1 Notmuch 0.9 (2011-10-01)
2 ========================
7 Correct handling of interruptions during "notmuch new"
9 "notmuch new" now operates as a series of small, self-consistent
10 transactions, so it can correctly resume after an interruption or
11 crash. Previously, interruption could lose existing tags, fail to
12 detect messages on resume, or leave the database in a state
13 temporarily or permanently inconsistent with the mail store.
20 notmuch_database_begin_atomic and notmuch_database_end_atomic allow
21 multiple database operations to be performed atomically.
23 notmuch_database_find_message_by_filename does exactly what it says.
26 Notmuch 0.8 (2011-09-10)
27 ========================
29 Improved handling of message/rfc822 parts
31 Both in the CLI and the emacs interface. Output of rfc822 parts now
32 includes the primary headers, as well as the body and all subparts.
33 Output of the completely raw rfc822-formatted message, including all
34 headers, is unfortunately not yet supported (but hopefully will be
37 Improved Build system portability
39 Certain parts of the shell script generating notmuch.sym were
40 specific to the GNU versions of sed and nm. The new version should
41 be more portable to e.g. OpenBSD.
43 Documentation update for Ruby bindings
45 Added documentation, typo fixes, and improved support for rdoc.
47 Unicode, iterator, PEP8 changes for python bindings
49 - PEP8 (code formatting) changes for python files.
50 - Remove Tags.__len__ ; see 0.6 release notes for motivation.
51 - Decode headers as UTF8, encode (unicode) database paths as UTF8.
53 Notmuch 0.7 (2011-08-01)
54 ========================
56 Vim interface improvements
57 --------------------------
59 Jason Woofenden provided a number of bug fixes for the Vim interface
61 * fix citation/signature fold lengths
62 * fix cig/cit parsing within multipart/*
63 * fix on-screen instructions for show-signature
64 * fix from list reformatting in search view
65 * fix space key: now archives (did opposite)
67 Uwe Kleine-König contributed
69 * use full path for sendmail/doc fix
70 * fix compose temp file name
72 Python Bindings changes
73 -----------------------
75 Sebastian Spaeth contributed two changes related to unicode and UTF8:
77 * message tags are now explicitly unicode
78 * query string is encoded as a UTF8 byte string
80 Build-System improvments
81 ------------------------
83 Generate notmuch.sym after the relevant object files
85 This fixes a bug in parallel building. Thanks to Thomas Jost for the
88 Notmuch 0.6.1 (2011-07-17)
89 ==========================
94 Re-export Xapian exception typeinfo symbols.
96 It turned out our aggressive symbol hiding caused problems for
97 people running gcc 4.4.5.
99 Notmuch 0.6 (2011-07-01)
100 =======================
101 New, general features
102 ---------------------
103 Folder-based searching
105 Notmuch queries can now include a search term to match the
106 directories in which mail files are stored (within the mail
107 storage). The syntax is as follows:
111 For example, one might use things such as:
117 to match any path containing a directory "spam", "work/todo", or
118 containing a directory starting with "2011-", respectively.
120 This feature is particularly useful for users of delivery-agent
121 software (such as procmail or maildrop) that is filtering mail and
122 delivering it to particular folders, or users of systems such as
123 Gmail that use filesystem directories to indicate message tags.
125 NOTE: Only messages that are newly indexed with this version of
126 notmuch will be searchable with folder: terms. In order to enable
127 this feature for all mail, the entire notmuch index will need to be
130 notmuch dump > notmuch.dump
131 # Backup, then remove notmuch database ($MAIL/.notmuch)
133 notmuch restore notmuch.dump
137 Both the command line interface and the emacs-interface have new
138 support for PGP/MIME, detailed below. Thanks to Daniel Kahn Gillmor
139 and Jameson Graef Rollins for making this happen.
141 New, automatic tags: "signed" and "encrypted"
143 These tags will automatically be applied to messages containing
144 multipart/signed and multipart/encrypted parts.
146 NOTE: Only messages that are newly indexed with this version of
147 notmuch will receive these tags.
149 New command-line features
150 -------------------------
151 Add new "notmuch show --verify" option for signature verification
153 This option instruct notmuch to verify the signature of
154 PGP/MIME-signed parts.
156 Add new "notmuch show --decrypt" and "notmuch reply --decrypt" options
158 This option instructs notmuch to decrypt PGP/MIME-encrypted parts.
159 Note that this feature currently requires gpg-agent and a passphrase entry
160 tool (e.g. pinentry-gtk or pinentry-curses).
162 Proper nesting of multipart parts in "notmuch show" output
164 MIME parts are now display with proper nesting to reflect original
165 MIME hierarchy of a message. This allows clients to correctly
166 analyze the MIME structure, (such as, for example, determining to
167 which parts a signature part applies).
