBSD,
958 and Fedora systems. We're hopeful that the notmuch code base is now
959 more portable than ever before.
961 Arrange for libnotmuch to be found automatically after make install
963 The notmuch build system is now careful to help the user avoid
964 errors of the form "libnotmuch.so could not be found" immediately
965 after installing. This support takes two forms:
967 1. If the library is installed to a system directory,
968 (configured in /etc/ld.so.conf), then "make install" will
969 automatically run ldconfig.
971 2. If the library is installed to a non-system directory, the
972 build system adds a DR_RUNPATH entry to the final binary
973 pointing to the directory to which the library is installed.
975 When this support works, the user should be able to run notmuch
976 immediately after "make install", without any errors trying to find
977 the notmuch library, and without having to manually set environment
978 variables such as LD_LIBRARY_PATH.
980 Check compiler/linker options before using them
982 The configure script now carefully checks that any desired
983 compilation options, (whether for enabling compiler warnings, or for
984 embedding rpath, etc.), are supported. Only supported options are
985 used in the resulting Makefile.
987 New test-suite features
988 -----------------------
989 New modularization of test suite.
991 Thanks to a gracious relicensing of the test-suite infrastructure
992 from the git project, notmuch now has a modular test suite. This
993 provides the ability to run individual sections of the test suite
994 rather than the whole things. It also provides better summary of
995 test results, with support for tests that are expected to fail
996 (BROKEN and FIXED) in addition to PASS and FAIL. Finally, it makes
997 it easy to run the test suite within valgrind (pass --valgrind to
998 notmuch-test or to any sub-script) which has been very useful.
1000 New testing of emacs interface.
1002 The test suite has been augmented to allow automated testing of the
1003 emacs interfaces. So far, this includes basic searches, display of
1004 threads, and tag manipulation. This also includes a test that a new
1005 message can successfully be sent out through a (dummy) SMTP server
1006 and that said message is successfully integrated into the notmuch
1007 database via the FCC setting.
1011 Fix potential corruption of database when "notmuch new " is interrupted.
1013 Previously, an interruption of "notmuch new" would (rarely) result
1014 in a corrupt database. The corruption would manifest itself by a
1015 persistent error of the form:
1017 document ID of 1234 has no thread ID
1019 The message-adding code has been carefully audited and reworked to
1020 avoid this sort of corruption regardless of when it is interrupted.
1022 Fix failure with extremely long message ID headers.
1024 Previously, a message with an extremely long message ID, (say, more
1025 than 300 characters), would fail to be added to notmuch, (triggering
1026 Xapian exceptions). This has now been fixed.
1028 Fix for messages with "charset=unknown-8bit"
1030 Previously, messages with this charset would cause notmuch to emit a
1031 GMime warning, (which would then trip up emacs or other interfaces
1032 parsing the notmuch results).
1034 Fix notmuch_query_search_threads function to return NULL on any exception
1036 Fix "notmuch search" to return non-zero if notmuch_query_search_threads fails
1038 Previously, this command could confusingly report a Xapian
1039 exception, yet still return an error code of 0. It now correctly
1040 returns a failing error code of 1 in this case.
1044 Fix to handle a message with a subject containing, for example "[1234]"
1046 Previously, a message subject containing a sequence of digits within
1047 square brackets would cause the emacs interface to mis-parse the
1048 output of "notmuch search". This would result in the message being
1049 mis-displayed and prevent the user from manipulating the message in
1050 the emacs interface.
1052 Fix to correctly handle message IDs containing ".."
1054 The emacs interface now properly quotes message IDs to avoid a
1055 Xapian bug in which the ".." within a message ID would be
1056 misinterpreted as a numeric range specification.
1058 Python-binding fixes
1059 --------------------
1060 The python bindings for notmuch have been updated to work with python3.
1062 Debian-specific fixes
1063 ---------------------
1064 Fix emacs initialization so "M-x notmuch" works for users by default.
1066 Now, a new Debian user can immediately run "emacs -f notmuch" after
1067 "apt-get install notmuch". Previously, the user would have had to
1068 edit the ~/.emacs file to add "(require 'notmuch)" before this would
1071 Notmuch 0.3.1 (2010-04-27)
1072 ==========================
1075 Fix an infinite loop in "notmuch reply"
1077 This bug could be triggered by replying to a message where the
1078 user's primary email address did not appear in the To: header and
1079 the user had not configured any secondary email addresses. The bug
1080 was a simple re-use of the same iterator variable in nested loops.
1082 Fix a potential SEGV in "notmuch search"
1084 This bug could be triggered by an author name ending in a ','.
1085 Admittedly - that's almost certainly a spam email, but we never
1086 want notmuch to crash.
