1 Notmuch 0.6 (2011-07-01)
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:
19 to match any path containing a directory "spam", "work/todo", or
20 containing a directory starting with "2011-", respectively.
22 This feature is particularly useful for users of delivery-agent
23 software (such as procmail or maildrop) that is filtering mail and
24 delivering it to particular folders, or users of systems such as
25 Gmail that use filesystem directories to indicate message tags.
27 NOTE: Only messages that are newly indexed with this version of
28 notmuch will be searchable with folder: terms. In order to enable
29 this feature for all mail, the entire notmuch index will need to be
32 notmuch dump > notmuch.dump
33 # Backup, then remove notmuch database ($MAIL/.notmuch)
35 notmuch restore notmuch.dump
39 Both the command line interface and the emacs-interface have new
40 support for PGP/MIME, detailed below. Thanks to Daniel Kahn Gillmor
41 and Jameson Graef Rollins for making this happen.
43 New, automatic tags: "signed" and "encrypted"
45 These tags will automatically be applied to messages containing
46 multipart/signed and multipart/encrypted parts.
48 NOTE: Only messages that are newly indexed with this version of
49 notmuch will receive these tags.
51 New command-line features
52 -------------------------
53 Add new "notmuch show --verify" option for signature verification
55 This option instruct notmuch to verify the signature of
56 PGP/MIME-signed parts.
58 Add new "notmuch show --decrypt" and "notmuch reply --decrypt" options
60 This option instructs notmuch to decrypt PGP/MIME-encrypted parts.
61 Note that this feature currently requires gpg-agent and a passphrase entry
62 tool (e.g. pinentry-gtk or pinentry-curses).
64 Proper nesting of multipart parts in "notmuch show" output
66 MIME parts are now display with proper nesting to reflect original
67 MIME hierarchy of a message. This allows clients to correctly
68 analyze the MIME structure, (such as, for example, determining to
69 which parts a signature part applies).
71 Add new "notmuch show --part" option
73 This is a replacement for the older "notmuch part" command, (which
74 is now deprecated—it should still work as always, but is no longer
75 documented). Putting part output under "notmuch show" allows for all
76 of the "notmuch show" options to be applied when extracting a single
77 part, (such as --format=json for extracting a message part with JSON
80 Deprecate "notmuch search-tags", (in favor of "notmuch search --output=tags *")
82 The "notmuch search-tags" sub-command has been redundant since the
83 addition of the --output=tags option to "notmuch search". We now
84 make that more clear by deprecating "notmuch search-tags", (dropping
85 it from the documentation). We do continue to support the old syntax
86 by translating it internally to the new call.
88 Performance improvements
89 ------------------------
90 Faster searches (by doing fewer searches to construct threads)
92 Whenever a user asks for search results as threads, notmuch first
93 performs a search for messages matching the query, then performs
94 additional searches to find other messages in the resulting threads.
96 Removing inefficiencies and redundancies in these secondary searches
97 results in a measured speedups of 1.5x for a typical search.
99 Faster searches (by doing fewer passes to gather message data)
101 Optimizing Xapian data access patterns (using a single pass to get
102 all message-document data rather than a pass for each data type)
103 results in a measured speedup of 1.7x for a typical search.
105 The benefits of this optimization combine with the preceding
106 optimization. With both in place, Austin Clements measured a speedup
107 of 2.5x for a search of all messages in his inbox (was 4.5s, now
108 1.8s). Thanks, Austin!
110 Faster initial indexing
112 More efficient indexing of new messages results in a measured
113 speedup of 1.4x for the initial indexing of 3 GB of mail (1h 14m
114 rather than 1h 46m). Thanks to Austin Clements and Michal Sojka.
116 Make "notmuch new" faster for unchanged directories
118 Optimizing to not do any further examinations of sub-directories
119 when the filesystem indicates that a directory is unchanged from the
120 last "notmuch new" results in measured speedups of 8.5 for the "No
121 new mail" case, (was 0.77s, now 0.09s). Thanks to Karel Zak.
123 New emacs-interface features
124 ----------------------------
126 Support for PGP/MIME (GnuPG)
128 Automatically indicate validity of signatures for multipart/signed
129 messages. Automatically display decrypted content for
130 multipart/encrypted messages. See the emacs variable
131 notmuch-crypto-process-mime for more information. Note that this
132 needs gpg-agent and a pinentry tool just as the command line tools.
133 Also note there is no support SMIME yet.
135 Output of pipe command is now displayed if pipe command fails
137 This is extremely useful in the common use case of piping a patch to
138 "git am". If git fails to cleanly merge the patch the error messages
139 from the failed merge are now clearly displayed to the user, (where
140 previously they were silently hidden from the user).