169 Add new "notmuch show --part" option
171 This is a replacement for the older "notmuch part" command, (which
172 is now deprecated—it should still work as always, but is no longer
173 documented). Putting part output under "notmuch show" allows for all
174 of the "notmuch show" options to be applied when extracting a single
175 part, (such as --format=json for extracting a message part with JSON
178 Deprecate "notmuch search-tags", (in favor of "notmuch search --output=tags *")
180 The "notmuch search-tags" sub-command has been redundant since the
181 addition of the --output=tags option to "notmuch search". We now
182 make that more clear by deprecating "notmuch search-tags", (dropping
183 it from the documentation). We do continue to support the old syntax
184 by translating it internally to the new call.
186 Performance improvements
187 ------------------------
188 Faster searches (by doing fewer searches to construct threads)
190 Whenever a user asks for search results as threads, notmuch first
191 performs a search for messages matching the query, then performs
192 additional searches to find other messages in the resulting threads.
194 Removing inefficiencies and redundancies in these secondary searches
195 results in a measured speedups of 1.5x for a typical search.
197 Faster searches (by doing fewer passes to gather message data)
199 Optimizing Xapian data access patterns (using a single pass to get
200 all message-document data rather than a pass for each data type)
201 results in a measured speedup of 1.7x for a typical search.
203 The benefits of this optimization combine with the preceding
204 optimization. With both in place, Austin Clements measured a speedup
205 of 2.5x for a search of all messages in his inbox (was 4.5s, now
206 1.8s). Thanks, Austin!
208 Faster initial indexing
210 More efficient indexing of new messages results in a measured
211 speedup of 1.4x for the initial indexing of 3 GB of mail (1h 14m
212 rather than 1h 46m). Thanks to Austin Clements and Michal Sojka.
214 Make "notmuch new" faster for unchanged directories
216 Optimizing to not do any further examinations of sub-directories
217 when the filesystem indicates that a directory is unchanged from the
218 last "notmuch new" results in measured speedups of 8.5 for the "No
219 new mail" case, (was 0.77s, now 0.09s). Thanks to Karel Zak.
221 New emacs-interface features
222 ----------------------------
224 Support for PGP/MIME (GnuPG)
226 Automatically indicate validity of signatures for multipart/signed
227 messages. Automatically display decrypted content for
228 multipart/encrypted messages. See the emacs variable
229 notmuch-crypto-process-mime for more information. Note that this
230 needs gpg-agent and a pinentry tool just as the command line tools.
231 Also note there is no support SMIME yet.
233 Output of pipe command is now displayed if pipe command fails
235 This is extremely useful in the common use case of piping a patch to
236 "git am". If git fails to cleanly merge the patch the error messages
237 from the failed merge are now clearly displayed to the user, (where
238 previously they were silently hidden from the user).
240 User-selectable From address
242 A user can choose which configured email addresses should be used as
243 the From address whenever composing a new message. To do so, simply
244 press C-u before the command which will open a new message. Emacs
245 will prompt for the from address to use.
247 The user can customize the "Notmuch Identities" setting in the
248 notmuch customize group in order to use addresses other than those in
249 the notmuch configuration file if desired.
251 The user can also choose to always be prompted for the from address
252 when composing a new message (without having to use C-u) by setting
253 the "Notmuch Always Prompt For Sender" option in the notmuch
256 Hiding of repeated subjects in collapsed thread view
258 In notmuch-show mode, if a collapsed message has the same subject as
259 its parent, the subject is not shown.
261 Automatic detection and hiding of original message in top-posted message
263 When a message contains a line looking something like:
265 ----- Original Message -----
267 emacs hides this and all subsequent lines as an "original message",
268 (allowing the user to click or press enter on the "original message"
269 button to display it again). This makes the handling of top-posted
270 citations work much like conventional citations.
272 New hooks for running code when tags are modified
274 Some users want to perform additional actions whenever a particular
275 tag is added/removed from a message. This could be used to, for
276 example, interface with some external spam-recognition training
277 tool. To facilitate this, two new hooks are added which can be
278 modified in the following settings of the notmuch customize group:
280 Notmuch Before Tag Hook
281 Notmuch After Tag Hook
283 New optional support for hiding some multipart/alternative parts
285 Many emails are sent with redundant content within a
286 multipart/alternative group (such as a text/plain part as well as a
287 text/html part). Users can configure the setting:
289 Notmuch Show All Multipart/Alternative Parts
291 to "off" in the notmuch customize group to have the interface
292 automatically hide some part alternatives (such as text/html
293 parts). This new part hiding is not configured by default yet
294 because there's not yet a simple way to re-display such a hidden
295 part if it is not actually redundant with a displayed part.
297 Better rendering of text/x-vcalendar parts
299 These parts are now displayed in a format suitable for use with the
302 Avoid getting confused by Subject and Author fields with newline characters
304 Replacing all characters with ASCII code less than 32 with a question mark.
306 Cleaner display of From line in email messages (remove double quotes,
307 and drop "name" if it's actually just a repeat of the email address).
