1 Notmuch 0.6 (2011-07-XX)
2 =======================
7 Notmuch queries can now include a search term to match the
8 directories in which mail files are stored (within the mail
9 storage). The syntax is as follows:
13 For example, one might use things such as:
18 or anything else that matches directories within your mail storage.
20 This feature is particularly useful for users of delivery-agent
21 software (such as procmail or maildrop) that is filtering mail and
22 delivering it to particular folders, or users of systems such as
23 Gmail that use filesystem directories to indicate message tags.
25 NOTE: Only messages that are newly indexed with this version of
26 notmuch will be searchable with folder: terms. In order to enable
27 this feature for all mail, the entire notmuch index will need to be
30 notmuch dump > notmuch.dump
31 # Backup, then remove notmuch database ($MAIL/.notmuch)
33 notmuch restore notmuch.dump
35 New, automatic tags: "signed" and "encrypted"
37 These tags will automatically be applied to messages containing
38 multipart/signed and multipart/encrypted parts.
40 NOTE: Only messages that are newly indexed with this version of
41 notmuch will receive these tags. In order to enable this feature for
42 all mail, the entire notmuch index will need to be rebuilt (see
45 New command-line features
46 -------------------------
47 Add new "notmuch show --verify" option for signature verification
49 This option instruct notmuch to verify the signature of
50 PGP/MIME-signed parts.
52 Add new "notmuch show --decrypt" and "notmuch reply --decrypt" options
54 This option instructs notmuch to decrypt PGP/MIME-encrypted parts.
56 Proper nesting of multipart parts in "notmuch show" output
58 MIME parts are now display with proper nesting to reflect original
59 MIME hierarchy of a message. This allows clients to correctly
60 analyze the MIME structure, (such as, for example, determining to
61 which parts a signature part applies).
63 Add new "notmuch show --part" option
65 This is a replacement for the older "notmuch part" command, (which
66 is now deprecated—it should still work as always, but is no longer
67 documented). Putting part output under "notmuch show" allows for all
68 of the "notmuch show" options to be applied when extracting a single
69 part, (such as --format=json for extracting a message part with JSON
72 Deprecate "notmuch search-tags", (in favor of "notmuch search --output=tags *")
74 The "notmuch search-tags" sub-command has been redundant since the
75 addition of the --output=tags option to "notmuch search". We now
76 make that more clear by deprecating "notmuch search-tags", (dropping
77 it from the documentation). We do continue to support the old syntax
78 by translating it internally to the new call.
80 Performance improvements
81 ------------------------
82 Faster searches (by doing fewer serches to construct threads)
84 Whenever a user asks for search results as threads, notmuch first
85 performs a search for messages matching the query, then performs
86 additional searches to find other messages in the resulting threads.
88 Removing inefficiences and redundancies in these secondary searches
89 results in a measured speedups of 1.5x for a typical search.
91 Faster searches (by doing fewer passes to gather message data)
93 Optimizing Xapian data access patterns (using a single pass to get
94 all message-document data rather than a ps for each data type)
95 results in a measured speedup of 1.7x for a typical search.
97 The benefits of this optimization combine with the preceding
98 optimization. With both in place, Austin Clements measured a speedup
99 of 2.5x for a search of all messages in his inbox (was 4.5s, now
100 1.8s). Thanks, Austin!
102 Faster initial indexing
104 More efficient indexing of new messages results in a measured
105 speedup of 1.4x for the initial indexing of 3 GB of mail (1h 14m
106 rather than 1h 46m). Thanks to Austin Clements and Michal Sojka.
108 Make "notmuch new" faster for unchanged directories
110 Optimizing to not do any further examinations of sub-directories
111 when the filesystem indicates that a directory is unchanged from the
112 last "notmuch new" results in measured speedups of 8.5 for the "No
113 new mail" case, (was 0.77s, now 0.09s). Thanks to Austin Clements
116 New emacs-interface features
117 ----------------------------
118 Output of pipe command is now displayed if pipe command fails
120 This is extremely useful in the common use case of piping a patch to
121 "git am". If git fails to cleanly merge the patch the error messages
122 from the failed merge are now clearly displayed to the user, (where
123 previously they were silently hidden from the user).
125 User-selectable From address
127 A user can choose which configured email addresses should be used as
128 the From address whenever composing a new message. To do so, simply
129 press C-u before the command which will open a new message. Emacs
130 will prompt for the from address to use.
132 The user can customize the "Notmuch Identities" setting in the
133 notmuch cutomize group in order to use addresses other than those in
134 the notmuch configuration file if desired.