142 User-selectable From address
144 A user can choose which configured email addresses should be used as
145 the From address whenever composing a new message. To do so, simply
146 press C-u before the command which will open a new message. Emacs
147 will prompt for the from address to use.
149 The user can customize the "Notmuch Identities" setting in the
150 notmuch customize group in order to use addresses other than those in
151 the notmuch configuration file if desired.
153 The user can also choose to always be prompted for the from address
154 when composing a new message (without having to use C-u) by setting
155 the "Notmuch Always Prompt For Sender" option in the notmuch
158 Hiding of repeated subjects in collapsed thread view
160 In notmuch-show mode, if a collapsed message has the same subject as
161 its parent, the subject is not shown.
163 Automatic detection and hiding of original message in top-posted message
165 When a message contains a line looking something like:
167 ----- Original Message -----
169 emacs hides this and all subsequent lines as an "original message",
170 (allowing the user to click or press enter on the "original message"
171 button to display it again). This makes the handling of top-posted
172 citations work much like conventional citations.
174 New hooks for running code when tags are modified
176 Some users want to perform additional actions whenever a particular
177 tag is added/removed from a message. This could be used to, for
178 example, interface with some external spam-recognition training
179 tool. To facilitate this, two new hooks are added which can be
180 modified in the following settings of the notmuch customize group:
182 Notmuch Before Tag Hook
183 Notmuch After Tag Hook
185 New optional support for hiding some multipart/alternative parts
187 Many emails are sent with redundant content within a
188 multipart/alternative group (such as a text/plain part as well as a
189 text/html part). Users can configure the setting:
191 Notmuch Show All Multipart/Alternative Parts
193 to "off" in the notmuch customize group to have the interface
194 automatically hide some part alternatives (such as text/html
195 parts). This new part hiding is not configured by default yet
196 because there's not yet a simple way to re-display such a hidden
197 part if it is not actually redundant with a displayed part.
199 Better rendering of text/x-vcalendar parts
201 These parts are now displayed in a format suitable for use with the
204 Avoid getting confused by Subject and Author fields with newline characters
206 Replacing all characters with ASCII code less than 32 with a question mark.
208 Cleaner display of From line in email messages (remove double quotes,
209 and drop "name" if it's actually just a repeat of the email address).
211 Vim interface improvements
212 --------------------------
213 Felipe Contreras provided a number of updates for the vim interface:
215 * Using sendmail directly rather than mailx,
216 * Implementing archive in show view
217 * Add support to mark as read in show and search views
218 * Add delete commands
221 Bindings improvements
222 ---------------------
223 Ruby bindings are now much more complete
225 Including QUERY.sort, QUERY.to_s, MESSAGE.maildir_flags_to_tags,
226 MESSAGE.tags_to_maildir_flags, and MESSAGE.get_filenames
228 * Python bindings have been upodated and extended
229 (docs online at http://packages.python.org/notmuch/)
232 - Message().get_filenames(),
233 - Message().tags_to_maildir_flags(),Message().maildir_flags_to_tags()
234 - list(Threads()) and list(Messages) works now
236 - Message().__cmp__() and __hash__()
237 These allow, for example:
240 As well as set arithmetic on Messages():
242 s1, s2= set(msgs1), set(msgs2)
247 - len(Messages()) as it exausted the iterator.
248 Use len(list(Messages())) or
249 Query.count_messages() to get the length.
251 Added initial Go bindings in bindings/go
253 New build-system features
254 -------------------------
255 Added support for building in a directory other than the source directory
257 This can be used with the widely-supported idiom of simply running
258 the configure script from some other directory:
265 Fix to save configure options for future, implicit runs of configure
267 When a user updates the source (such as with "git pull") calling
268 "make" may cause an automatic re-run of the configure script. When
269 this happens, the configure script will automatically be called with
270 the same options the user originally passed in the most-recent
271 manual invocation of configure.
273 New test-suite feature
274 ----------------------
275 Binary for bash for running test suite now located via PATH.
277 The notmuch test suite requires a fairly recent version of bash (>=
278 bash 4). As some systems supply an older version of bash at
279 /bin/bash, the test suite is now updated to search $PATH to locate
280 the bash binary. This allows users of systems with old /bin/bash to
281 simply install bash >= 4 somewhere on $PATH before /bin and then use
284 Support for testing output with a trailing newline.
286 Previously, some tests would fail to notice a difference in the
287 presence/absence of a trailing newline in a program output, (which
288 has led to bugs in the past). Now, carefully-written tests (using
289 test_expect_equal_file rather than test_expect_equal) will detect
290 any change in the presence/absence of a trailing newline. Many tests
291 are updated to take advantage of this.