309 Vim interface improvements
310 --------------------------
311 Felipe Contreras provided a number of updates for the vim interface:
313 * Using sendmail directly rather than mailx,
314 * Implementing archive in show view
315 * Add support to mark as read in show and search views
316 * Add delete commands
319 Bindings improvements
320 ---------------------
321 Ruby bindings are now much more complete
323 Including QUERY.sort, QUERY.to_s, MESSAGE.maildir_flags_to_tags,
324 MESSAGE.tags_to_maildir_flags, and MESSAGE.get_filenames
326 * Python bindings have been upodated and extended
327 (docs online at http://packages.python.org/notmuch/)
330 - Message().get_filenames(),
331 - Message().tags_to_maildir_flags(),Message().maildir_flags_to_tags()
332 - list(Threads()) and list(Messages) works now
334 - Message().__cmp__() and __hash__()
335 These allow, for example:
338 As well as set arithmetic on Messages():
340 s1, s2= set(msgs1), set(msgs2)
345 - len(Messages()) as it exausted the iterator.
346 Use len(list(Messages())) or
347 Query.count_messages() to get the length.
349 Added initial Go bindings in bindings/go
351 New build-system features
352 -------------------------
353 Added support for building in a directory other than the source directory
355 This can be used with the widely-supported idiom of simply running
356 the configure script from some other directory:
363 Fix to save configure options for future, implicit runs of configure
365 When a user updates the source (such as with "git pull") calling
366 "make" may cause an automatic re-run of the configure script. When
367 this happens, the configure script will automatically be called with
368 the same options the user originally passed in the most-recent
369 manual invocation of configure.
371 New test-suite feature
372 ----------------------
373 Binary for bash for running test suite now located via PATH.
375 The notmuch test suite requires a fairly recent version of bash (>=
376 bash 4). As some systems supply an older version of bash at
377 /bin/bash, the test suite is now updated to search $PATH to locate
378 the bash binary. This allows users of systems with old /bin/bash to
379 simply install bash >= 4 somewhere on $PATH before /bin and then use
382 Support for testing output with a trailing newline.
384 Previously, some tests would fail to notice a difference in the
385 presence/absence of a trailing newline in a program output, (which
386 has led to bugs in the past). Now, carefully-written tests (using
387 test_expect_equal_file rather than test_expect_equal) will detect
388 any change in the presence/absence of a trailing newline. Many tests
389 are updated to take advantage of this.
391 Avoiding accessing user's $HOME while running test suite
393 The test suite now carefully creates its own HOME directory. This
394 allows the test suite to be run with no existing HOME directory, (as
395 some build systems apparently do), and avoids test-suite differences
396 due to configuration files in the users HOME directory.
401 Output *all* files for "notmuch search --output=files"
403 For the cases where multiple files have the same Message ID,
404 previous versions of notmuch would output only one such file. This
405 command is now fixed to correctly output all files.
407 Fixed spurious search results from "overlapped" indexing of addresses
409 This fixed a bug where a search for:
411 to:user@elsewhere.com
413 would incorrectly match a message sent:
415 To: user@example,com, someone@elsewhere.com
417 Fix --output=json when search has no results
419 A bug present since notmuch 0.4 had caused searches with no results
420 to produce an invalid json object. This is now fixed to cleanly
421 return a valid json object representing an empty array "[]" as
424 fix the automatic detection of the From address for "notmuch reply"
425 from the Received headers in some cases.
427 Fix core dump on DragonFlyBSD due to -1 return value from
428 sysconf(_SC_GETPW_R_SIZE_MAX).
430 Cleaned up several memory leaks
432 Eliminated a few, rare segmentation faults and a double-free.
434 Fix libnotmuch library to only export notmuch API functions
436 Previous release of the notmuch library also exported some Xapian
437 C++ exception type symbols. These were never part of the library
438 interface and were never intended to be exported.
440 Emacs-interface bug fixes
441 -------------------------
442 Display any unexpected output or errors from "notmuch search" invocations
444 Previously any misformatted output or trailing error messages were
445 silently ignored. This output is now clearly displayed. This fix was
446 very helpful in identifying and fixing the bug described below.
448 Fix bug where some threads would be missing from large search results
450 When a search returned a "large" number of results, the emacs
451 interface was incorrectly dropping one thread every time the output
452 of the "notmuch search" process spanned the emacs read-buffer. This
455 Avoid re-compression of .gz files (and similar) when saving attachment
457 Emacs was being too clever for its own good and trying to
458 re-compress pre-compressed .gz files when saving such attachments
459 (potentially corrupting the attachment). The emacs interface is
460 fixed to avoid this bug.
462 Fix hiding of a message when a previously-hidden citation is visible
464 Previously the citation would remain visible in this case. This is
465 fixed so that hiding a message hides all parts.
467 Notmuch 0.5 (2010-11-11)
468 ========================
469 New, general features
470 ---------------------
471 Maildir-flag synchronization
473 Notmuch now knows how to synchronize flags in maildir filenames with
474 tags in the notmuch database. The following flag/tag mappings are
483 'S' unread (added when 'S' flag is not present)
485 The synchronization occurs in both directions, (for example, adding
486 the 'S' flag to a file will cause the "unread" tag to be added, and
487 adding the "replied" tag to a message will cause the file to be
488 renamed with an 'R' flag).