1090 Fix calculations for line wrapping in the primary "notmuch" view.
1092 Fix Fcc support to prompt to create a directory if the specified Fcc
1093 directory does not exist.
1097 Fix build on OpenSolaris (at least) due to missing 'extern "C"' block.
1099 Without this, the C++ sources could not find strcasestr and the
1100 final linking of notmuch would fail.
1102 Notmuch 0.3 (2010-04-27)
1103 ========================
1104 New command-line features
1105 -------------------------
1106 User-configurable tags for new messages
1108 A new "new.tags" option is available in the configuration file to
1109 determine which tags are applied to new messages. Run "notmuch
1110 setup" to generate new documentation within ~/.notmuch-config on how
1111 to specify this value.
1113 Threads search results named based on subjects that match search
1115 This means that when new mails arrived to a thread you've previously
1116 read, and the new mails have a new subject, you will see that
1117 subject in the search results rather than the old subject.
1119 Faster operation of "notmuch tag" (avoid unneeded sorting)
1121 Since the user just wants to tag all matching messages, we can make
1122 things perform a bit faster by avoiding the sort.
1124 Even Better guessing of From: header for "notmuch reply"
1126 Notmuch now looks at a number of headers when trying to figure out
1127 the best From: header to use in a reply. This is helpful if you have
1128 several configured email addresses, and you also subscribe to various
1129 mailing lists with different addresses, (so that mails you are
1130 replying to won't always include your subscribed address in the To:
1133 Indication of author names that match a search
1135 When notmuch displays threads as the result of a search, it now
1136 lists the authors that match the search before listing the other
1137 authors in the thread. It inserts a pipe '|' symbol between the last
1138 matching and first non-matching author. This is especially useful in
1139 a search that includes tag:unread. Now the authors of the unread
1140 messages in the thread are listed first.
1142 New: Python bindings
1143 --------------------
1144 Sebastian Spaeth has contributed his python bindings for the notmuch
1145 library to the central repository. These bindings were previously
1146 known as "cnotmuch" within python but have now been renamed to be
1147 accessible with a simple, and more official-looking "import notmuch".
1149 The bindings have already proven very useful as people proficient in
1150 python have been able to easily develop programs to do notmuch-based
1151 searches for email-address completion, maildir-flag synchronization,
1154 These bindings are available within the bindings/python directory, but
1155 are not yet integrated into the top-level Makefiles, nor the top-level
1156 package-building scripts. Improvements are welcome.
1158 Emacs interface improvements
1159 ----------------------------
1160 An entirely new initial view for notmuch, (friendly yet powerful)
1162 Some of us call the new view "notmuch hello" but you can get at it
1163 by simply calling "emacs -f notmuch". The new view provides a search
1164 bar where new searches can be performed. It also displays a list of
1165 recent searches, along with a button to save any of these, giving it
1166 a new name as a "saved search". Many people find these "saved
1167 searches" one of the most convenient ways of organizing their mail,
1168 (providing all of the features of "folders" in other mail clients,
1169 but without any of the disadvantages).
1171 Finally, this view can also optionally display all of the tags that
1172 exist in the database, along with a count for each tag, and a custom
1173 search of messages with that tag that's simply a click (or keypress)
1176 Note: For users that liked the original mode of "emacs -f notmuch"
1177 immediately displaying a particular search result, we
1178 recommend instead running something like:
1180 emacs --eval '(notmuch search "tag:inbox" t)'
1182 The "t" means to sort the messages in an "oldest first" order,
1183 (as notmuch would do previously by default). You can also
1184 leave that off to have your search results in "newest first"
1187 Full-featured "customize" support for configuring notmuch
1189 Notmuch now plugs in well to the emacs "customize" mode to make it
1190 much simpler to find things about the notmuch interface that can be
1191 tweaked by the user.
1193 You can get to this mode by starting at the main "Customize" menu in
1194 emacs, then browsing through "Applications", "Mail", and
1195 "Notmuch". Or you can go straight to "M-x customize-group"
1198 Once you're at the customize screen, you'll see a list of documented
1199 options that can be manipulated along with checkboxes, drop-down
1200 selectors, and text-entry boxes for configuring the various
1203 Support for doing tab-completion of email addresses
1205 This support currently relies on an external program,
1206 (notmuch-addresses), that is not yet shipped with notmuch
1207 itself. But multiple, suitable implementations of this program have
1208 already been written that generate address completions by doing
1209 notmuch searches of your email collection. For example, providing
1210 first those addresses that you have composed messages to in the
1213 One such program (implemented in python with the python bindings to
1214 notmuch) is available via:
1216 git clone http://jkr.acm.jhu.edu/git/notmuch_addresses.git
1218 Install that program as notmuch-addresses on your PATH, and then
1219 hitting TAB on a partial email address or name within the To: or Cc:
1220 line of an email message will provide matching completions.
