1 Notmuch 0.11.1 (2012-mm-dd)
2 ===========================
7 Fix error handling in python bindings.
9 The python bindings in 0.11 failed to detect NULL pointers being
10 returned from libnotmuch functions and thus failed to raise
11 exceptions to indicate the error condition. Any subsequent calls
12 into libnotmuch caused segmentation faults.
15 Notmuch 0.11 (2012-01-13)
16 =========================
18 Command-Line Interface
19 ----------------------
23 Hooks have been introduced to notmuch. Hooks are scripts that notmuch
24 invokes before and after certain actions. Initially, "notmuch new"
25 supports "pre-new" and "post-new" hooks that are run before and after
26 importing new messages into the database.
28 notmuch reply --decrypt bugfix
30 The "notmuch reply" command with --decrypt argument had a rarely
31 occurring bug that caused an encrypted message not to be decrypted
32 sometimes. This is now fixed.
37 Automatic tag query optimization
39 "notmuch tag" now automatically optimizes the user's query to
40 exclude messages whose tags won't change. In the past, we've
41 suggested that people do this by hand; this is no longer necessary.
43 Don't sort messages when creating a dump file
45 This speeds up tag dumps considerably, without any loss of
46 information. To replicate the old behavior of sorted output (for
47 example to compare two dump files), one can use e.g. sort(1).
52 Reduction of memory leaks
54 Two memory leaks when searching and showing messages were identified
55 and fixed in this release.
62 notmuch-show-advance (bound to the spacebar in notmuch-show-mode) had
63 a bug that caused it to always jump to the next message, even if it
64 should have scrolled down to show more of the current message instead.
67 Support "notmuch new" as a notmuch-poll-script
69 It's now possible to use "notmuch new" as a notmuch-poll-script
70 directly. This is also the new default. This allows taking better
71 advantage of the "notmuch new" hooks from emacs without intermediate
74 Improvements in saved search management
76 New saved searches are now appended to the list of saved searches,
77 not inserted in front. It's also possible to define a sort function
78 for displaying saved searches; alphabetical sort is provided.
80 Hooks for notmuch-hello
82 Two new hooks have been added: "notmuch-hello-mode-hook" (called after
83 entering notmuch-hello-mode) and "notmuch-hello-refresh-hook" (called
84 after updating a notmuch-hello buffer).
86 New face for crypto parts headers
88 Crypto parts used to be displayed with a hardcoded color. A new face
89 has been introduced to fix this: notmuch-crypto-part-header. It
90 defaults to the same value as before, but can be customized to match
93 Use space as default thousands separator
95 Large numbers in notmuch-hello are now displayed using a space as
96 thousands separator (e.g. "123 456" instead of "123,456"). This can be
97 changed by customizing "notmuch-hello-thousands-separator".
99 Call notmuch-show instead of notmuch-search when clicking on
100 buttonized id: links.
102 New function notmuch-show-advance
104 This new function advances through just the current thread, and is
105 less invasive than notmuch-show-advance-and-archive. It can easily
106 be bound to SPC with:
108 (define-key notmuch-show-mode-map " " 'notmuch-show-advance)
110 Various performance improvements.
115 The tool contrib/notmuch-deliver helps with initial delivery and
116 tagging of mail (replacing running notmuch new).
119 Notmuch 0.10.2 (2011-12-04)
120 ===========================
125 Fix crash in python bindings.
127 The python bindings did not call g_type_init, which caused crashes
128 for some, but not all users.
130 Notmuch 0.10.1 (2011-11-25)
131 ===========================
138 Argument processing changes in 0.10 introduced a bug where "notmuch
139 --help" crashed while "notmuch help" worked fine. This is fixed in
142 Notmuch 0.10 (2011-11-23)
143 =========================
145 New build and testing features
146 ------------------------------
148 Emacs tests are now done in dtach. This means that dtach is now
149 needed to run the notmuch test suite, at least until the checking for
150 prerequisites is improved.
152 Full test coverage of the stashing feature in Emacs.
154 New command-line features
155 -------------------------
157 Add "notmuch restore --accumulate" option
159 The --accumulate switch causes the union of the existing and new tags to be
160 applied, instead of replacing each message's tags as they are read in from
163 Add search terms to "notmuch dump"
165 The dump command now takes an optional search term much like notmuch
166 search/show/tag. The output file argument of dump is deprecated in
167 favour of using stdout.