136 The user can also choose to always be prompted for the from address
137 when composing a new message (without having to use C-u) by setting
138 the "Notmuch Always Prompt For Sender" option in the notmuch
141 Automatic detection and hiding of original message in top-posted message
143 When a message contains a line looking something like:
145 ----- Original Message -----
147 emacs hides this and all subsequent lines as an "original message",
148 (allowing the user to click or press enter on the "original message"
149 button to display it again). This makes the handling of top-posted
150 citations work much like conventional citations.
152 New hooks for running code when tags are modified
154 Some users want to perform additional actions whenever a particular
155 tag is added/removed from a message. This could be used to, for
156 example, interface with some external spam-recognition training
157 tool. T facilitate this, two new hooks are added which can be
158 modified in the following settings of the notmuch customize group:
160 Notmuch Before Tag Hook
161 Notmuch After Tag Hook
163 New optional support for hiding some multipart/alternative parts
165 Many emails are sent with redundant content within a
166 multipart/alternative group (such as a text/plain part as well as a
167 text/html part). Users can configure the setting:
169 Notmuch Show All Multipart/Alternative Parts
171 to "off" in the notmuch customize group to have the interface
172 automatically hide some part alternatives (such as text/html
173 parts). This new part hiding is not configured by default yet
174 because there's not yet a simple way to re-display such a hidden
175 part if it is not actually redundant with a displayed part.
177 Better rendering of text/x-vcalendar parts
179 These parts are now displayed in a format suitable for use with the
182 Avoid getting confused by Subject and Author fields with newline characters
184 Replacing all characters with ACII code less than 32 with a question mark.
186 Cleaner display of From line in email messages (remove double quotes,
187 and drop "name" if it's actually just a repeat of the email address).
189 Vim interface improvements
190 --------------------------
191 Felipe Contreras provided a number of updates for the vim interface.
193 Using sendmail directly rather than mailx,
195 Implementing archive in show view
197 Add support to mark as read in show and search views
203 Bindings improvements
204 ---------------------
205 Ruby bindings are now much more complete
207 Including QUERY.sort, QUERY.to_s, MESSAGE.maildir_flags_to_tags,
208 MESSAGE.tags_to_maildir_flags, and MESSAGE.get_filenames
210 Python bindings are now much more complete
212 Including Message().get_filenames(),
213 Message().tags_to_maildir_flags(), Threads().__nonzero__,
216 Also implement Message.__cmp__ and __hash__
217 These allow, for example:
221 As well as set arithmetic on Messages():
227 Added initial Go bindings in bindings/go
229 New build-system features
230 -------------------------
231 Added support for building in a directory other than the source directory
233 This can be used with the widely-supported idiom of simply running
234 the configure script from some other directory:
241 Fix to save configure options for future, implicit runs of configure
243 When a user updates the source (such as with "git pull") calling
244 "make" may cause an automatic re-run of the configure script. When
245 this happens, the configure script will automatically be called with
246 the same options the user originally passed in the most-recent
247 manual invocation of configure.
249 New test-suite feature
250 ----------------------
251 Binary for bash for running test suite now located via PATH.
253 The notmuch test suite requires a fairly recent version of bash (>=
254 bash 4). As some systems supply an older version of bash at
255 /bin/bash, the test suite is now updated to search $PATH to locate
256 the bash binary. This allows users of systems with old /bin/bash to
257 simply install bash >= 4 somwhere on $PATH before /bin and then use
260 Support for testing output with a trailing newline.
262 Previously, some tests would fail to notice a difference in the
263 presense/absence of a trailing newline in a program output, (which
264 has led to bugs in the past). Now, carefully-written tests (using
265 test_expect_equal_file rather than test_expect_equal) will detect
266 any change in the presence/absence of a trailing newline. Many tests
267 are updated to take advnatage of this.
269 Avoiding accessing user's $HOME while running test suite
271 The test suite now carefully creates its own HOME directory. This
272 allows the test suite to be run with no existing HOME directory, (as
273 some build systems apparently do), and avoids test-suite differences
274 due to configuration files in the users HOME directory.
279 Output *all* files for "notmuch search --output=files"
281 For the cases where multiple files have the same Message ID,
282 previous versions of notmuch would output only one such file. This
283 command is now fixed to correctly output all files.
285 Fixed spurious search results from "overlapped" indexing of addresses
287 This fixed a bug where a search for:
289 to:user@elsewhere.com
291 would incorrectly match a message sent:
293 To: user@example,com, someone@elsewhere.com
295 Fix --output=json when search has no results
297 A bug present since notmuch 0.4 had caused searches with no results
298 to produce an invalid json object. This is now fixed to cleanly
299 return a valid json object representing an empty array "[]" as
302 fix the automatic detection of the From address for "notmuch reply"
303 from the Received headers in some cases.
