1 [[!img notmuch-logo.png alt="Notmuch logo" class="left"]]
2 # Notmuch -- The mail indexer
6 Because dealing with your mail can be so much better.
8 * "Not much mail" is what Notmuch thinks about your email
9 collection. Even if you receive 12000 messages per month or have on
10 the order of millions of messages that you've been saving for
11 decades. Regardless, Notmuch will be able to quickly search all of
12 it. It's just plain not much mail.
14 * "Not much mail" is also what you should have in your inbox at any
15 time. Notmuch gives you what you need, (tags and fast search), so
16 that you can keep your inbox tamed and focus on what really matters
17 in your life, (which is surely not email).
19 * Notmuch is an answer to [Sup](http://sup.rubyforge.org/).
20 Sup is a very good email program written by William Morgan (and
21 others) and is the direct inspiration for Notmuch. Notmuch began as
22 an effort to rewrite performance-critical pieces of Sup in C rather
23 than ruby. From there, it grew into a separate project. One
24 significant contribution Notmuch makes compared to Sup is the
25 separation of the indexer/searcher from the user interface. (Notmuch
26 provides a library interface so that its indexing/searching/tagging
27 features can be integrated into any email program.)
29 * Notmuch is not much of an email program. It doesn't receive messages
30 (no POP or IMAP support). It doesn't send messages (no mail composer,
31 no network code at all). And for what it does do (email search) that
32 work is provided by an external library,
33 [Xapian](http://xapian.org). So if Notmuch provides no user
34 interface and Xapian does all the heavy lifting, then what's left
37 If you've been looking for a fast, global-search and tag-based email
38 reader to use within your text editor or in a terminal, then Notmuch
39 may be exactly what you've been looking for.
41 If you're a developer of an existing email program and would love a
42 good library interface for fast, global search with support for
43 arbitrary tags, then Notmuch also may be exactly what you've been
48 [[The latest news from notmuch|news]]
52 To get started with notmuch, just run "notmuch" at the command line.
53 The configuration wizard will walk you through initial setup,
54 including specifying the location of your mail store and now to start
55 the initial indexing. After that, come back and checkout how our
58 * [[General how-tos|howto]]
59 * [[Available frontends|frontends]]
61 * [[Excluding and deleting messages|excluding]]
62 * [[Initial tagging|Initial_Tagging]]
63 * [[Tips for using notmuch within Emacs|emacstips]]
64 * [[Remote usage|remoteusage]]
65 * [[Performance|performance]]
67 Apart from the wiki, help is available via email. Join the mailing
68 list. Read the archives. Ask questions.
72 * [[Emacs UI screenshots|screenshots]]
76 * [Debian](http://packages.debian.org/search?keywords=notmuch)
77 * [Fedora](https://community.dev.fedoraproject.org/packages/notmuch)
78 * [Gentoo](http://packages.gentoo.org/package/net-mail/notmuch)
79 * [Slackware](http://slackbuilds.org/repository/13.37/office/notmuch/)
80 * [Ubuntu](http://packages.ubuntu.com/search?keywords=notmuch)
84 All of the code for Notmuch is available as [free
85 software](http://www.fsf.org/licensing/essays/free-sw.html) released
86 under the GNU [GPL version
87 3](http://www.fsf.org/licensing/licenses/gpl.html). The latest
88 versions can be checked out via git with this command:
90 git clone git://notmuchmail.org/git/notmuch
92 You can browse the [Notmuch code
93 history](http://git.notmuchmail.org/git/notmuch) online. And finally,
94 you can [subscribe to the `notmuch-commits`
95 list](http://notmuchmail.org/mailman/listinfo/notmuch-commits) to watch
96 every commit made to notmuch and the notmuchmail.org web site.
98 Source code of notmuch releases can be downloaded [here](http://notmuchmail.org/releases/).
100 There is a buildbot [here](http://buildbot.notmuchmail.org/grid) (configuration [here](https://github.com/tomprince/buildbot-configs/tree/notmuch)).
102 ## Bug-tracking and patches
104 Patches are most welcome and should be sent to notmuch@notmuchmail.org.
105 Please try to follow the [[patch submission guidelines|patchformatting]]
106 when submitting patches to notmuch.
108 The tagging and filtering features of notmuch make it quite suitable
109 for use as a bug- and patch-tracker. We are currently experimenting
110 with using it for this purpose for notmuch development, using a
111 utility called [[nmbug]].
113 The status of current patches can also be followed [[online|http://nmbug.tethera.net/status]].
115 ## Contact: Email & IRC
117 Comments? Please feel free to email the notmuch mailing list:
118 notmuch@notmuchmail.org (subscription is not required, but you can
119 subscribe to the [notmuch
120 list](http://notmuchmail.org/mailman/listinfo/notmuch) if you would
121 like to). You can also browse the [online
122 archives](http://notmuchmail.org/pipermail/notmuch/) of the mailing
123 list, read them as a [web forum
124 (nabble)](http://notmuch.198994.n3.nabble.com/), or download an
125 [mbox file](http://notmuchmail.org/archives/notmuch.mbox) of the entire
128 The `mb2md` utility can be used to convert the archives to maildir
129 format which is convenient for reading the archives within notmuch
132 If you prefer real-time chat, there is often someone on the
133 [#notmuch](irc://chat.freenode.net/#notmuch)@irc.freenode.net IRC
138 We have started a [[feature requests|feature-requests]] page on this
139 wiki. No, things you add there won't automatically get implemented -
140 but it's a nice way to collect ideas.
144 This wiki is maintained using
145 [ikiwiki](http://ikiwiki.info). Instructions on how to edit it can be
146 found [[here|wikiwriteaccess]].