490 This synchronization is enabled by default for users of the
491 command-line interface, (though only files in directories named
492 "cur" or "new" will be renamed). It can be disabled by setting the
493 new maildir.synchronize_flags option in the configuration file. For
496 notmuch config set maildir.synchronize_flags false
498 Users upgrading may also want to run "notmuch setup" once (just
499 accept the existing configuration) to get a new, nicely-commented
500 [maildir] section added to the configuration file.
502 For users of the notmuch library, the new synchronization
503 functionality is available with the following two new functions:
505 notmuch_message_maildir_flags_to_tags
506 notmuch_message_tags_to_maildir_flags
508 It is anticipated that future improvements to this support will
509 allow for safe synchronization of the 'T' flag with the "deleted"
510 tag, as well as support for custom flag/tag mappings.
514 Support for querying multiple filenames for a single message
516 It is common for the mailstore to contain multiple files with the
517 same message ID. Previously, notmuch would always hide these
518 duplicate files, (returning a single, arbitrary filename with
519 notmuch_message_get_filename).
521 With this release, library users can access all filenames for a
522 message with the new function:
524 notmuch_message_get_filenames
526 Together with notmuch_filenames_valid, notmuch_filenames_get, and
527 notmuch_filenames_move_to_next it is now possible to iterate over
528 all available filenames for a given message.
530 New command-line features
531 -------------------------
532 New "notmuch show --format=raw" for getting at original email contents
534 This new feature allows for a fully-functional email client to be
535 built on top of the notmuch command-line without needing any direct
536 access to the mail store itself.
538 For example, it's now possible to run "emacs -f notmuch" on a local
539 machine with only ssh access to the mail store/notmuch database. To
540 do this, simply set the notmuch-command variable in emacs to the
541 name of a script containing:
543 ssh user@host notmuch "$@"
545 If the ssh client has enabled connection sharing (ControlMaster
546 option in OpenSSH), the emacs interface can be quite responsive this
551 Fix "notmuch search" to print nothing when nothing matches
553 The 0.4 release had a bug in which:
555 notmuch search <expression-with-no-matches>
557 would produce a single blank line of output, (where previous
558 versions would produce no output. This fix also causes a change in
559 the --format=json output, (which would previously produce "[]" and
560 now produces nothing).
562 Emacs interface improvements
563 ----------------------------
564 Fix to allow pipe ('|') command to work when using notmuch over ssh
566 Fix count of lines in hidden signatures.
568 Omit repeated subject lines in (collapsed) thread display.
570 Display current thread subject in a header line.
572 Provide a "c i" binding to copy a thread ID from the search view.
574 Allow for notmuch-fcc-dirs to have a value of nil.
576 Also, the more complex form of notmuch-fcc-dirs now has a slightly
577 different format. It no longer has a special first-element, fallback
578 string. Instead it's now a list of cons cells where the car of each
579 cell is a regular expression to be matched against the sender
580 address, and the cdr is the name of a folder to use for an FCC. So
581 the old fallback behavior can be achieved by including a final cell
582 of (".*" . "default-fcc-folder").
584 Vim interface improvements
585 --------------------------
586 Felipe Contreras provided a number of updates for the vim interface.
588 These include optimizations, support for newer versions of vim, fixed
589 support for sending mail on modern systems, new commands, and
594 Added initial ruby bindings in bindings/ruby
596 Notmuch 0.4 (2010-11-01)
597 ========================
598 New command-line features
599 -------------------------
600 notmuch search --output=(summary|threads|messages|tags|files)
602 This new option allows for particular items to be returned from
603 notmuch searches. The "summary" option is the default and behaves
604 just as "notmuch search" has historically behaved.
606 The new option values allow for thread IDs, message IDs, lists of
607 tags, and lists of filenames to be returned from searches. It is
608 expected that this new option will be very useful in shell
609 scripts. For example:
611 for file in $(notmuch search --output=files <search-terms>); do
612 <operations-on> "$file"
615 notmuch show --format=mbox <search-specification>
617 This new option allows for the messages matching a search
618 specification to be presented as an mbox. Specifically the "mboxrd"
619 format is used which allows for reversible quoting of lines
620 beginning with "From ". A reader should remove a single '>' from the
621 beginning of all lines beginning with one or more '>' characters
622 followed by the 5 characters "From ".
624 notmuch config [get|set] <section>.<item> [value ...]
626 The new top-level "config" command allows for any value in the
627 notmuch configuration file to be queried or set to a new value. Both
628 single-valued and multi-valued items are supported, as our any
629 custom items stored in the configuration file.
631 Avoid setting Bcc header in "notmuch reply"
633 We decided that this was a bit heavy-handed as the actual mail
634 user-agent should be responsible for setting any Bcc option. Also,
635 see below for the notmuch/emacs user-agent now setting an Fcc by
636 default rather than Bcc.
640 Add notmuch_query_get_query_string and notmuch_query_get_sort
642 These are simply functions for querying properties of a
643 notmuch_query_t object.