305 Fix core dump on DragonFlyBSD due to -1 return value from
306 sysconf(_SC_GETPW_R_SIZE_MAX).
308 Cleaned up several memory leaks
310 Eliminated a few, rare segmentation faults and a double-free.
312 Fix libnotmuch library to only export notmuch API functions
314 Previous release of the notmuch library also exported some Xapian
315 C++ exception type symbols. These were never part of the library
316 interface and were never intented to be exported.
318 Emacs-interface bug fixes
319 -------------------------
320 Display any unexpected output or errors from "notmuch search" invocations
322 Previously any misformatted output or trailing error messages were
323 silently ignored. This output is now clearly displayed. This fix was
324 very helpful in identifying and fixing the bug decribed below.
326 Fix bug where some threads would be missing from large search results
328 When a search returned a "large" number of results, the emacs
329 interface was incorrectly dropping one thread everytime the output
330 of the "notmuch search" process spanned the emacss read-buffer. This
333 Avoid rec-compression of .gz files (and similar) when saving attachment
335 Emacs was being too clever for its own good and trying to
336 re-compress pre-compressed .gz files when saving such attachments
337 (potentially corrupting the attachment). The emacs interface is
338 fixed to avoid this bug.
340 Fix hiding of a message when a previously-hidden citation is visible
342 Previously the citation would remain visible in this case. This is
343 fixed so that hiding a message hides all parts.
345 Notmuch 0.5 (2010-11-11)
346 ========================
347 New, general features
348 ---------------------
349 Maildir-flag synchronization
351 Notmuch now knows how to synchronize flags in maildir filenames with
352 tags in the notmuch database. The following flag/tag mappings are
361 'S' unread (added when 'S' flag is not present)
363 The synchronization occurs in both directions, (for example, adding
364 the 'S' flag to a file will cause the "unread" tag to be added, and
365 adding the "replied" tag to a message will cause the file to be
366 renamed with an 'R' flag).
368 This synchronization is enabled by default for users of the
369 command-line interface, (though only files in directories named
370 "cur" or "new" will be renamed). It can be disabled by setting the
371 new maildir.synchronize_flags option in the configuration file. For
374 notmuch config set maildir.synchronize_flags false
376 Users upgrading may also want to run "notmuch setup" once (just
377 accept the existing configuration) to get a new, nicely-commented
378 [maildir] section added to the configuration file.
380 For users of the notmuch library, the new synchronization
381 functionality is available with the following two new functions:
383 notmuch_message_maildir_flags_to_tags
384 notmuch_message_tags_to_maildir_flags
386 It is anticipated that future improvements to this support will
387 allow for safe synchronization of the 'T' flag with the "deleted"
388 tag, as well as support for custom flag/tag mappings.
392 Support for querying multiple filenames for a single message
394 It is common for the mailstore to contain multiple files with the
395 same message ID. Previously, notmuch would always hide these
396 duplicate files, (returning a single, arbitrary filename with
397 notmuch_message_get_filename).
399 With this release, library users can access all filenames for a
400 message with the new function:
402 notmuch_message_get_filenames
404 Together with notmuch_filenames_valid, notmuch_filenames_get, and
405 notmuch_filenames_move_to_next it is now possible to iterate over
406 all available filenames for a given message.
408 New command-line features
409 -------------------------
410 New "notmuch show --format=raw" for getting at original email contents
412 This new feature allows for a fully-functional email client to be
413 built on top of the notmuch command-line without needing any direct
414 access to the mail store itself.
416 For example, it's now possible to run "emacs -f notmuch" on a local
417 machine with only ssh access to the mail store/notmuch database. To
418 do this, simply set the notmuch-command variable in emacs to the
419 name of a script containing:
421 ssh user@host notmuch "$@"
423 If the ssh client has enabled connection sharing (ControlMaster
424 option in OpenSSH), the emacs interface can be quite responsive this
429 Fix "notmuch search" to print nothing when nothing matches
431 The 0.4 release had a bug in which:
433 notmuch search <expression-with-no-matches>
435 would produce a single blank line of output, (where previous
436 versions would produce no output. This fix also causes a change in
437 the --format=json output, (which would previously produce "[]" and
438 now produces nothing).
