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.)
27 Compress the output in a format compatible with <b>gzip</b>(1).
29 <b>--format=(sup|batch-tag)</b>
31 Notmuch restore supports two plain text dump formats, both with
32 one message-id per line, followed by a list of tags.
36 The default <b>batch-tag</b> dump format is intended to more
37 robust against malformed message-ids and tags containing
38 whitespace or non-<b>ascii</b>(7) characters. Each line has the
41 +<<u>encoded-tag</u>> +<<u>encoded-tag</u>> ... -- id:<<u>quoted-mes-</u>
44 Tags are hex-encoded by replacing every byte not matching
45 the regex <b>[A-Za-z0-9@=.,</b>_<b>+-]</b> with <b>%nn</b> where nn is the two
46 digit hex encoding. The message ID is a valid Xapian
47 query, quoted using Xapian boolean term quoting rules: if
48 the ID contains whitespace or a close paren or starts
49 with a double quote, it must be enclosed in double quotes
50 and double quotes inside the ID must be doubled. The
51 astute reader will notice this is a special case of the
52 batch input format for <a href='../notmuch-tag-1/'>notmuch-tag</a>(1); note that the sin-
53 gle message-id query is mandatory for <a href='../notmuch-restore-1/'>notmuch-restore</a>(1).
57 The <b>sup</b> dump file format is specifically chosen to be
58 compatible with the format of files produced by sup-dump.
59 So if you've previously been using sup for mail, then the
60 <b>notmuch</b> <b>restore</b> command provides you a way to import all
61 of your tags (or labels as sup calls them). Each line has
64 <<u>message-id</u>> <b>(</b> <<u>tag</u>> ... <b>)</b>
66 with zero or more tags are separated by spaces. Note that
67 (malformed) message-ids may contain arbitrary non-null
68 characters. Note also that tags with spaces will not be
69 correctly restored with this format.
71 With no search terms, a dump of all messages in the database
72 will be generated. A "--" argument instructs notmuch that the
73 remaining arguments are search terms.
75 See <a href='../notmuch-search-terms-7/'>notmuch-search-terms</a>(7) for details of the supported syntax
76 for <search-terms>.
81 <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>
82 <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),
83 <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>
84 <a href='../notmuch-tag-1/'>much-tag</a>(1)
89 Carl Worth and many others
94 2014, Carl Worth and many others