169 Add "notmuch search" --offset and --limit options
171 The search command now takes options --offset=[-]N and --limit=N to limit
172 the number of results shown.
174 Add "notmuch count --output" option
176 The count command is now capable of counting threads in addition to
177 messages. This is selected using the new --output=(threads|messages) option.
179 New emacs UI features
180 ---------------------
182 Add tab-completion for notmuch-search and notmuch-search-filter
184 These functions now support completion tags for query parts
185 starting with "tag:".
187 Turn "id:MSG-ID" links into buttons associated with notmuch searches
189 Text of the form "id:MSG-ID" in mails is now a clickable button that
190 opens a notmuch search for the given message id.
192 Add keybinding ('c I') for stashing Message-ID's without an id: prefix
194 Reduces manual labour when stashing them for use outside notmuch.
196 Do not query on notmuch-search exit
198 It is harmless to kill the external notmuch process, so the user
199 is no longer interrogated when they interrupt a search.
204 Emacs now constructs large search buffers more efficiently
206 Search avoids opening and parsing message files
208 We now store more information in the database so search no longer
209 has to open every message file to get basic headers. This can
210 improve search speed by as much as 10X, but taking advantage of this
211 requires a database rebuild:
213 notmuch dump > notmuch.dump
214 # Backup, then remove notmuch database ($MAIL/.notmuch)
216 notmuch restore notmuch.dump
218 New collection of add-on tools
219 ------------------------------
221 The source directory "contrib" contains tools built on notmuch. These
222 tools are not part of notmuch, and you should check their individual
223 licenses. Feel free to report problems with them to the notmuch
226 nmbug - share tags with a given prefix
228 nmbug helps maintain a git repo containing all tags with a given
229 prefix (by default "notmuch::"). Tags can be shared by commiting
230 them to git in one location and restoring in another.
232 Notmuch 0.9 (2011-10-01)
233 ========================
235 New, general features
236 ---------------------
238 Correct handling of interruptions during "notmuch new"
240 "notmuch new" now operates as a series of small, self-consistent
241 transactions, so it can correctly resume after an interruption or
242 crash. Previously, interruption could lose existing tags, fail to
243 detect messages on resume, or leave the database in a state
244 temporarily or permanently inconsistent with the mail store.
251 notmuch_database_begin_atomic and notmuch_database_end_atomic allow
252 multiple database operations to be performed atomically.
254 notmuch_database_find_message_by_filename does exactly what it says.
258 notmuch_database_find_message (and n_d_f_m_by_filename) now return
259 a status indicator and uses an output parameter for the
260 message. This change required changing the SONAME of libnotmuch to
263 Python bindings changes
264 -----------------------
266 - Re-encode python unicode objects to utf-8 before passing back to
268 - Support Database().begin_atomic()/end_atomic()
269 - Support Database().find_message_by_filename()
270 NB! This needs a db opened in READ-WRITE mode currently, or it will crash
271 the python process. The is a limitation (=bug) of the underlying libnotmuch.
272 - Fixes where we would not throw NotmuchErrors when we should (Justus Winter)
273 - Update for n_d_find_message* API changes (see above).
275 Ruby bindings changes
276 ---------------------
278 - Wrap new library functions notmuch_database_{begin,end}_atomic.
279 - Add new exception Notmuch::UnbalancedAtomicError.
280 - Rename destroy to destroy! according to Ruby naming conventions.
281 - Update for n_d_find_message* API changes (see above).
286 * Add gpg callback to crypto sigstatus buttons to retrieve/refresh
288 * Add notmuch-show-refresh-view function (and corresponding binding)
289 to refresh the view of a notmuch-show buffer.
291 Reply formatting cleanup
292 ------------------------
294 "notmuch reply" no longer includes notification that non-leafnode
295 MIME parts are being suppressed.
297 Notmuch 0.8 (2011-09-10)
298 ========================
300 Improved handling of message/rfc822 parts
302 Both in the CLI and the emacs interface. Output of rfc822 parts now
303 includes the primary headers, as well as the body and all subparts.