440 Emacs interface improvements
441 ----------------------------
442 Fix to allow pipe ('|') command to work when using notmuch over ssh
444 Fix count of lines in hidden signatures.
446 Omit repeated subject lines in (collapsed) thread display.
448 Display current thread subject in a header line.
450 Provide a "c i" binding to copy a thread ID from the search view.
452 Allow for notmuch-fcc-dirs to have a value of nil.
454 Also, the more complex form of notmuch-fcc-dirs now has a slightly
455 different format. It no longer has a special first-element, fallback
456 string. Instead it's now a list of cons cells where the car of each
457 cell is a regular expression to be matched against the sender
458 address, and the cdr is the name of a folder to use for an FCC. So
459 the old fallback behavior can be achieved by including a fineal cell
460 of (".*" . "default-fcc-folder").
462 Vim interface improvements
463 --------------------------
464 Felipe Contreras provided a number of updates for the vim interface.
466 These include optimiations, support for newer versions of vim, fixed
467 support for sending mail on modern systmms, new commands, and
472 Added initial ruby bindings in bindings/ruby
474 Notmuch 0.4 (2010-11-01)
475 ========================
476 New command-line features
477 -------------------------
478 notmuch search --output=(summary|threads|messages|tags|files)
480 This new option allows for particular items to be returned from
481 notmuch searches. The "summary" option is the default and behaves
482 just as "notmuch search" has historically behaved.
484 The new option values allow for thread IDs, message IDs, lists of
485 tags, and lists of filenames to be returned from searches. It is
486 expected that this new option will be very useful in shell
487 scripts. For example:
489 for file in $(notmuch search --output=files <search-terms>); do
490 <operations-on> "$file"
493 notmuch show --format=mbox <search-specification>
495 This new option allows for the messages matching a search
496 specification to be presented as an mbox. Specifically the "mboxrd"
497 format is used which allows for reversible quoting of lines
498 beginning with "From ". A reader should remove a single '>' from the
499 beginning of all lines beginning with one or more '>' characters
500 followed by the 5 characters "From ".
502 notmuch config [get|set] <section>.<item> [value ...]
504 The new top-level "config" command allows for any value in the
505 notmuch configuration file to be queried or set to a new value. Both
506 single-valued and multi-valued items are supported, as our any
507 custom items stored in the configuration file.
509 Avoid setting Bcc header in "notmuch reply"
511 We decided that this was a bit heavy-handed as the actual mail
512 user-agent should be responsible for setting any Bcc option. Also,
513 see below for the notmuch/emacs user-agent now setting an Fcc by
514 default rather than Bcc.
518 Add notmuch_query_get_query_string and notmuch_query_get_sort
520 These are simply functions for querying properties of a
521 notmuch_query_t object.
525 Enable Fcc of all sent messages by default (to "sent" directory)
527 All messages sent from the emacs interface will now be saved to the
528 notmuch mail store where they will be incorporated to the database
529 by the next "notmuch new". By default, messages are saved to the
530 "sent" directory at the top-level of the mail store. This directory
531 can be customized by means of the "Notmuch Fcc Dirs" option in the
532 notmuch customize interface.
534 Ability to all open messages in a thread to a pipe
536 Historically, the '|' keybinding allows for piping a single message
537 to an external command. Now, by prefixing this key with a prefix
538 argument, (for example, by pressing "Control-U |"), all open
539 messages in the current thread will be sent to the external command.
541 Optional support for detecting inline patches
543 This hook is disabled by default but can be enabled with a checkbox
544 under "Notmuch Show Insert Text/Plain Hook" in the notmuch customize
545 interface. It allows for inline patches to be detected and treated
546 as if they were attachments, (with context-sensitive highlighting).
548 Automatically tag messages as "replied" when sending a reply
550 Messages replied to within the emacs interface will now be tagged as
551 "replied". This feature can easily be customized to add or remove
552 other tags as well. For example, a user might use a tag of
553 "needs-reply" and can configure this feature to automatically remove
554 that tag when replying. See "Notmuch Message Mark Replied" in the
555 notmuch customize interface.
557 Allow search-result color specifications to overlay each other
559 For example, one tag can specify the background color of matching
560 lines, while another can specify the foreground. With this change,
561 both settings will now be visible simultaneously, (which was not the
562 case in previous releases). See "Notmuch Search Line Faces" in the
563 notmuch customize interface.