293 Avoiding accessing user's $HOME while running test suite
295 The test suite now carefully creates its own HOME directory. This
296 allows the test suite to be run with no existing HOME directory, (as
297 some build systems apparently do), and avoids test-suite differences
298 due to configuration files in the users HOME directory.
303 Output *all* files for "notmuch search --output=files"
305 For the cases where multiple files have the same Message ID,
306 previous versions of notmuch would output only one such file. This
307 command is now fixed to correctly output all files.
309 Fixed spurious search results from "overlapped" indexing of addresses
311 This fixed a bug where a search for:
313 to:user@elsewhere.com
315 would incorrectly match a message sent:
317 To: user@example,com, someone@elsewhere.com
319 Fix --output=json when search has no results
321 A bug present since notmuch 0.4 had caused searches with no results
322 to produce an invalid json object. This is now fixed to cleanly
323 return a valid json object representing an empty array "[]" as
326 fix the automatic detection of the From address for "notmuch reply"
327 from the Received headers in some cases.
329 Fix core dump on DragonFlyBSD due to -1 return value from
330 sysconf(_SC_GETPW_R_SIZE_MAX).
332 Cleaned up several memory leaks
334 Eliminated a few, rare segmentation faults and a double-free.
336 Fix libnotmuch library to only export notmuch API functions
338 Previous release of the notmuch library also exported some Xapian
339 C++ exception type symbols. These were never part of the library
340 interface and were never intended to be exported.
342 Emacs-interface bug fixes
343 -------------------------
344 Display any unexpected output or errors from "notmuch search" invocations
346 Previously any misformatted output or trailing error messages were
347 silently ignored. This output is now clearly displayed. This fix was
348 very helpful in identifying and fixing the bug described below.
350 Fix bug where some threads would be missing from large search results
352 When a search returned a "large" number of results, the emacs
353 interface was incorrectly dropping one thread every time the output
354 of the "notmuch search" process spanned the emacs read-buffer. This
357 Avoid re-compression of .gz files (and similar) when saving attachment
359 Emacs was being too clever for its own good and trying to
360 re-compress pre-compressed .gz files when saving such attachments
361 (potentially corrupting the attachment). The emacs interface is
362 fixed to avoid this bug.
364 Fix hiding of a message when a previously-hidden citation is visible
366 Previously the citation would remain visible in this case. This is
367 fixed so that hiding a message hides all parts.
369 Notmuch 0.5 (2010-11-11)
370 ========================
371 New, general features
372 ---------------------
373 Maildir-flag synchronization
375 Notmuch now knows how to synchronize flags in maildir filenames with
376 tags in the notmuch database. The following flag/tag mappings are
385 'S' unread (added when 'S' flag is not present)
387 The synchronization occurs in both directions, (for example, adding
388 the 'S' flag to a file will cause the "unread" tag to be added, and
389 adding the "replied" tag to a message will cause the file to be
390 renamed with an 'R' flag).
392 This synchronization is enabled by default for users of the
393 command-line interface, (though only files in directories named
394 "cur" or "new" will be renamed). It can be disabled by setting the
395 new maildir.synchronize_flags option in the configuration file. For
398 notmuch config set maildir.synchronize_flags false
400 Users upgrading may also want to run "notmuch setup" once (just
401 accept the existing configuration) to get a new, nicely-commented
402 [maildir] section added to the configuration file.
404 For users of the notmuch library, the new synchronization
405 functionality is available with the following two new functions:
407 notmuch_message_maildir_flags_to_tags
408 notmuch_message_tags_to_maildir_flags
410 It is anticipated that future improvements to this support will
411 allow for safe synchronization of the 'T' flag with the "deleted"
412 tag, as well as support for custom flag/tag mappings.
416 Support for querying multiple filenames for a single message
418 It is common for the mailstore to contain multiple files with the
419 same message ID. Previously, notmuch would always hide these
420 duplicate files, (returning a single, arbitrary filename with
421 notmuch_message_get_filename).
423 With this release, library users can access all filenames for a
424 message with the new function:
426 notmuch_message_get_filenames
428 Together with notmuch_filenames_valid, notmuch_filenames_get, and
429 notmuch_filenames_move_to_next it is now possible to iterate over
430 all available filenames for a given message.
432 New command-line features
433 -------------------------
434 New "notmuch show --format=raw" for getting at original email contents
436 This new feature allows for a fully-functional email client to be
437 built on top of the notmuch command-line without needing any direct
438 access to the mail store itself.