1222 Support for file-based (Fcc) delivery of sent messages to mail store
1224 This isn't yet enabled by default. To enable this, one will have to
1225 set the "Notmuch Fcc Dirs" setting within the notmuch customize
1226 screen, (see its documentation there for details). We anticipate
1227 making this automatic in a future release.
1229 New 'G' key binding to trigger mail refresh (G == "Get new mail")
1231 The 'G' key works wherever '=' works. Before refreshing the screen
1232 it calls an external program that can be used to poll email servers,
1233 run notmuch new and setup specific tags for the new emails. The
1234 script to be called should be configured with the "Notmuch Poll
1235 Script" setting in the customize interface. This script will
1236 typically invoke "notmuch new" and then perhaps several "notmuch
1239 Implement emacs message display with the JSON output from notmuch.
1241 This is much more robust than the previous implementation, (where
1242 some HTML mails and mail quoting the notmuch code with the delimiter
1243 characters in it would cause the parser to fall over).
1245 Better handling of HTML messages and MIME attachments (inline images!)
1247 Allow for any MIME parts that emacs can display to be displayed
1248 inline. This includes inline viewing of image attachments, (provided
1249 the window is large enough to fit the image at its natural size).
1251 Much more robust handling of HTML messages. Currently both text/plain
1252 and text/html alternates will be rendered next to each other. In a
1253 future release, users will be able to decide to see only one or the
1254 other representation.
1256 Each attachment now has its own button so that attachments can be
1257 saved individually (the 'w' key is still available to save all
1260 Customizable support for tidying of text/plain message content
1262 Many new functions are available for tidying up message
1263 content. These include options such as wrapping long lines,
1264 compressing duplicate blank lines, etc.
1266 Most of these are disabled by default, but can easily be enabled by
1267 clicking the available check boxes under the "Notmuch Show Insert
1268 Text/Plain Hook" within the notmuch customize screen.
1270 New support for searchable citations (even when hidden)
1272 When portions of overly-long citations are hidden, the contents of
1273 these citations will still be available for emacs' standard
1274 "incremental search" functions. When the search matches any portion
1275 of a hidden citation, the citation will become visible temporarily
1276 to display the search result.
1278 More flexible handling of header visibility
1280 As an answer to complaints from many users, the To, Cc, and Date
1281 headers of messages are no longer hidden by default. For those users
1282 that liked that these were hidden, a new "Notmuch Messages Headers
1283 Visible" option in the customize interface can be set to nil. The
1284 visibility of headers can still be toggled on a per-message basis
1285 with the 'h' keybinding.
1287 For users that don't want to see some subset of those headers, the
1288 new "Notmuch Message Headers" variable can be customized to list
1289 only those headers that should be present in the display of a message.
1291 The Return key now toggles message visibility anywhere
1293 Previously this worked only on the first summary-line of a message.
1295 Customizable formatting of search results
1297 The user can easily customize the order, width, and formatting of
1298 the various fields in a "notmuch search" buffer. See the "Notmuch
1299 Search Result Format" section of the customize interface.
1301 Generate nicer names for search buffers when using a saved search.
1303 Add a notmuch User-Agent header when sending mail from notmuch/emacs.
1305 New keybinding (M-Ret) to open all collapsed messages in a thread.
1309 Provide a new NOTMUCH_SORT_UNSORTED value for queries
1311 This can be somewhat faster when sorting simply isn't desired. For
1312 example when collecting a set of messages that will all be
1313 manipulated identically, (adding a tag, removing a tag, deleting the
1314 messages), then there's no advantage to sorting the messages by
1319 Fix to compile against GMime 2.6
1321 Previously notmuch insisted on being able to find GMime 2.4, (even
1322 though GMime 2.6 would have worked all along).
1324 Fix configure script to accept (and ignore) various standard options.
1326 For example, those that the Gentoo build scripts expect configure to
1327 accept are now all accepted.
1331 A large number of new tests for the many new features.
1333 Better display of output from failed tests.
1335 Now shows failures with diff rather than forcing the user to gaze at
1336 complete actual and expected output looking for deviation.
1338 Notmuch 0.2 (2010-04-16)
1339 ========================
1340 This is the second release of the notmuch mail system, with actual
1341 detailed release notes this time!
1343 This release consists of a number of minor new features that make
1344 notmuch more pleasant to use, and a few fairly major bug fixes.
1346 We didn't quite hit our release target of "about a week" from the 0.1
1347 release, (0.2 is happening 11 days after 0.1), but we hope to do
1348 better for next week. Look forward to some major features coming to
1349 notmuch in subsequent releases.
