[[!img notmuch-logo.png alt="Notmuch logo" class="left"]]
-# Notmuch -- The mail indexer
+# Notmuch -- Just an email system
-## Why Notmuch?
+If you've been looking for a fast, global-search and tag-based email
+system to use within your text editor or in a terminal...
+
+If you're the kind of person that gets excited about being able to
+write shell scripts for exploring and manipulating your email...
+
+If you're a developer of an existing email program and would love a
+good library interface for fast, global search with support for
+arbitrary tags...
+
+If you want the convenience of fast, reliable search of all your
+email, but don't want to give a 3rd-party access to your email...
+
+Then notmuch may be exactly what you've been looking for.
+
+[[!toc levels=2]]
+
+## Why is it named Notmuch?
* "Not much mail" is what Notmuch thinks about your email
collection. Even if you receive 12000 messages per month or have on
that you can keep your inbox tamed and focus on what really matters
in your life, (which is surely not email).
-* Notmuch is an answer to [Sup](http://sup.rubyforge.org/).
+* Notmuch is an answer to [Sup](http://sup-heliotrope.github.io/).
Sup is a very good email program written by William Morgan (and
others) and is the direct inspiration for Notmuch. Notmuch began as
an effort to rewrite performance-critical pieces of Sup in C rather
- than ruby. From there, it grew into a separate project. One
+ than Ruby. From there, it grew into a separate project. One
significant contribution Notmuch makes compared to Sup is the
separation of the indexer/searcher from the user interface. (Notmuch
provides a library interface so that its indexing/searching/tagging
features can be integrated into any email program.)
* Notmuch is not much of an email program. It doesn't receive messages
- (no POP or IMAP suport). It doesn't send messages (no mail composer,
+ (no POP or IMAP support). It doesn't send messages (no mail composer,
no network code at all). And for what it does do (email search) that
work is provided by an external library,
[Xapian](http://xapian.org). So if Notmuch provides no user
interface and Xapian does all the heavy lifting, then what's left
here? Not much.
-Notmuch is still in the early stages of development, but there are
-already two user interfaces available for it (one for emacs and one
-for vim). If you've been looking for a fast, global-search and
-tag-based email reader to use within your text editor or in a
-terminal, then Notmuch may be exactly what you've been looking for.
-
-Otherwise, if you're a developer of an existing email program and
-would love a good library interface for fast, global search with
-support for arbitrary tags, then Notmuch also may be exactly what
-you've been looking for.
-
## News
-[[The latest new from notmuch|news]]
+[[Notmuch news|news]] (mostly release notes and changes).
-## Documentation
+## Getting Started
-So far, there is not much documentation. Eventually, the wiki will
-contain a reference for users. This is what we have so far:
+To get started with Notmuch, just run "notmuch" at the command line.
+This command will walk you through initial setup, including specifying
+the location of your mail store and how to start the initial indexing.
- * [[General how-tos|howto]]
- * [[Initial_Tagging]]
- * [[Tips for using notmuch within Emacs|emacstips]]
- * [[Remote Usage|remoteusage]]
- * [[Performance|performance]]
+For a little more detailed guide, see [[Getting Started with
+Notmuch|getting-started]].
-Apart from the wiki, help is available via email. Join the mailing
-list. Read the archives. Ask questions.
+## Email Clients and Front Ends
-## Source code
+Notmuch ships with a powerful set of [[command-line tools|manpages]], an
+[[email client for Emacs|notmuch-emacs]], another
+[client for vim](https://git.notmuchmail.org/git/notmuch/blob/HEAD:/vim/README),
+and a [[Mutt integration script|notmuch-mutt]].
-Either way, please feel free to jump in. All of the code for Notmuch
-is available as [free
-software](http://www.fsf.org/licensing/essays/free-sw.html) released
-under the GNU [GPL version
-3](http://www.fsf.org/licensing/licenses/gpl.html). The latest
-versions can be checked out via git with this command:
+There are also many other [[email clients, frontends and tools|frontends]] based
+on Notmuch.
- git clone git://notmuchmail.org/git/notmuch
+## Documentation
-You can browse the [Notmuch code
-history](http://git.notmuchmail.org/git/notmuch) online. And finally,
-you can [subscribe to the `notmuch-commits`
-list](http://notmuchmail.org/mailman/listinfo/notmuch-commits) to watch
-every commit made to notmuch and the notmuchmail.org web site.
+ * [[Notmuch manual pages|manpages]]
+ * [[Email clients and frontends|frontends]]
+ * [[General how-tos|howto]]
+ * [[Frequently Asked Questions|faq]]
+ * [[Searching]]
+ * [[Excluding and deleting messages|excluding]]
+ * [[Initial tagging|Initial_Tagging]]
+ * Tips for using Notmuch with [[Emacs|emacstips]], [[Vim|vimtips]], and [[Mutt|mutttips]]
+ * [[Emacs remote usage|remoteusage]]
+ * [[Performance|performance]]
+ * [[References|references]]
+ * [[Notmuch Library Language Bindings|bindings]]
-Patches are most welcome and should be sent to notmuch@notmuchmail.org.
-Please try to follow the [patch submission guidelines of the Git
-project](http://repo.or.cz/w/git.git?a=blob;f=Documentation/SubmittingPatches;hb=HEAD)
-when submitting patches to notmuch. We are currently test-driving a [Patchwork
-instance](http://patchwork.notmuchmail.org/project/notmuch) to help us keep track
-of [the patches](http://patchwork.notmuchmail.org/project/notmuch/list).