647 Enable Fcc of all sent messages by default (to "sent" directory)
649 All messages sent from the emacs interface will now be saved to the
650 notmuch mail store where they will be incorporated to the database
651 by the next "notmuch new". By default, messages are saved to the
652 "sent" directory at the top-level of the mail store. This directory
653 can be customized by means of the "Notmuch Fcc Dirs" option in the
654 notmuch customize interface.
656 Ability to all open messages in a thread to a pipe
658 Historically, the '|' keybinding allows for piping a single message
659 to an external command. Now, by prefixing this key with a prefix
660 argument, (for example, by pressing "Control-U |"), all open
661 messages in the current thread will be sent to the external command.
663 Optional support for detecting inline patches
665 This hook is disabled by default but can be enabled with a checkbox
666 under "Notmuch Show Insert Text/Plain Hook" in the notmuch customize
667 interface. It allows for inline patches to be detected and treated
668 as if they were attachments, (with context-sensitive highlighting).
670 Automatically tag messages as "replied" when sending a reply
672 Messages replied to within the emacs interface will now be tagged as
673 "replied". This feature can easily be customized to add or remove
674 other tags as well. For example, a user might use a tag of
675 "needs-reply" and can configure this feature to automatically remove
676 that tag when replying. See "Notmuch Message Mark Replied" in the
677 notmuch customize interface.
679 Allow search-result color specifications to overlay each other
681 For example, one tag can specify the background color of matching
682 lines, while another can specify the foreground. With this change,
683 both settings will now be visible simultaneously, (which was not the
684 case in previous releases). See "Notmuch Search Line Faces" in the
685 notmuch customize interface.
687 Make hidden author names still available for incremental search.
689 When there is insufficient space to display all authors of a thread
690 in search results, the names of hidden authors are now still made
691 available to emacs' incremental search commands. As the user
692 searches, matching lines will temporarily expand to show the hidden
695 New binding of Control-TAB (works like TAB in reverse)
697 Many notmuch nodes already use TAB to navigate forward through
698 various items allowing actions, (message headers, email attachments,
699 etc.). The new Control-TAB binding operates similarly but in the
702 New build-system features
703 -------------------------
704 Various portability fixes have been applied
706 These include fixes for build failures on at least Solaris, FreeBSD,
707 and Fedora systems. We're hopeful that the notmuch code base is now
708 more portable than ever before.
710 Arrange for libnotmuch to be found automatically after make install
712 The notmuch build system is now careful to help the user avoid
713 errors of the form "libnotmuch.so could not be found" immediately
714 after installing. This support takes two forms:
716 1. If the library is installed to a system directory,
717 (configured in /etc/ld.so.conf), then "make install" will
718 automatically run ldconfig.
720 2. If the library is installed to a non-system directory, the
721 build system adds a DR_RUNPATH entry to the final binary
722 pointing to the directory to which the library is installed.
724 When this support works, the user should be able to run notmuch
725 immediately after "make install", without any errors trying to find
726 the notmuch library, and without having to manually set environment
727 variables such as LD_LIBRARY_PATH.
729 Check compiler/linker options before using them
731 The configure script now carefully checks that any desired
732 compilation options, (whether for enabling compiler warnings, or for
733 embedding rpath, etc.), are supported. Only supported options are
734 used in the resulting Makefile.
736 New test-suite features
737 -----------------------
738 New modularization of test suite.
740 Thanks to a gracious relicensing of the test-suite infrastructure
741 from the git project, notmuch now has a modular test suite. This
742 provides the ability to run individual sections of the test suite
743 rather than the whole things. It also provides better summary of
744 test results, with support for tests that are expected to fail
745 (BROKEN and FIXED) in addition to PASS and FAIL. Finally, it makes
746 it easy to run the test suite within valgrind (pass --valgrind to
747 notmuch-test or to any sub-script) which has been very useful.
749 New testing of emacs interface.
751 The test suite has been augmented to allow automated testing of the
752 emacs interfaces. So far, this includes basic searches, display of
753 threads, and tag manipulation. This also includes a test that a new
754 message can successfully be sent out through a (dummy) SMTP server
755 and that said message is successfully integrated into the notmuch
756 database via the FCC setting.
760 Fix potential corruption of database when "notmuch new " is interrupted.
762 Previously, an interruption of "notmuch new" would (rarely) result
763 in a corrupt database. The corruption would manifest itself by a
764 persistent error of the form:
766 document ID of 1234 has no thread ID
768 The message-adding code has been carefully audited and reworked to
769 avoid this sort of corruption regardless of when it is interrupted.
771 Fix failure with extremely long message ID headers.
773 Previously, a message with an extremely long message ID, (say, more
774 than 300 characters), would fail to be added to notmuch, (triggering
775 Xapian exceptions). This has now been fixed.
777 Fix for messages with "charset=unknown-8bit"
779 Previously, messages with this charset would cause notmuch to emit a
780 GMime warning, (which would then trip up emacs or other interfaces
781 parsing the notmuch results).
783 Fix notmuch_query_search_threads function to return NULL on any exception
785 Fix "notmuch search" to return non-zero if notmuch_query_search_threads fails
787 Previously, this command could confusingly report a Xapian
788 exception, yet still return an error code of 0. It now correctly
789 returns a failing error code of 1 in this case.