1355 Better guessing of From: header.
1357 Notmuch now tries harder to guess which configured address should be
1358 used as the From: line in a "notmuch reply". It will examine the
1359 Received: headers if it fails to find any configured address in To:
1360 or Cc:. This allows it to often choose the correct address even when
1361 replying to a message sent to a mailing list, and not directly to a
1364 Make "notmuch count" with no arguments count all messages
1366 Previously, it was hard to construct a search term that was
1367 guaranteed to match all messages.
1369 Provide a new special-case search term of "*" to match all messages.
1371 This can be used in any command accepting a search term, such as
1372 "notmuch search '*'". Note that you'll want to take care that the
1373 shell doesn't expand * against the current files. And note that the
1374 support for "*" is a special case. It's only meaningful as a single
1375 search term and loses its special meaning when combined with any
1378 Automatically detect thread connections even when a parent message is
1381 Previously, if two or more message were received with a common
1382 parent, but that parent was not received, then these messages would
1383 not be recognized as belonging to the same thread. This is now fixed
1384 so that such messages are properly connected in a thread.
1388 Fix potential data loss in "notmuch new" with SIGINT
1390 One code path in "notmuch new" was not properly handling
1391 SIGINT. Previously, this could lead to messages being removed from
1392 the database (and their tags being lost) if the user pressed
1393 Control-C while "notmuch new" was working.
1395 Fix segfault when a message includes a MIME part that is empty.
1397 Fix handling of non-ASCII characters with --format=json
1399 Previously, characters outside the range of 7-bit ASCII were
1400 silently dropped from the JSON output. This led to corrupted display
1401 of utf-8 content in the upcoming notmuch web-based frontends.
1403 Fix headers to be properly decoded in "notmuch reply"
1405 Previously, the user might see:
1407 Subject: Re: =?iso-8859-2?q?Rozlu=E8ka?=
1411 Subject: Re: Rozlučka
1413 The former text is properly encoded to be RFC-compliant SMTP, will
1414 be sent correctly, and will be properly decoded by the
1415 recipient. But the user trying to edit the reply would likely be
1416 unable to read or edit that field in its encoded form.
1418 Emacs client features
1419 ---------------------
1420 Show the last few lines of citations as well as the first few lines.
1422 It's often the case that the last sentence of a citation is what is
1423 being replied to directly, so the last few lines are often much more
1424 important. The number of lines shown at the beginning and end of any
1425 citation can be configured, (notmuch-show-citation-lines-prefix and
1426 notmuch-show-citation-lines-suffix).
1428 The '+' and '-' commands in the search view can now add and remove
1431 Selective bulk tagging is now possible by selecting a region of
1432 threads and then using either the '+' or '-' keybindings. Bulk
1433 tagging is still available for all threads matching the current
1434 search with the '*' binding.
1436 More meaningful buffer names for thread-view buffers.
1438 Notmuch now uses the Subject of the thread as the buffer
1439 name. Previously it was using the thread ID, which is a meaningless
1442 Provide for customized colors of threads in search view based on tags.
1444 See the documentation of notmuch-search-line-faces, (or us "M-x
1445 customize" and browse to the "notmuch" group within "Applications"
1446 and "Mail"), for details on how to configure this colorization.
1448 Build-system features
1449 ---------------------
1450 Add support to properly build libnotmuch on Darwin systems (OS X).
1452 Add support to configure for many standard options.
1454 We include actual support for:
1456 --includedir --mandir --sysconfdir
1458 And accept and silently ignore several more:
1460 --build --infodir --libexecdir --localstatedir
1461 --disable-maintainer-mode --disable-dependency-tracking
1463 Install emacs client in "make install" rather than requiring a
1464 separate "make install-emacs".
1466 Automatically compute versions numbers between releases.
1468 This support uses the git-describe notation, so a version such as
1469 0.1-144-g43cbbfc indicates a version that is 144 commits since the
1470 0.1 release and is available as git commit "43cbbfc".
1472 Add a new "make test" target to run the test suite and actually verify
1475 Notmuch 0.1 (2010-04-05)
1476 ========================
1477 This is the first release of the notmuch mail system.
1479 It includes the libnotmuch library, the notmuch command-line
1480 interface, and an emacs-based interface to notmuch.
1482 Note: Notmuch will work best with Xapian 1.0.18 (or later) or Xapian
1483 1.1.4 (or later). Previous versions of Xapian (whether 1.0 or 1.1) had
1484 a performance bug that made notmuch very slow when modifying
1485 tags. This would cause distracting pauses when reading mail while
1486 notmuch would wait for Xapian when removing the "inbox" and "unread"
1487 tags from messages in a thread.