+Apart from the wiki, help is available via email and on IRC (see
+below). Join the mailing list. Read the archives. Ask questions.
-Source code of notmuch releases can be downloaded [here](http://notmuchmail.org/releases/).
+## Screenshots
-## Binary packages
+* [[Emacs UI screenshots|screenshots]]
-* [Debian](http://packages.debian.org/search?keywords=notmuch), [Ubuntu](http://packages.ubuntu.com/search?keywords=notmuch)
+## Obtaining Notmuch
-## Screenshots
+[Notmuch source releases](https://notmuchmail.org/releases/) are available as
+source tar balls.
-* [[Emacs UI screenshots|screenshots]]
+Notmuch is packaged for at least the following operating systems and
+distributions:
+
+* [Arch Linux](https://www.archlinux.org/packages/?q=notmuch)
+* [Debian](http://packages.debian.org/search?keywords=notmuch)
+* [Fedora](https://src.fedoraproject.org/rpms/notmuch)
+* [FreeBSD](http://www.freshports.org/mail/notmuch)
+* [Gentoo](http://packages.gentoo.org/package/net-mail/notmuch)
+* [NetBSD](http://ftp.netbsd.org/pub/pkgsrc/current/pkgsrc/mail/notmuch/README.html)
+* [openSUSE](https://build.opensuse.org/search?search_text=notmuch)
+* macOS [Homebrew](https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew-core/blob/09baa1c3f5a30f8450d2145d4fd988e4b4d48070/Formula/notmuch.rb), [MacPorts](https://www.macports.org/ports.php?by=name&substr=notmuch), or [pkgsrc](http://ftp.netbsd.org/pub/pkgsrc/current/pkgsrc/mail/notmuch/README.html).
+* [Slackware](http://slackbuilds.org/repository/13.37/office/notmuch/)
+* [Ubuntu](http://packages.ubuntu.com/search?keywords=notmuch)
## Contact: Email & IRC
Comments? Please feel free to email the notmuch mailing list:
-notmuch@notmuchmail.org (subscription is not required, but you can
-subscribe to the [notmuch
-list](http://notmuchmail.org/mailman/listinfo/notmuch) if you would
-like to). You can also browse the [online
-archives](http://notmuchmail.org/pipermail/notmuch/) of the mailing
-list, read them as a [web forum
-(nabble)](http://notmuch.198994.n3.nabble.com/), or download an
-[mbox file](http://notmuchmail.org/archives/notmuch.mbox) of the entire
-mailing-list.
-
-The `mb2md` utility can be used to convert the archives to maildir
-format which is convenient for reading the archives within notmuch
-itself.
+<mailto:notmuch@notmuchmail.org> (subscription is not required, but you can
+also subscribe to the
+[notmuch mailing list](https://nmbug.notmuchmail.org/list/)). You
+can also browse the
+[online list archives](https://nmbug.notmuchmail.org/nmweb/),
+read them as a
+[web forum (nabble)](http://notmuch.198994.n3.nabble.com/), or
+download an [archive](https://nmbug.notmuchmail.org/archive/notmuch-list.tar.xz)
+of the entire mailing-list.
+
+The archive unpacks to maildir format which is convenient for reading
+the archives within notmuch itself.
If you prefer real-time chat, there is often someone on the
-[#notmuch](irc://chat.freenode.net/#notmuch)@irc.freenode.net IRC
-channel.
+[#notmuch](irc://irc.libera.chat/#notmuch)@irc.libera.chat IRC channel. Don't
+ask if you can ask a question, just ask, and please wait for an answer, we might
+not be in your timezone.
+
+## Troubleshooting, Reporting Bugs and Feature Requests
+
+Please send bug reports and feature requests to the [Notmuch mailing
+list](https://nmbug.notmuchmail.org/list/)
+<mailto:notmuch@notmuchmail.org>.
+
+For hints about troubleshooting and bug reporting see [[bugs]].
+
+Please see the [nmbug status page](https://nmbug.notmuchmail.org/status/) for
+lists of [known bugs](https://nmbug.notmuchmail.org/status/#Bugs) and [feature
+requests](https://nmbug.notmuchmail.org/status/#Wish-list).
+
+## Development and Contributing
+
+All of the code for Notmuch is available as [free
+software](https://www.fsf.org/licensing/essays/free-sw.html) released
+under the GNU [GPL version
+3](https://www.fsf.org/licensing/licenses/gpl.html). The latest
+versions can be checked out via git with this command:
+
+ git clone https://git.notmuchmail.org/git/notmuch
+
+You can browse the [Notmuch code history
+online](https://git.notmuchmail.org/git/notmuch). [The Notmuch OpenHub project
+page](https://www.openhub.net/p/notmuch) has a nice summary of the codebase and
+activity.
-## Feature Ideas
+Continuous integration build and test suite status: [](https://travis-ci.org/notmuch/notmuch)
-We have started a [[feature requests|feature-requests]] page on this
-wiki. No, things you add there won't automatically get implemented -
-but it's a nice way to collect ideas.
+Contributions, such as patches, to Notmuch are most welcome. Please refer to the
+[[guide to contributing|contributing]].
-### Website
+## Website
-This wiki is maintained using
-[ikiwiki](http://ikiwiki.info). Instructions on how to edit it can be
-found [[here|wikiwriteaccess]].
+This website is a wiki, maintained using [ikiwiki](http://ikiwiki.info). Here
+are [[instructions on how to edit the wiki|wikiwriteaccess]]. The wiki contents
+are mostly [[dual licensed under CC-BY-SA-3.0 and GPLv3+|COPYING]].
projects / notmuch-wiki / blobdiff