565 Make hidden author names still available for incremental search.
567 When there is insufficient space to display all authors of a thread
568 in search results, the names of hidden authors are now still made
569 available to emacs' incremental search commands. As the user
570 searches, matching lines will temporarily expand to show the hidden
573 New binding of Control-TAB (works like TAB in reverse)
575 Many notmuch nodes already use TAB to navigate forward through
576 various items allowing actions, (message headers, email attachments,
577 etc.). The new Control-TAB binding operates similarly but in the
580 New build-system features
581 -------------------------
582 Various portability fixes have been applied
584 These include fixes for build failures on at least Solaris, FreeBSD,
585 and Fedora systems. We're hopeful that the notmuch code base is now
586 more portable than ever before.
588 Arrange for libnotmuch to be found automatically after make install
590 The notmuch build system is now careful to help the user avoid
591 errors of the form "libnotmuch.so could not be found" immediately
592 after installing. This support takes two forms:
594 1. If the library is installed to a system directory,
595 (configured in /etc/ld.so.conf), then "make install" will
596 automatically run ldconfig.
598 2. If the library is installed to a non-system directory, the
599 build system adds a DR_RUNPATH entry to the final binary
600 pointing to the directory to which the library is installed.
602 When this support works, the user should be able to run notmuch
603 immediately after "make install", without any errors trying to find
604 the notmuch library, and without having to manually set environment
605 variables such as LD_LIBRARY_PATH.
607 Check compiler/linker options before using them
609 The configure script now carefully checks that any desired
610 compilation options, (whether for enabling compiler warnings, or for
611 embedding rpath, etc.), are supported. Only supported options are
612 used in the resulting Makefile.
614 New test-suite features
615 -----------------------
616 New modularization of test suite.
618 Thanks to a gracious relicensing of the test-suite infrastructure
619 from the git project, notmuch now has a modular test suite. This
620 provides the ability to run individual sections of the test suite
621 rather than the whole things. It also provides better summary of
622 test results, with support for tests that are expected to fail
623 (BROKEN and FIXED) in addition to PASS and FAIL. Finally, it makes
624 it easy to run the test suite within valgrind (pass --valgrind to
625 notmuch-test or to any sub-script) which has been very useful.
627 New testing of emacs interface.
629 The test suite has been augmented to allow automated testing of the
630 emacs interfaces. So far, this includes basic searches, display of
631 threads, and tag manipulation. This also includes a test that a new
632 message can successfully be sent out through a (dummy) SMTP server
633 and that said message is successfully integrated into the notmuch
634 database via the FCC setting.
638 Fix potential corruption of database when "notmuch new " is interrupted.
640 Previously, an interruption of "notmuch new" would (rarely) result
641 in a corrupt database. The corruption would manifest itself by a
642 persistent error of the form:
644 document ID of 1234 has no thread ID
646 The message-adding code has been carefully audited and reworked to
647 avoid this sort of corruption regardless of when it is interrupted.
649 Fix failure with extremely long message ID headers.
651 Previously, a message with an extremely long message ID, (say, more
652 than 300 characters), would fail to be added to notmuch, (triggering
653 Xapian exceptions). This has now been fixed.
655 Fix for messages with "charset=unknown-8bit"
657 Previously, messages with this charset would cause notmuch to emit a
658 GMime warning, (which would then trip up emacs or other interfaces
659 parsing the notmuch results).
661 Fix notmuch_query_search_threads function to return NULL on any exception
663 Fix "notmuch search" to return non-zero if notmuch_query_search_threads fails
665 Previously, this command could confusingly report a Xapian
666 exception, yet still return an error code of 0. It now correctly
667 returns a failing error code of 1 in this case.
671 Fix to handle a message with a subject containing, for example "[1234]"
673 Previously, a message subject containing a sequence of digits within
674 square brackets would cause the emacs interface to mis-parse the
675 output of "notmuch search". This would result in the message being
676 mis-displayed and prevent the user from manipulating the message in
679 Fix to correctly handle message IDs containing ".."
681 The emacs interface now properly quotes message IDs to avoid a
682 Xapian bug in which the ".." within a message ID would be
683 misinterpreted as a numeric range specification.
687 The python bindings for notmuch have been updated to work with python3.
689 Debian-specific fixes
690 ---------------------
691 Fix emacs initialization so "M-x notmuch" works for users by default.
693 Now, a new Debian user can immediately run "emacs -f notmuch" after
694 "apt-get install notmuch". Previously, the user would have had to
695 edit the ~/.emacs file to add "(require 'notmuch)" before this would
698 Notmuch 0.3.1 (2010-04-27)
699 ==========================
702 Fix an infinite loop in "notmuch reply"
704 This bug could be triggered by replying to a message where the
705 user's primary email address did not appear in the To: header and
706 the user had not configured any secondary email addresses. The bug
707 was a simple re-use of the same iterator variable in nested loops.