440 For example, it's now possible to run "emacs -f notmuch" on a local
441 machine with only ssh access to the mail store/notmuch database. To
442 do this, simply set the notmuch-command variable in emacs to the
443 name of a script containing:
445 ssh user@host notmuch "$@"
447 If the ssh client has enabled connection sharing (ControlMaster
448 option in OpenSSH), the emacs interface can be quite responsive this
453 Fix "notmuch search" to print nothing when nothing matches
455 The 0.4 release had a bug in which:
457 notmuch search <expression-with-no-matches>
459 would produce a single blank line of output, (where previous
460 versions would produce no output. This fix also causes a change in
461 the --format=json output, (which would previously produce "[]" and
462 now produces nothing).
464 Emacs interface improvements
465 ----------------------------
466 Fix to allow pipe ('|') command to work when using notmuch over ssh
468 Fix count of lines in hidden signatures.
470 Omit repeated subject lines in (collapsed) thread display.
472 Display current thread subject in a header line.
474 Provide a "c i" binding to copy a thread ID from the search view.
476 Allow for notmuch-fcc-dirs to have a value of nil.
478 Also, the more complex form of notmuch-fcc-dirs now has a slightly
479 different format. It no longer has a special first-element, fallback
480 string. Instead it's now a list of cons cells where the car of each
481 cell is a regular expression to be matched against the sender
482 address, and the cdr is the name of a folder to use for an FCC. So
483 the old fallback behavior can be achieved by including a final cell
484 of (".*" . "default-fcc-folder").
486 Vim interface improvements
487 --------------------------
488 Felipe Contreras provided a number of updates for the vim interface.
490 These include optimizations, support for newer versions of vim, fixed
491 support for sending mail on modern systems, new commands, and
496 Added initial ruby bindings in bindings/ruby
498 Notmuch 0.4 (2010-11-01)
499 ========================
500 New command-line features
501 -------------------------
502 notmuch search --output=(summary|threads|messages|tags|files)
504 This new option allows for particular items to be returned from
505 notmuch searches. The "summary" option is the default and behaves
506 just as "notmuch search" has historically behaved.
508 The new option values allow for thread IDs, message IDs, lists of
509 tags, and lists of filenames to be returned from searches. It is
510 expected that this new option will be very useful in shell
511 scripts. For example:
513 for file in $(notmuch search --output=files <search-terms>); do
514 <operations-on> "$file"
517 notmuch show --format=mbox <search-specification>
519 This new option allows for the messages matching a search
520 specification to be presented as an mbox. Specifically the "mboxrd"
521 format is used which allows for reversible quoting of lines
522 beginning with "From ". A reader should remove a single '>' from the
523 beginning of all lines beginning with one or more '>' characters
524 followed by the 5 characters "From ".
526 notmuch config [get|set] <section>.<item> [value ...]
528 The new top-level "config" command allows for any value in the
529 notmuch configuration file to be queried or set to a new value. Both
530 single-valued and multi-valued items are supported, as our any
531 custom items stored in the configuration file.
533 Avoid setting Bcc header in "notmuch reply"
535 We decided that this was a bit heavy-handed as the actual mail
536 user-agent should be responsible for setting any Bcc option. Also,
537 see below for the notmuch/emacs user-agent now setting an Fcc by
538 default rather than Bcc.
542 Add notmuch_query_get_query_string and notmuch_query_get_sort
544 These are simply functions for querying properties of a
545 notmuch_query_t object.
549 Enable Fcc of all sent messages by default (to "sent" directory)
551 All messages sent from the emacs interface will now be saved to the
552 notmuch mail store where they will be incorporated to the database
553 by the next "notmuch new". By default, messages are saved to the
554 "sent" directory at the top-level of the mail store. This directory
555 can be customized by means of the "Notmuch Fcc Dirs" option in the
556 notmuch customize interface.
558 Ability to all open messages in a thread to a pipe
560 Historically, the '|' keybinding allows for piping a single message
561 to an external command. Now, by prefixing this key with a prefix
562 argument, (for example, by pressing "Control-U |"), all open
563 messages in the current thread will be sent to the external command.
565 Optional support for detecting inline patches
567 This hook is disabled by default but can be enabled with a checkbox
568 under "Notmuch Show Insert Text/Plain Hook" in the notmuch customize
569 interface. It allows for inline patches to be detected and treated
570 as if they were attachments, (with context-sensitive highlighting).
572 Automatically tag messages as "replied" when sending a reply
574 Messages replied to within the emacs interface will now be tagged as
575 "replied". This feature can easily be customized to add or remove
576 other tags as well. For example, a user might use a tag of
577 "needs-reply" and can configure this feature to automatically remove
578 that tag when replying. See "Notmuch Message Mark Replied" in the
579 notmuch customize interface.
581 Allow search-result color specifications to overlay each other
583 For example, one tag can specify the background color of matching
584 lines, while another can specify the foreground. With this change,
585 both settings will now be visible simultaneously, (which was not the
586 case in previous releases). See "Notmuch Search Line Faces" in the
587 notmuch customize interface.
