8 **notmuch** [option ...] **command** [arg ...]
13 Notmuch is a command-line based program for indexing, searching,
14 reading, and tagging large collections of email messages.
16 This page describes how to get started using notmuch from the command
17 line, and gives a brief overview of the commands available. For more
18 information on e.g. **notmuch show** consult the **notmuch-show(1)** man
19 page, also accessible via **notmuch help show**
21 The quickest way to get started with Notmuch is to simply invoke the
22 ``notmuch`` command with no arguments, which will interactively guide
23 you through the process of indexing your mail.
28 While the command-line program ``notmuch`` provides powerful
29 functionality, it does not provide the most convenient interface for
30 that functionality. More sophisticated interfaces are expected to be
31 built on top of either the command-line interface, or more likely, on
32 top of the notmuch library interface. See http://notmuchmail.org for
33 more about alternate interfaces to notmuch. The emacs-based interface to
34 notmuch (available under **emacs/** in the Notmuch source distribution)
35 is probably the most widely used at this time.
40 Supported global options for ``notmuch`` include
42 ``--help`` [command-name]
43 Print a synopsis of available commands and exit.
44 With an optional command name, show the man page
48 Print the installed version of notmuch, and exit.
51 Specify the configuration file to use. This overrides any
52 configuration file specified by ${NOTMUCH\_CONFIG}.
54 All global options except ``--config`` can also be specified after the
55 command. For example, ``notmuch subcommand --version`` is equivalent to
56 ``notmuch --version subcommand``.
64 The **notmuch setup** command is used to configure Notmuch for first
65 use, (or to reconfigure it later).
67 The setup command will prompt for your full name, your primary email
68 address, any alternate email addresses you use, and the directory
69 containing your email archives. Your answers will be written to a
70 configuration file in ${NOTMUCH\_CONFIG} (if set) or
71 ${HOME}/.notmuch-config . This configuration file will be created with
72 descriptive comments, making it easy to edit by hand later to change the
73 configuration. Or you can run **notmuch setup** again to change the
76 The mail directory you specify can contain any number of sub-directories
77 and should primarily contain only files with individual email messages
78 (eg. maildir or mh archives are perfect). If there are other, non-email
79 files (such as indexes maintained by other email programs) then notmuch
80 will do its best to detect those and ignore them.
82 Mail storage that uses mbox format, (where one mbox file contains many
83 messages), will not work with notmuch. If that's how your mail is
84 currently stored, it is recommended you first convert it to maildir
85 format with a utility such as mb2md before running **notmuch setup .**
87 Invoking ``notmuch`` with no command argument will run **setup** if the
88 setup command has not previously been completed.
93 Several of the notmuch commands accept search terms with a common
94 syntax. See **notmuch-search-terms**\ (7) for more details on the
97 The **search**, **show**, **address** and **count** commands are used
98 to query the email database.
100 The **reply** command is useful for preparing a template for an email
103 The **tag** command is the only command available for manipulating
106 The **dump** and **restore** commands can be used to create a textual
107 dump of email tags for backup purposes, and to restore from that dump.
109 The **config** command can be used to get or set settings in the notmuch
115 The following environment variables can be used to control the behavior
119 Specifies the location of the notmuch configuration file. Notmuch
120 will use ${HOME}/.notmuch-config if this variable is not set.
122 **NOTMUCH\_TALLOC\_REPORT**
123 Location to write a talloc memory usage report. See
124 **talloc\_enable\_leak\_report\_full** in **talloc(3)** for more
127 **NOTMUCH\_DEBUG\_QUERY**
128 If set to a non-empty value, the notmuch library will print (to
129 stderr) Xapian queries it constructs.
134 **notmuch-config(1)**, **notmuch-count(1)**, **notmuch-dump(1)**,
135 **notmuch-hooks(5)**, **notmuch-insert(1)**, **notmuch-new(1)**,
136 **notmuch-reply(1)**, **notmuch-restore(1)**, **notmuch-search(1)**,
137 **notmuch-search-terms(7)**, **notmuch-show(1)**, **notmuch-tag(1)**,
138 **notmuch-address(1)**
140 The notmuch website: **http://notmuchmail.org**
145 Feel free to send questions, comments, or kudos to the notmuch mailing
146 list <notmuch@notmuchmail.org> . Subscription is not required before
147 posting, but is available from the notmuchmail.org website.
149 Real-time interaction with the Notmuch community is available via IRC
150 (server: irc.freenode.net, channel: #notmuch).