709 Fix a potential SEGV in "notmuch search"
711 This bug could be triggered by an author name ending in a ','.
712 Admittedly - that's almost certainly a spam email, but we never
713 want notmuch to crash.
717 Fix calculations for line wrapping in the primary "notmuch" view.
719 Fix Fcc support to prompt to create a directory if the specified Fcc
720 directory does not exist.
724 Fix build on OpenSolaris (at least) due to missing 'extern "C"' block.
726 Without this, the C++ sources could not find strcasestr and the
727 final linking of notmuch would fail.
729 Notmuch 0.3 (2010-04-27)
730 ========================
731 New command-line features
732 -------------------------
733 User-configurable tags for new messages
735 A new "new.tags" option is available in the configuration file to
736 determine which tags are applied to new messages. Run "notmuch
737 setup" to generate new documentation within ~/.notmuch-config on how
738 to specify this value.
740 Threads search results named based on subjects that match search
742 This means that when new mails arrived to a thread you've previously
743 read, and the new mails have a new subject, you will see that
744 subject in the search results rather than the old subject.
746 Faster operation of "notmuch tag" (avoid unneeded sorting)
748 Since the user just wants to tag all matching messages, we can make
749 things perform a bit faster by avoiding the sort.
751 Even Better guessing of From: header for "notmuch reply"
753 Notmuch now looks at a number of headers when trying to figure out
754 the best From: header to use in a reply. This is helpful if you have
755 several configured email addresses, and you also subscribe to various
756 mailing lists with different addresses, (so that mails you are
757 replying to won't always include your subscribed address in the To:
760 Indication of author names that match a search
762 When notmuch displays threads as the result of a search, it now
763 lists the authors that match the search before listing the other
764 authors in the thread. It inserts a pipe '|' symbol between the last
765 matching and first non-matching author. This is especially useful in
766 a search that includes tag:unread. Now the authors of the unread
767 messages in the thread are listed first.
771 Sebastian Spaeth has contributed his python bindings for the notmuch
772 library to the central repository. These bindings were previously
773 known as "cnotmuch" within python but have now been renamed to be
774 accessible with a simple, and more official-looking "import notmuch".
776 The bindings have already proven very useful as people proficient in
777 python have been able to easily develop programs to do notmuch-based
778 searches for email-address completion, maildir-flag synchronization,
781 These bindings are available within the bindings/python directory, but
782 are not yet integrated into the top-level Makefiles, nor the top-level
783 package-building scripts. Improvements are welcome.
785 Emacs interface improvements
786 ----------------------------
787 An entirely new initial view for notmuch, (friendly yet powerful)
789 Some of us call the new view "notmuch hello" but you can get at it
790 by simply calling "emacs -f notmuch". The new view provides a search
791 bar where new searches can be performed. It also displays a list of
792 recent searches, along with a button to save any of these, giving it
793 a new name as a "saved search". Many people find these "saved
794 searches" one of the most convenient ways of organizing their mail,
795 (providing all of the features of "folders" in other mail clients,
796 but without any of the disadvantages).
798 Finally, this view can also optionally display all of the tags that
799 exist in the database, along with a count for each tag, and a custom
800 search of messages with that tag that's simply a click (or keypress)
803 Note: For users that liked the original mode of "emacs -f notmuch"
804 immediately displaying a particular search result, we
805 recommend instead running something like:
807 emacs --eval '(notmuch search "tag:inbox" t)'
809 The "t" means to sort the messages in an "oldest first" order,
810 (as notmuch would do previously by default). You can also
811 leave that off to have your search results in "newest first"
814 Full-featured "customize" support for configuring notmuch
816 Notmuch now plugs in well to the emacs "customize" mode to make it
817 much simpler to find things about the notmuch interface that can be
820 You can get to this mode by starting at the main "Customize" menu in
821 emacs, then browsing through "Applications", "Mail", and
822 "Notmuch". Or you can go straight to "M-x customize-group"
825 Once you're at the customize screen, you'll see a list of documented
826 options that can be manipulated along with checkboxes, drop-down
827 selectors, and text-entry boxes for configuring the various
830 Support for doing tab-completion of email addresses
832 This support currently relies on an external program,
833 (notmuch-addresses), that is not yet shipped with notmuch
834 itself. But multiple, suitable implementations of this program have
835 already been written that generate address completions by doing
836 notmuch searches of your email collection. For example, providing
837 first those addresses that you have composed messages to in the
840 One such program (implemented in python with the python bindings to
841 notmuch) is available via:
843 git clone http://jkr.acm.jhu.edu/git/notmuch_addresses.git
845 Install that program as notmuch-addresses on your PATH, and then
846 hitting TAB on a partial email address or name within the To: or Cc:
847 line of an email message will provide matching completions.