589 Make hidden author names still available for incremental search.
591 When there is insufficient space to display all authors of a thread
592 in search results, the names of hidden authors are now still made
593 available to emacs' incremental search commands. As the user
594 searches, matching lines will temporarily expand to show the hidden
597 New binding of Control-TAB (works like TAB in reverse)
599 Many notmuch nodes already use TAB to navigate forward through
600 various items allowing actions, (message headers, email attachments,
601 etc.). The new Control-TAB binding operates similarly but in the
604 New build-system features
605 -------------------------
606 Various portability fixes have been applied
608 These include fixes for build failures on at least Solaris, FreeBSD,
609 and Fedora systems. We're hopeful that the notmuch code base is now
610 more portable than ever before.
612 Arrange for libnotmuch to be found automatically after make install
614 The notmuch build system is now careful to help the user avoid
615 errors of the form "libnotmuch.so could not be found" immediately
616 after installing. This support takes two forms:
618 1. If the library is installed to a system directory,
619 (configured in /etc/ld.so.conf), then "make install" will
620 automatically run ldconfig.
622 2. If the library is installed to a non-system directory, the
623 build system adds a DR_RUNPATH entry to the final binary
624 pointing to the directory to which the library is installed.
626 When this support works, the user should be able to run notmuch
627 immediately after "make install", without any errors trying to find
628 the notmuch library, and without having to manually set environment
629 variables such as LD_LIBRARY_PATH.
631 Check compiler/linker options before using them
633 The configure script now carefully checks that any desired
634 compilation options, (whether for enabling compiler warnings, or for
635 embedding rpath, etc.), are supported. Only supported options are
636 used in the resulting Makefile.
638 New test-suite features
639 -----------------------
640 New modularization of test suite.
642 Thanks to a gracious relicensing of the test-suite infrastructure
643 from the git project, notmuch now has a modular test suite. This
644 provides the ability to run individual sections of the test suite
645 rather than the whole things. It also provides better summary of
646 test results, with support for tests that are expected to fail
647 (BROKEN and FIXED) in addition to PASS and FAIL. Finally, it makes
648 it easy to run the test suite within valgrind (pass --valgrind to
649 notmuch-test or to any sub-script) which has been very useful.
651 New testing of emacs interface.
653 The test suite has been augmented to allow automated testing of the
654 emacs interfaces. So far, this includes basic searches, display of
655 threads, and tag manipulation. This also includes a test that a new
656 message can successfully be sent out through a (dummy) SMTP server
657 and that said message is successfully integrated into the notmuch
658 database via the FCC setting.
662 Fix potential corruption of database when "notmuch new " is interrupted.
664 Previously, an interruption of "notmuch new" would (rarely) result
665 in a corrupt database. The corruption would manifest itself by a
666 persistent error of the form:
668 document ID of 1234 has no thread ID
670 The message-adding code has been carefully audited and reworked to
671 avoid this sort of corruption regardless of when it is interrupted.
673 Fix failure with extremely long message ID headers.
675 Previously, a message with an extremely long message ID, (say, more
676 than 300 characters), would fail to be added to notmuch, (triggering
677 Xapian exceptions). This has now been fixed.
679 Fix for messages with "charset=unknown-8bit"
681 Previously, messages with this charset would cause notmuch to emit a
682 GMime warning, (which would then trip up emacs or other interfaces
683 parsing the notmuch results).
685 Fix notmuch_query_search_threads function to return NULL on any exception
687 Fix "notmuch search" to return non-zero if notmuch_query_search_threads fails
689 Previously, this command could confusingly report a Xapian
690 exception, yet still return an error code of 0. It now correctly
691 returns a failing error code of 1 in this case.
695 Fix to handle a message with a subject containing, for example "[1234]"
697 Previously, a message subject containing a sequence of digits within
698 square brackets would cause the emacs interface to mis-parse the
699 output of "notmuch search". This would result in the message being
700 mis-displayed and prevent the user from manipulating the message in
703 Fix to correctly handle message IDs containing ".."
705 The emacs interface now properly quotes message IDs to avoid a
706 Xapian bug in which the ".." within a message ID would be
707 misinterpreted as a numeric range specification.
711 The python bindings for notmuch have been updated to work with python3.
713 Debian-specific fixes
714 ---------------------
715 Fix emacs initialization so "M-x notmuch" works for users by default.
717 Now, a new Debian user can immediately run "emacs -f notmuch" after
718 "apt-get install notmuch". Previously, the user would have had to
719 edit the ~/.emacs file to add "(require 'notmuch)" before this would
722 Notmuch 0.3.1 (2010-04-27)
723 ==========================
726 Fix an infinite loop in "notmuch reply"
728 This bug could be triggered by replying to a message where the
729 user's primary email address did not appear in the To: header and
730 the user had not configured any secondary email addresses. The bug
731 was a simple re-use of the same iterator variable in nested loops.