793 Fix to handle a message with a subject containing, for example "[1234]"
795 Previously, a message subject containing a sequence of digits within
796 square brackets would cause the emacs interface to mis-parse the
797 output of "notmuch search". This would result in the message being
798 mis-displayed and prevent the user from manipulating the message in
801 Fix to correctly handle message IDs containing ".."
803 The emacs interface now properly quotes message IDs to avoid a
804 Xapian bug in which the ".." within a message ID would be
805 misinterpreted as a numeric range specification.
809 The python bindings for notmuch have been updated to work with python3.
811 Debian-specific fixes
812 ---------------------
813 Fix emacs initialization so "M-x notmuch" works for users by default.
815 Now, a new Debian user can immediately run "emacs -f notmuch" after
816 "apt-get install notmuch". Previously, the user would have had to
817 edit the ~/.emacs file to add "(require 'notmuch)" before this would
820 Notmuch 0.3.1 (2010-04-27)
821 ==========================
824 Fix an infinite loop in "notmuch reply"
826 This bug could be triggered by replying to a message where the
827 user's primary email address did not appear in the To: header and
828 the user had not configured any secondary email addresses. The bug
829 was a simple re-use of the same iterator variable in nested loops.
831 Fix a potential SEGV in "notmuch search"
833 This bug could be triggered by an author name ending in a ','.
834 Admittedly - that's almost certainly a spam email, but we never
835 want notmuch to crash.
839 Fix calculations for line wrapping in the primary "notmuch" view.
841 Fix Fcc support to prompt to create a directory if the specified Fcc
842 directory does not exist.
846 Fix build on OpenSolaris (at least) due to missing 'extern "C"' block.
848 Without this, the C++ sources could not find strcasestr and the
849 final linking of notmuch would fail.
851 Notmuch 0.3 (2010-04-27)
852 ========================
853 New command-line features
854 -------------------------
855 User-configurable tags for new messages
857 A new "new.tags" option is available in the configuration file to
858 determine which tags are applied to new messages. Run "notmuch
859 setup" to generate new documentation within ~/.notmuch-config on how
860 to specify this value.
862 Threads search results named based on subjects that match search
864 This means that when new mails arrived to a thread you've previously
865 read, and the new mails have a new subject, you will see that
866 subject in the search results rather than the old subject.
868 Faster operation of "notmuch tag" (avoid unneeded sorting)
870 Since the user just wants to tag all matching messages, we can make
871 things perform a bit faster by avoiding the sort.
873 Even Better guessing of From: header for "notmuch reply"
875 Notmuch now looks at a number of headers when trying to figure out
876 the best From: header to use in a reply. This is helpful if you have
877 several configured email addresses, and you also subscribe to various
878 mailing lists with different addresses, (so that mails you are
879 replying to won't always include your subscribed address in the To:
882 Indication of author names that match a search
884 When notmuch displays threads as the result of a search, it now
885 lists the authors that match the search before listing the other
886 authors in the thread. It inserts a pipe '|' symbol between the last
887 matching and first non-matching author. This is especially useful in
888 a search that includes tag:unread. Now the authors of the unread
889 messages in the thread are listed first.
893 Sebastian Spaeth has contributed his python bindings for the notmuch
894 library to the central repository. These bindings were previously
895 known as "cnotmuch" within python but have now been renamed to be
896 accessible with a simple, and more official-looking "import notmuch".
898 The bindings have already proven very useful as people proficient in
899 python have been able to easily develop programs to do notmuch-based
900 searches for email-address completion, maildir-flag synchronization,
903 These bindings are available within the bindings/python directory, but
904 are not yet integrated into the top-level Makefiles, nor the top-level
905 package-building scripts. Improvements are welcome.
907 Emacs interface improvements
908 ----------------------------
909 An entirely new initial view for notmuch, (friendly yet powerful)
911 Some of us call the new view "notmuch hello" but you can get at it
912 by simply calling "emacs -f notmuch". The new view provides a search
913 bar where new searches can be performed. It also displays a list of
914 recent searches, along with a button to save any of these, giving it
915 a new name as a "saved search". Many people find these "saved
916 searches" one of the most convenient ways of organizing their mail,
917 (providing all of the features of "folders" in other mail clients,
918 but without any of the disadvantages).