849 Support for file-based (Fcc) delivery of sent messages to mail store
851 This isn't yet enabled by default. To enable this, one will have to
852 set the "Notmuch Fcc Dirs" setting within the notmuch customize
853 screen, (see its documentation there for details). We anticipate
854 making this automatic in a future release.
856 New 'G' key binding to trigger mail refresh (G == "Get new mail")
858 The 'G' key works wherever '=' works. Before refreshing the screen
859 it calls an external program that can be used to poll email servers,
860 run notmuch new and setup specific tags for the new emails. The
861 script to be called should be configured with the "Notmuch Poll
862 Script" setting in the customize interface. This script will
863 typically invoke "notmuch new" and then perhaps several "notmuch
866 Implement emacs message display with the JSON output from notmuch.
868 This is much more robust than the previous implementation, (where
869 some HTML mails and mail quoting the notmuch code with the delimiter
870 characters in it would cause the parser to fall over).
872 Better handling of HTML messages and MIME attachments (inline images!)
874 Allow for any MIME parts that emacs can display to be displayed
875 inline. This includes inline viewing of image attachments, (provided
876 the window is large enough to fit the image at its natural size).
878 Much more robust handling of HTML messages. Currently both text/plain
879 and text/html alternates will be rendered next to each other. In a
880 future release, users will be able to decide to see only one or the
881 other representation.
883 Each attachment now has its own button so that attachments can be
884 saved individually (the 'w' key is still available to save all
887 Customizable support for tidying of text/plain message content
889 Many new functions are available for tidying up message
890 content. These include options such as wrapping long lines,
891 compressing duplicate blank lines, etc.
893 Most of these are disabled by default, but can easily be enabled by
894 clicking the available check boxes under the "Notmuch Show Insert
895 Text/Plain Hook" within the notmuch customize screen.
897 New support for searchable citations (even when hidden)
899 When portions of overly-long citations are hidden, the contents of
900 these citations will still be available for emacs' standard
901 "incremental search" functions. When the search matches any portion
902 of a hidden citation, the citation will become visible temporarily
903 to display the search result.
905 More flexible handling of header visibility
907 As an answer to complaints from many users, the To, Cc, and Date
908 headers of messages are no longer hidden by default. For those users
909 that liked that these were hidden, a new "Notmuch Messages Headers
910 Visible" option in the customize interface can be set to nil. The
911 visibility of headers can still be toggled on a per-message basis
912 with the 'h' keybinding.
914 For users that don't want to see some subset of those headers, the
915 new "Notmuch Message Headers" variable can be customized to list
916 only those headers that should be present in the display of a message.
918 The Return key now toggles message visibility anywhere
920 Previously this worked only on the first summary-line of a message.
922 Customizable formatting of search results
924 The user can easily customize the order, width, and formatting of
925 the various fields in a "notmuch search" buffer. See the "Notmuch
926 Search Result Format" section of the customize interface.
928 Generate nicer names for search buffers when using a saved search.
930 Add a notmuch User-Agent header when sending mail from notmuch/emacs.
932 New keybinding (M-Ret) to open all collapsed messages in a thread.
936 Provide a new NOTMUCH_SORT_UNSORTED value for queries
938 This can be somewhat faster when sorting simply isn't desired. For
939 example when collecting a set of messages that will all be
940 manipulated identically, (adding a tag, removing a tag, deleting the
941 messages), then there's no advantage to sorting the messages by
946 Fix to compile against GMime 2.6
948 Previously notmuch insisted on being able to find GMime 2.4, (even
949 though GMime 2.6 would have worked all along).
951 Fix configure script to accept (and ignore) various standard options.
953 For example, those that the gentoo build scripts expect configure to
954 accept are now all accepted.
958 A large number of new tests for the many new features.
960 Better display of output from failed tests.
962 Now shows failures with diff rather than forcing the user to gaze at
963 complete actual and expected output looking for deviation.
965 Notmuch 0.2 (2010-04-16)
966 ========================
967 This is the second release of the notmuch mail system, with actual
968 detailed release notes this time!
970 This release consists of a number of minor new features that make
971 notmuch more pleasant to use, and a few fairly major bug fixes.
973 We didn't quite hit our release target of "about a week" from the 0.1
974 release, (0.2 is happening 11 days after 0.1), but we hope to do
975 better for next week. Look forward to some major features coming to
976 notmuch in subsequent releases.