733 Fix a potential SEGV in "notmuch search"
735 This bug could be triggered by an author name ending in a ','.
736 Admittedly - that's almost certainly a spam email, but we never
737 want notmuch to crash.
741 Fix calculations for line wrapping in the primary "notmuch" view.
743 Fix Fcc support to prompt to create a directory if the specified Fcc
744 directory does not exist.
748 Fix build on OpenSolaris (at least) due to missing 'extern "C"' block.
750 Without this, the C++ sources could not find strcasestr and the
751 final linking of notmuch would fail.
753 Notmuch 0.3 (2010-04-27)
754 ========================
755 New command-line features
756 -------------------------
757 User-configurable tags for new messages
759 A new "new.tags" option is available in the configuration file to
760 determine which tags are applied to new messages. Run "notmuch
761 setup" to generate new documentation within ~/.notmuch-config on how
762 to specify this value.
764 Threads search results named based on subjects that match search
766 This means that when new mails arrived to a thread you've previously
767 read, and the new mails have a new subject, you will see that
768 subject in the search results rather than the old subject.
770 Faster operation of "notmuch tag" (avoid unneeded sorting)
772 Since the user just wants to tag all matching messages, we can make
773 things perform a bit faster by avoiding the sort.
775 Even Better guessing of From: header for "notmuch reply"
777 Notmuch now looks at a number of headers when trying to figure out
778 the best From: header to use in a reply. This is helpful if you have
779 several configured email addresses, and you also subscribe to various
780 mailing lists with different addresses, (so that mails you are
781 replying to won't always include your subscribed address in the To:
784 Indication of author names that match a search
786 When notmuch displays threads as the result of a search, it now
787 lists the authors that match the search before listing the other
788 authors in the thread. It inserts a pipe '|' symbol between the last
789 matching and first non-matching author. This is especially useful in
790 a search that includes tag:unread. Now the authors of the unread
791 messages in the thread are listed first.
795 Sebastian Spaeth has contributed his python bindings for the notmuch
796 library to the central repository. These bindings were previously
797 known as "cnotmuch" within python but have now been renamed to be
798 accessible with a simple, and more official-looking "import notmuch".
800 The bindings have already proven very useful as people proficient in
801 python have been able to easily develop programs to do notmuch-based
802 searches for email-address completion, maildir-flag synchronization,
805 These bindings are available within the bindings/python directory, but
806 are not yet integrated into the top-level Makefiles, nor the top-level
807 package-building scripts. Improvements are welcome.
809 Emacs interface improvements
810 ----------------------------
811 An entirely new initial view for notmuch, (friendly yet powerful)
813 Some of us call the new view "notmuch hello" but you can get at it
814 by simply calling "emacs -f notmuch". The new view provides a search
815 bar where new searches can be performed. It also displays a list of
816 recent searches, along with a button to save any of these, giving it
817 a new name as a "saved search". Many people find these "saved
818 searches" one of the most convenient ways of organizing their mail,
819 (providing all of the features of "folders" in other mail clients,
820 but without any of the disadvantages).
822 Finally, this view can also optionally display all of the tags that
823 exist in the database, along with a count for each tag, and a custom
824 search of messages with that tag that's simply a click (or keypress)
827 Note: For users that liked the original mode of "emacs -f notmuch"
828 immediately displaying a particular search result, we
829 recommend instead running something like:
831 emacs --eval '(notmuch search "tag:inbox" t)'
833 The "t" means to sort the messages in an "oldest first" order,
834 (as notmuch would do previously by default). You can also
835 leave that off to have your search results in "newest first"
838 Full-featured "customize" support for configuring notmuch
840 Notmuch now plugs in well to the emacs "customize" mode to make it
841 much simpler to find things about the notmuch interface that can be
844 You can get to this mode by starting at the main "Customize" menu in
845 emacs, then browsing through "Applications", "Mail", and
846 "Notmuch". Or you can go straight to "M-x customize-group"
849 Once you're at the customize screen, you'll see a list of documented
850 options that can be manipulated along with checkboxes, drop-down
851 selectors, and text-entry boxes for configuring the various
854 Support for doing tab-completion of email addresses
856 This support currently relies on an external program,
857 (notmuch-addresses), that is not yet shipped with notmuch
858 itself. But multiple, suitable implementations of this program have
859 already been written that generate address completions by doing
860 notmuch searches of your email collection. For example, providing
861 first those addresses that you have composed messages to in the
864 One such program (implemented in python with the python bindings to
865 notmuch) is available via:
867 git clone http://jkr.acm.jhu.edu/git/notmuch_addresses.git
869 Install that program as notmuch-addresses on your PATH, and then
870 hitting TAB on a partial email address or name within the To: or Cc:
871 line of an email message will provide matching completions.