920 Finally, this view can also optionally display all of the tags that
921 exist in the database, along with a count for each tag, and a custom
922 search of messages with that tag that's simply a click (or keypress)
925 Note: For users that liked the original mode of "emacs -f notmuch"
926 immediately displaying a particular search result, we
927 recommend instead running something like:
929 emacs --eval '(notmuch search "tag:inbox" t)'
931 The "t" means to sort the messages in an "oldest first" order,
932 (as notmuch would do previously by default). You can also
933 leave that off to have your search results in "newest first"
936 Full-featured "customize" support for configuring notmuch
938 Notmuch now plugs in well to the emacs "customize" mode to make it
939 much simpler to find things about the notmuch interface that can be
942 You can get to this mode by starting at the main "Customize" menu in
943 emacs, then browsing through "Applications", "Mail", and
944 "Notmuch". Or you can go straight to "M-x customize-group"
947 Once you're at the customize screen, you'll see a list of documented
948 options that can be manipulated along with checkboxes, drop-down
949 selectors, and text-entry boxes for configuring the various
952 Support for doing tab-completion of email addresses
954 This support currently relies on an external program,
955 (notmuch-addresses), that is not yet shipped with notmuch
956 itself. But multiple, suitable implementations of this program have
957 already been written that generate address completions by doing
958 notmuch searches of your email collection. For example, providing
959 first those addresses that you have composed messages to in the
962 One such program (implemented in python with the python bindings to
963 notmuch) is available via:
965 git clone http://jkr.acm.jhu.edu/git/notmuch_addresses.git
967 Install that program as notmuch-addresses on your PATH, and then
968 hitting TAB on a partial email address or name within the To: or Cc:
969 line of an email message will provide matching completions.
971 Support for file-based (Fcc) delivery of sent messages to mail store
973 This isn't yet enabled by default. To enable this, one will have to
974 set the "Notmuch Fcc Dirs" setting within the notmuch customize
975 screen, (see its documentation there for details). We anticipate
976 making this automatic in a future release.
978 New 'G' key binding to trigger mail refresh (G == "Get new mail")
980 The 'G' key works wherever '=' works. Before refreshing the screen
981 it calls an external program that can be used to poll email servers,
982 run notmuch new and setup specific tags for the new emails. The
983 script to be called should be configured with the "Notmuch Poll
984 Script" setting in the customize interface. This script will
985 typically invoke "notmuch new" and then perhaps several "notmuch
988 Implement emacs message display with the JSON output from notmuch.
990 This is much more robust than the previous implementation, (where
991 some HTML mails and mail quoting the notmuch code with the delimiter
992 characters in it would cause the parser to fall over).
994 Better handling of HTML messages and MIME attachments (inline images!)
996 Allow for any MIME parts that emacs can display to be displayed
997 inline. This includes inline viewing of image attachments, (provided
998 the window is large enough to fit the image at its natural size).
1000 Much more robust handling of HTML messages. Currently both text/plain
1001 and text/html alternates will be rendered next to each other. In a
1002 future release, users will be able to decide to see only one or the
1003 other representation.
1005 Each attachment now has its own button so that attachments can be
1006 saved individually (the 'w' key is still available to save all
1009 Customizable support for tidying of text/plain message content
1011 Many new functions are available for tidying up message
1012 content. These include options such as wrapping long lines,
1013 compressing duplicate blank lines, etc.
1015 Most of these are disabled by default, but can easily be enabled by
1016 clicking the available check boxes under the "Notmuch Show Insert
1017 Text/Plain Hook" within the notmuch customize screen.
1019 New support for searchable citations (even when hidden)
1021 When portions of overly-long citations are hidden, the contents of
1022 these citations will still be available for emacs' standard
1023 "incremental search" functions. When the search matches any portion
1024 of a hidden citation, the citation will become visible temporarily
1025 to display the search result.
1027 More flexible handling of header visibility
1029 As an answer to complaints from many users, the To, Cc, and Date
1030 headers of messages are no longer hidden by default. For those users
1031 that liked that these were hidden, a new "Notmuch Messages Headers
1032 Visible" option in the customize interface can be set to nil. The
1033 visibility of headers can still be toggled on a per-message basis
1034 with the 'h' keybinding.
1036 For users that don't want to see some subset of those headers, the
1037 new "Notmuch Message Headers" variable can be customized to list
1038 only those headers that should be present in the display of a message.
1040 The Return key now toggles message visibility anywhere
1042 Previously this worked only on the first summary-line of a message.
1044 Customizable formatting of search results
1046 The user can easily customize the order, width, and formatting of
1047 the various fields in a "notmuch search" buffer. See the "Notmuch
1048 Search Result Format" section of the customize interface.
1050 Generate nicer names for search buffers when using a saved search.
1052 Add a notmuch User-Agent header when sending mail from notmuch/emacs.
1054 New keybinding (M-Ret) to open all collapsed messages in a thread.
1058 Provide a new NOTMUCH_SORT_UNSORTED value for queries
1060 This can be somewhat faster when sorting simply isn't desired. For
1061 example when collecting a set of messages that will all be
1062 manipulated identically, (adding a tag, removing a tag, deleting the
1063 messages), then there's no advantage to sorting the messages by
1068 Fix to compile against GMime 2.6
1070 Previously notmuch insisted on being able to find GMime 2.4, (even
1071 though GMime 2.6 would have worked all along).
1073 Fix configure script to accept (and ignore) various standard options.
1075 For example, those that the Gentoo build scripts expect configure to
1076 accept are now all accepted.
1080 A large number of new tests for the many new features.
1082 Better display of output from failed tests.
1084 Now shows failures with diff rather than forcing the user to gaze at
1085 complete actual and expected output looking for deviation.
1087 Notmuch 0.2 (2010-04-16)
1088 ========================
1089 This is the second release of the notmuch mail system, with actual
1090 detailed release notes this time!
