1 <h1>NOTMUCH-DUMP(1)</h1>
5 notmuch-dump - creates a plain-text dump of the tags of each message
10 <b>notmuch</b> <b>dump</b> [--format=(batch-tag|sup)] [--] [--output=<<u>file</u>>] [--]
11 [<<u>search-term</u>> ...]
16 Dump tags for messages matching the given search terms.
18 Output is to the given filename, if any, or to stdout.
20 These tags are the only data in the notmuch database that can't be
21 recreated from the messages themselves. The output of notmuch dump is
22 therefore the only critical thing to backup (and much more friendly to
23 incremental backup than the native database files.)
25 <b>--gzip</b> Compress the output in a format compatible with <b>gzip</b>(1).
27 <b>--format=(sup|batch-tag)</b>
28 Notmuch restore supports two plain text dump formats, both with
29 one message-id per line, followed by a list of tags.
32 The default <b>batch-tag</b> dump format is intended to more
33 robust against malformed message-ids and tags containing
34 whitespace or non-<b>ascii</b>(7) characters. Each line has the
36 +<<u>encoded-tag</u>> +<<u>encoded-tag</u>> ... -- id:<<u>quoted-mes‐</u>
39 Tags are hex-encoded by replacing every byte not matching
40 the regex <b>[A-Za-z0-9@=.,</b>_<b>+-]</b> with <b>%nn</b> where nn is the two
41 digit hex encoding. The message ID is a valid Xapian
42 query, quoted using Xapian boolean term quoting rules: if
43 the ID contains whitespace or a close paren or starts
44 with a double quote, it must be enclosed in double quotes
45 and double quotes inside the ID must be doubled. The
46 astute reader will notice this is a special case of the
47 batch input format for <a href='../notmuch-tag-1/'>notmuch-tag</a>(1); note that the sin‐
48 gle message-id query is mandatory for <a href='../notmuch-restore-1/'>notmuch-restore</a>(1).
50 <b>sup</b> The <b>sup</b> dump file format is specifically chosen to be
51 compatible with the format of files produced by sup-dump.
52 So if you've previously been using sup for mail, then the
53 <b>notmuch</b> <b>restore</b> command provides you a way to import all
54 of your tags (or labels as sup calls them). Each line has
56 <<u>message-id</u>> <b>(</b> <<u>tag</u>> ... <b>)</b>
58 with zero or more tags are separated by spaces. Note that
59 (malformed) message-ids may contain arbitrary non-null
60 characters. Note also that tags with spaces will not be
61 correctly restored with this format.
63 With no search terms, a dump of all messages in the database
64 will be generated. A "--" argument instructs notmuch that the
65 remaining arguments are search terms.
67 See <a href='../notmuch-search-terms-7/'>notmuch-search-terms</a>(7) for details of the supported syntax
68 for <search-terms>.
73 <a href='../notmuch-1/'>notmuch</a>(1), <a href='../notmuch-config-1/'>notmuch-config</a>(1), <a href='../notmuch-count-1/'>notmuch-count</a>(1), <a href='../notmuch-hooks-5/'>notmuch-hooks</a>(5), <a href='../notmuch-insert-1/'>not‐</a>
74 <a href='../notmuch-insert-1/'>much-insert</a>(1), <a href='../notmuch-new-1/'>notmuch-new</a>(1), <a href='../notmuch-reply-1/'>notmuch-reply</a>(1), <a href='../notmuch-restore-1/'>notmuch-restore</a>(1),
75 <a href='../notmuch-search-1/'>notmuch-search</a>(1), <a href='../notmuch-search-terms-7/'>notmuch-search-terms</a>(7), <a href='../notmuch-show-1/'>notmuch-show</a>(1), <a href='../notmuch-tag-1/'>not‐</a>
76 <a href='../notmuch-tag-1/'>much-tag</a>(1)
81 Carl Worth and many others
86 2014, Carl Worth and many others