873 Support for file-based (Fcc) delivery of sent messages to mail store
875 This isn't yet enabled by default. To enable this, one will have to
876 set the "Notmuch Fcc Dirs" setting within the notmuch customize
877 screen, (see its documentation there for details). We anticipate
878 making this automatic in a future release.
880 New 'G' key binding to trigger mail refresh (G == "Get new mail")
882 The 'G' key works wherever '=' works. Before refreshing the screen
883 it calls an external program that can be used to poll email servers,
884 run notmuch new and setup specific tags for the new emails. The
885 script to be called should be configured with the "Notmuch Poll
886 Script" setting in the customize interface. This script will
887 typically invoke "notmuch new" and then perhaps several "notmuch
890 Implement emacs message display with the JSON output from notmuch.
892 This is much more robust than the previous implementation, (where
893 some HTML mails and mail quoting the notmuch code with the delimiter
894 characters in it would cause the parser to fall over).
896 Better handling of HTML messages and MIME attachments (inline images!)
898 Allow for any MIME parts that emacs can display to be displayed
899 inline. This includes inline viewing of image attachments, (provided
900 the window is large enough to fit the image at its natural size).
902 Much more robust handling of HTML messages. Currently both text/plain
903 and text/html alternates will be rendered next to each other. In a
904 future release, users will be able to decide to see only one or the
905 other representation.
907 Each attachment now has its own button so that attachments can be
908 saved individually (the 'w' key is still available to save all
911 Customizable support for tidying of text/plain message content
913 Many new functions are available for tidying up message
914 content. These include options such as wrapping long lines,
915 compressing duplicate blank lines, etc.
917 Most of these are disabled by default, but can easily be enabled by
918 clicking the available check boxes under the "Notmuch Show Insert
919 Text/Plain Hook" within the notmuch customize screen.
921 New support for searchable citations (even when hidden)
923 When portions of overly-long citations are hidden, the contents of
924 these citations will still be available for emacs' standard
925 "incremental search" functions. When the search matches any portion
926 of a hidden citation, the citation will become visible temporarily
927 to display the search result.
929 More flexible handling of header visibility
931 As an answer to complaints from many users, the To, Cc, and Date
932 headers of messages are no longer hidden by default. For those users
933 that liked that these were hidden, a new "Notmuch Messages Headers
934 Visible" option in the customize interface can be set to nil. The
935 visibility of headers can still be toggled on a per-message basis
936 with the 'h' keybinding.
938 For users that don't want to see some subset of those headers, the
939 new "Notmuch Message Headers" variable can be customized to list
940 only those headers that should be present in the display of a message.
942 The Return key now toggles message visibility anywhere
944 Previously this worked only on the first summary-line of a message.
946 Customizable formatting of search results
948 The user can easily customize the order, width, and formatting of
949 the various fields in a "notmuch search" buffer. See the "Notmuch
950 Search Result Format" section of the customize interface.
952 Generate nicer names for search buffers when using a saved search.
954 Add a notmuch User-Agent header when sending mail from notmuch/emacs.
956 New keybinding (M-Ret) to open all collapsed messages in a thread.
960 Provide a new NOTMUCH_SORT_UNSORTED value for queries
962 This can be somewhat faster when sorting simply isn't desired. For
963 example when collecting a set of messages that will all be
964 manipulated identically, (adding a tag, removing a tag, deleting the
965 messages), then there's no advantage to sorting the messages by
970 Fix to compile against GMime 2.6
972 Previously notmuch insisted on being able to find GMime 2.4, (even
973 though GMime 2.6 would have worked all along).
975 Fix configure script to accept (and ignore) various standard options.
977 For example, those that the Gentoo build scripts expect configure to
978 accept are now all accepted.
982 A large number of new tests for the many new features.
984 Better display of output from failed tests.
986 Now shows failures with diff rather than forcing the user to gaze at
987 complete actual and expected output looking for deviation.
989 Notmuch 0.2 (2010-04-16)
990 ========================
991 This is the second release of the notmuch mail system, with actual
992 detailed release notes this time!
994 This release consists of a number of minor new features that make
995 notmuch more pleasant to use, and a few fairly major bug fixes.
997 We didn't quite hit our release target of "about a week" from the 0.1
998 release, (0.2 is happening 11 days after 0.1), but we hope to do
999 better for next week. Look forward to some major features coming to
1000 notmuch in subsequent releases.