1092 This release consists of a number of minor new features that make
1093 notmuch more pleasant to use, and a few fairly major bug fixes.
1095 We didn't quite hit our release target of "about a week" from the 0.1
1096 release, (0.2 is happening 11 days after 0.1), but we hope to do
1097 better for next week. Look forward to some major features coming to
1098 notmuch in subsequent releases.
1104 Better guessing of From: header.
1106 Notmuch now tries harder to guess which configured address should be
1107 used as the From: line in a "notmuch reply". It will examine the
1108 Received: headers if it fails to find any configured address in To:
1109 or Cc:. This allows it to often choose the correct address even when
1110 replying to a message sent to a mailing list, and not directly to a
1113 Make "notmuch count" with no arguments count all messages
1115 Previously, it was hard to construct a search term that was
1116 guaranteed to match all messages.
1118 Provide a new special-case search term of "*" to match all messages.
1120 This can be used in any command accepting a search term, such as
1121 "notmuch search '*'". Note that you'll want to take care that the
1122 shell doesn't expand * against the current files. And note that the
1123 support for "*" is a special case. It's only meaningful as a single
1124 search term and loses its special meaning when combined with any
1127 Automatically detect thread connections even when a parent message is
1130 Previously, if two or more message were received with a common
1131 parent, but that parent was not received, then these messages would
1132 not be recognized as belonging to the same thread. This is now fixed
1133 so that such messages are properly connected in a thread.
1137 Fix potential data loss in "notmuch new" with SIGINT
1139 One code path in "notmuch new" was not properly handling
1140 SIGINT. Previously, this could lead to messages being removed from
1141 the database (and their tags being lost) if the user pressed
1142 Control-C while "notmuch new" was working.
1144 Fix segfault when a message includes a MIME part that is empty.
1146 Fix handling of non-ASCII characters with --format=json
1148 Previously, characters outside the range of 7-bit ASCII were
1149 silently dropped from the JSON output. This led to corrupted display
1150 of utf-8 content in the upcoming notmuch web-based frontends.
1152 Fix headers to be properly decoded in "notmuch reply"
1154 Previously, the user might see:
1156 Subject: Re: =?iso-8859-2?q?Rozlu=E8ka?=
1160 Subject: Re: Rozlučka
1162 The former text is properly encoded to be RFC-compliant SMTP, will
1163 be sent correctly, and will be properly decoded by the
1164 recipient. But the user trying to edit the reply would likely be
1165 unable to read or edit that field in its encoded form.
1167 Emacs client features
1168 ---------------------
1169 Show the last few lines of citations as well as the first few lines.
1171 It's often the case that the last sentence of a citation is what is
1172 being replied to directly, so the last few lines are often much more
1173 important. The number of lines shown at the beginning and end of any
1174 citation can be configured, (notmuch-show-citation-lines-prefix and
1175 notmuch-show-citation-lines-suffix).
1177 The '+' and '-' commands in the search view can now add and remove
1180 Selective bulk tagging is now possible by selecting a region of
1181 threads and then using either the '+' or '-' keybindings. Bulk
1182 tagging is still available for all threads matching the current
1183 search with the '*' binding.
1185 More meaningful buffer names for thread-view buffers.
1187 Notmuch now uses the Subject of the thread as the buffer
1188 name. Previously it was using the thread ID, which is a meaningless
1191 Provide for customized colors of threads in search view based on tags.
1193 See the documentation of notmuch-search-line-faces, (or us "M-x
1194 customize" and browse to the "notmuch" group within "Applications"
1195 and "Mail"), for details on how to configure this colorization.
1197 Build-system features
1198 ---------------------
1199 Add support to properly build libnotmuch on Darwin systems (OS X).
1201 Add support to configure for many standard options.
1203 We include actual support for:
1205 --includedir --mandir --sysconfdir
1207 And accept and silently ignore several more:
1209 --build --infodir --libexecdir --localstatedir
1210 --disable-maintainer-mode --disable-dependency-tracking
1212 Install emacs client in "make install" rather than requiring a
1213 separate "make install-emacs".
1215 Automatically compute versions numbers between releases.
1217 This support uses the git-describe notation, so a version such as
1218 0.1-144-g43cbbfc indicates a version that is 144 commits since the
1219 0.1 release and is available as git commit "43cbbfc".
1221 Add a new "make test" target to run the test suite and actually verify
1224 Notmuch 0.1 (2010-04-05)
1225 ========================
1226 This is the first release of the notmuch mail system.
1228 It includes the libnotmuch library, the notmuch command-line
1229 interface, and an emacs-based interface to notmuch.
1231 Note: Notmuch will work best with Xapian 1.0.18 (or later) or Xapian
1232 1.1.4 (or later). Previous versions of Xapian (whether 1.0 or 1.1) had
1233 a performance bug that made notmuch very slow when modifying
1234 tags. This would cause distracting pauses when reading mail while
1235 notmuch would wait for Xapian when removing the "inbox" and "unread"
1236 tags from messages in a thread.