[[!img notmuch-logo.png alt="Notmuch logo" class="left"]]
#How to...

Some tips about how to do some useful things with notmuch, and the
various "third party" notmuch utilities.

* <span id="receive_mail">**Receive mail**</span>

  Notmuch requires either [maildir
  flag](http://cr.yp.to/proto/maildir.html) or a "mh"-style
  maildirectory to operate on.  Basically any setup in which each mail
  is in a file of its own will work.  Here are some generally
  well-regarded mail retrieval tools:

  * [offlineimap](https://github.com/jgoerzen/offlineimap/wiki/) -
    quite useful and widely tested, it also offers a handy hook that
    will come in useful a bit later in our setup.  Also supports
    "presynchook" and "postsynchook" command that will get run
    whenever you sync.  Point _postsynchook_ to a script that gets run
    on every sync and that will do the automatic updating and tagging
    of your notmuch database.

  * [mbsync](http://isync.sourceforge.net/)

  * [getmail](http://pyropus.ca/software/getmail/)

  * [fetchmail](http://fetchmail.berlios.de/)

  See the [[initial_tagging]] page for more info on intial tagging of messages.

* <span id="print_filenames">**Print only filenames of a search (python bindings)**</span>

  Notmuch includes python bindings to the notmuch shared library,
  called [cnotmuch](http://pypi.python.org/pypi/cnotmuch).  Extensive
  API documentation is available.

  The bindings are very simple to use.  As an example, given you have
  the python bindings installed (or simply set your PYTHONPATH
  environment variable to point to the .../bindings/python directory),
  this script will print the filenames of a matching search:

                             #!/usr/bin/env python
                             import sys
                             import notmuch
                             search = " ".join(sys.argv[1:])
                             q = notmuch.Database().create_query(search)
                             for m in q.search_messages():
                                 print m.get_filename()

* <span id="sync_maildir_flags">**Sync notmuch tags and maildir flags**</span>

  notmuch **since version 0.5** syncs maildir flags and respective
  tags in both directions. This part applies only to notmuch prior to
  version 0.5:

  Some IMAP users rely on maildir flags that convey the status "seen",
  "replied", "trashed", in order to synchronize the status of their
  mail across mail clients (a [maildir
  flag](http://cr.yp.to/proto/maildir.html) is simply a defined part
  of their filename).  Notmuch will by default happily ignore those
  flags and will never modify them either, as there is no built-in
  support for synchronizing your notmuch tags with your imap maildir
  flags (seen, replied, trashed, etc). However there are currently 2
  ways in which you can achieve synchronization.

  [notmuchsync](http://spaetz.github.com/notmuchsync/) is a utility
  (based on the cnotmuch python bindings) that allows synchronization
  in either direction, as well as pruning of deleted files.

  The second solution allows for fast maildir flag to notmuch tag
  synchronization (and only in that direction) requires patching the
  notmuch source code. The patch has been posted in this mail
  *id:1267450136-31749-1-git-send-email-Sebastian@SSpaeth.de* and can
  be viewed as a [source diff in this git
  repository](http://github.com/spaetz/notmuch-all-feature/commit/df3b087cefb85e9d16fd17540e348bcb854dd7ee).

* <span id="print_filenames">**Using notmuch with Mutt**</span>

  Notmuch is a great mail indexing tool that can also be used *in conjunction*
  with existing Mail User Agents (MUA) instead of replacing them. The advantage
  of such mixed solutions is that users can benefit from notmuch features (such
  as full-text search and thread reconstruction) without *having to* change
  MUA.

  A popular geek MUA is [the Mutt e-mail client](http://www.mutt.org);
  integrating notmuch with Mutt is fairly straightforward. An
  [**how to use Notmuch with Mutt**](http://upsilon.cc/~zack/blog/posts/2011/01/how_to_use_Notmuch_with_Mutt/)
  has been written by Stefano Zacchiroli, together with some glue code. Check
  out the
  [howto](http://upsilon.cc/~zack/blog/posts/2011/01/how_to_use_Notmuch_with_Mutt/)
  for more information.

  <small>(Note by the howto author: I've linked the howto from this wiki rather
  than splicing it in, in order to avoid duplication of information. If you
  think it would be better to have it here, feel free to copy the text
  here. The howto is
  [available](http://git.upsilon.cc/cgi-bin/gitweb.cgi?p=zack-homepage.git;a=history;f=blog/posts/2011/01/how_to_use_Notmuch_with_Mutt.mdwn)
  in markdown syntax from the Git repository of my homepage.)</small>