982 Better guessing of From: header.
984 Notmuch now tries harder to guess which configured address should be
985 used as the From: line in a "notmuch reply". It will examine the
986 Received: headers if it fails to find any configured address in To:
987 or Cc:. This allows it to often choose the correct address even when
988 replying to a message sent to a mailing list, and not directly to a
991 Make "notmuch count" with no arguments count all messages
993 Previously, it was hard to construct a search term that was
994 guaranteed to match all messages.
996 Provide a new special-case search term of "*" to match all messages.
998 This can be used in any command accepting a search term, such as
999 "notmuch search '*'". Note that you'll want to take care that the
1000 shell doesn't expand * against the current files. And note that the
1001 support for "*" is a special case. It's only meaningful as a single
1002 search term and loses its special meaning when combined with any
1005 Automatically detect thread connections even when a parent message is
1008 Previously, if two or more message were received with a common
1009 parent, but that parent was not received, then these messages would
1010 not be recognized as belonging to the same thread. This is now fixed
1011 so that such messages are properly connected in a thread.
1015 Fix potential data loss in "notmuch new" with SIGINT
1017 One code path in "notmuch new" was not properly handling
1018 SIGINT. Previously, this could lead to messages being removed from
1019 the database (and their tags being lost) if the user pressed
1020 Control-C while "notmuch new" was working.
1022 Fix segfault when a message includes a MIME part that is empty.
1024 Fix handling of non-ASCII characters with --format=json
1026 Previously, characters outside the range of 7-bit ASCII were
1027 silently dropped from the JSON output. This led to corrupted display
1028 of utf-8 content in the upcoming notmuch web-based frontends.
1030 Fix headers to be properly decoded in "notmuch reply"
1032 Previously, the user might see:
1034 Subject: Re: =?iso-8859-2?q?Rozlu=E8ka?=
1038 Subject: Re: Rozlučka
1040 The former text is properly encoded to be RFC-compliant SMTP, will
1041 be sent correctly, and will be properly decoded by the
1042 recipient. But the user trying to edit the reply would likely be
1043 unable to read or edit that field in its encoded form.
1045 Emacs client features
1046 ---------------------
1047 Show the last few lines of citations as well as the first few lines.
1049 It's often the case that the last sentence of a citation is what is
1050 being replied to directly, so the last few lines are often much more
1051 important. The number of lines shown at the beginning and end of any
1052 citation can be configured, (notmuch-show-citation-lines-prefix and
1053 notmuch-show-citation-lines-suffix).
1055 The '+' and '-' commands in the search view can now add and remove
1058 Selective bulk tagging is now possible by selecting a region of
1059 threads and then using either the '+' or '-' keybindings. Bulk
1060 tagging is still available for all threads matching the current
1061 search with th '*' binding.
1063 More meaningful buffer names for thread-view buffers.
1065 Notmuch now uses the Subject of the thread as the buffer
1066 name. Previously it was using the thread ID, which is a meaningless
1069 Provide for customized colors of threads in search view based on tags.
1071 See the documentation of notmuch-search-line-faces, (or us "M-x
1072 customize" and browse to the "notmuch" group within "Applications"
1073 and "Mail"), for details on how to configure this colorization.
1075 Build-system features
1076 ---------------------
1077 Add support to properly build libnotmuch on Darwin systems (OS X).
1079 Add support to configure for many standard options.
1081 We include actual support for:
1083 --includedir --mandir --sysconfdir
1085 And accept and silently ignore several more:
1087 --build --infodir --libexecdir --localstatedir
1088 --disable-maintainer-mode --disable-dependency-tracking
1090 Install emacs client in "make install" rather than requiring a
1091 separate "make install-emacs".
1093 Automatically compute versions numbers between releases.
1095 This support uses the git-describe notation, so a version such as
1096 0.1-144-g43cbbfc indicates a version that is 144 commits since the
1097 0.1 release and is available as git commit "43cbbfc".
1099 Add a new "make test" target to run the test suite and actually verify
1102 Notmuch 0.1 (2010-04-05)
1103 ========================
1104 This is the first release of the notmuch mail system.
1106 It includes the libnotmuch library, the notmuch command-line
1107 interface, and an emacs-based interface to notmuch.
1109 Note: Notmuch will work best with Xapian 1.0.18 (or later) or Xapian
1110 1.1.4 (or later). Previous versions of Xapian (whether 1.0 or 1.1) had
1111 a performance bug that made notmuch very slow when modifying
1112 tags. This would cause distracting pauses when reading mail while
1113 notmuch would wait for Xapian when removing the "inbox" and "unread"
1114 tags from messages in a thread.