1006 Better guessing of From: header.
1008 Notmuch now tries harder to guess which configured address should be
1009 used as the From: line in a "notmuch reply". It will examine the
1010 Received: headers if it fails to find any configured address in To:
1011 or Cc:. This allows it to often choose the correct address even when
1012 replying to a message sent to a mailing list, and not directly to a
1015 Make "notmuch count" with no arguments count all messages
1017 Previously, it was hard to construct a search term that was
1018 guaranteed to match all messages.
1020 Provide a new special-case search term of "*" to match all messages.
1022 This can be used in any command accepting a search term, such as
1023 "notmuch search '*'". Note that you'll want to take care that the
1024 shell doesn't expand * against the current files. And note that the
1025 support for "*" is a special case. It's only meaningful as a single
1026 search term and loses its special meaning when combined with any
1029 Automatically detect thread connections even when a parent message is
1032 Previously, if two or more message were received with a common
1033 parent, but that parent was not received, then these messages would
1034 not be recognized as belonging to the same thread. This is now fixed
1035 so that such messages are properly connected in a thread.
1039 Fix potential data loss in "notmuch new" with SIGINT
1041 One code path in "notmuch new" was not properly handling
1042 SIGINT. Previously, this could lead to messages being removed from
1043 the database (and their tags being lost) if the user pressed
1044 Control-C while "notmuch new" was working.
1046 Fix segfault when a message includes a MIME part that is empty.
1048 Fix handling of non-ASCII characters with --format=json
1050 Previously, characters outside the range of 7-bit ASCII were
1051 silently dropped from the JSON output. This led to corrupted display
1052 of utf-8 content in the upcoming notmuch web-based frontends.
1054 Fix headers to be properly decoded in "notmuch reply"
1056 Previously, the user might see:
1058 Subject: Re: =?iso-8859-2?q?Rozlu=E8ka?=
1062 Subject: Re: Rozlučka
1064 The former text is properly encoded to be RFC-compliant SMTP, will
1065 be sent correctly, and will be properly decoded by the
1066 recipient. But the user trying to edit the reply would likely be
1067 unable to read or edit that field in its encoded form.
1069 Emacs client features
1070 ---------------------
1071 Show the last few lines of citations as well as the first few lines.
1073 It's often the case that the last sentence of a citation is what is
1074 being replied to directly, so the last few lines are often much more
1075 important. The number of lines shown at the beginning and end of any
1076 citation can be configured, (notmuch-show-citation-lines-prefix and
1077 notmuch-show-citation-lines-suffix).
1079 The '+' and '-' commands in the search view can now add and remove
1082 Selective bulk tagging is now possible by selecting a region of
1083 threads and then using either the '+' or '-' keybindings. Bulk
1084 tagging is still available for all threads matching the current
1085 search with the '*' binding.
1087 More meaningful buffer names for thread-view buffers.
1089 Notmuch now uses the Subject of the thread as the buffer
1090 name. Previously it was using the thread ID, which is a meaningless
1093 Provide for customized colors of threads in search view based on tags.
1095 See the documentation of notmuch-search-line-faces, (or us "M-x
1096 customize" and browse to the "notmuch" group within "Applications"
1097 and "Mail"), for details on how to configure this colorization.
1099 Build-system features
1100 ---------------------
1101 Add support to properly build libnotmuch on Darwin systems (OS X).
1103 Add support to configure for many standard options.
1105 We include actual support for:
1107 --includedir --mandir --sysconfdir
1109 And accept and silently ignore several more:
1111 --build --infodir --libexecdir --localstatedir
1112 --disable-maintainer-mode --disable-dependency-tracking
1114 Install emacs client in "make install" rather than requiring a
1115 separate "make install-emacs".
1117 Automatically compute versions numbers between releases.
1119 This support uses the git-describe notation, so a version such as
1120 0.1-144-g43cbbfc indicates a version that is 144 commits since the
1121 0.1 release and is available as git commit "43cbbfc".
1123 Add a new "make test" target to run the test suite and actually verify
1126 Notmuch 0.1 (2010-04-05)
1127 ========================
1128 This is the first release of the notmuch mail system.
1130 It includes the libnotmuch library, the notmuch command-line
1131 interface, and an emacs-based interface to notmuch.
1133 Note: Notmuch will work best with Xapian 1.0.18 (or later) or Xapian
1134 1.1.4 (or later). Previous versions of Xapian (whether 1.0 or 1.1) had
1135 a performance bug that made notmuch very slow when modifying
1136 tags. This would cause distracting pauses when reading mail while
1137 notmuch would wait for Xapian when removing the "inbox" and "unread"
1138 tags from messages in a thread.