304 Output of the completely raw rfc822-formatted message, including all
305 headers, is unfortunately not yet supported (but hopefully will be
308 Improved Build system portability
310 Certain parts of the shell script generating notmuch.sym were
311 specific to the GNU versions of sed and nm. The new version should
312 be more portable to e.g. OpenBSD.
314 Documentation update for Ruby bindings
316 Added documentation, typo fixes, and improved support for rdoc.
318 Unicode, iterator, PEP8 changes for python bindings
320 - PEP8 (code formatting) changes for python files.
321 - Remove Tags.__len__ ; see 0.6 release notes for motivation.
322 - Decode headers as UTF8, encode (unicode) database paths as UTF8.
324 Notmuch 0.7 (2011-08-01)
325 ========================
327 Vim interface improvements
328 --------------------------
330 Jason Woofenden provided a number of bug fixes for the Vim interface
332 * fix citation/signature fold lengths
333 * fix cig/cit parsing within multipart/*
334 * fix on-screen instructions for show-signature
335 * fix from list reformatting in search view
336 * fix space key: now archives (did opposite)
338 Uwe Kleine-König contributed
340 * use full path for sendmail/doc fix
341 * fix compose temp file name
343 Python Bindings changes
344 -----------------------
346 Sebastian Spaeth contributed two changes related to unicode and UTF8:
348 * message tags are now explicitly unicode
349 * query string is encoded as a UTF8 byte string
351 Build-System improvements
352 ------------------------
354 Generate notmuch.sym after the relevant object files
356 This fixes a bug in parallel building. Thanks to Thomas Jost for the
359 Notmuch 0.6.1 (2011-07-17)
360 ==========================
365 Re-export Xapian exception typeinfo symbols.
367 It turned out our aggressive symbol hiding caused problems for
368 people running gcc 4.4.5.
370 Notmuch 0.6 (2011-07-01)
371 =======================
372 New, general features
373 ---------------------
374 Folder-based searching
376 Notmuch queries can now include a search term to match the
377 directories in which mail files are stored (within the mail
378 storage). The syntax is as follows:
382 For example, one might use things such as:
388 to match any path containing a directory "spam", "work/todo", or
389 containing a directory starting with "2011-", respectively.
391 This feature is particularly useful for users of delivery-agent
392 software (such as procmail or maildrop) that is filtering mail and
393 delivering it to particular folders, or users of systems such as
394 Gmail that use filesystem directories to indicate message tags.
396 NOTE: Only messages that are newly indexed with this version of
397 notmuch will be searchable with folder: terms. In order to enable
398 this feature for all mail, the entire notmuch index will need to be
401 notmuch dump > notmuch.dump
402 # Backup, then remove notmuch database ($MAIL/.notmuch)
404 notmuch restore notmuch.dump
408 Both the command line interface and the emacs-interface have new
409 support for PGP/MIME, detailed below. Thanks to Daniel Kahn Gillmor
410 and Jameson Graef Rollins for making this happen.
412 New, automatic tags: "signed" and "encrypted"
414 These tags will automatically be applied to messages containing
415 multipart/signed and multipart/encrypted parts.
417 NOTE: Only messages that are newly indexed with this version of
418 notmuch will receive these tags.
420 New command-line features
421 -------------------------
422 Add new "notmuch show --verify" option for signature verification
424 This option instruct notmuch to verify the signature of
425 PGP/MIME-signed parts.
427 Add new "notmuch show --decrypt" and "notmuch reply --decrypt" options
429 This option instructs notmuch to decrypt PGP/MIME-encrypted parts.
430 Note that this feature currently requires gpg-agent and a passphrase entry
431 tool (e.g. pinentry-gtk or pinentry-curses).
433 Proper nesting of multipart parts in "notmuch show" output
435 MIME parts are now display with proper nesting to reflect original
436 MIME hierarchy of a message. This allows clients to correctly
437 analyze the MIME structure, (such as, for example, determining to
438 which parts a signature part applies).
440 Add new "notmuch show --part" option
442 This is a replacement for the older "notmuch part" command, (which
443 is now deprecated—it should still work as always, but is no longer
444 documented). Putting part output under "notmuch show" allows for all
445 of the "notmuch show" options to be applied when extracting a single
446 part, (such as --format=json for extracting a message part with JSON
449 Deprecate "notmuch search-tags", (in favor of "notmuch search --output=tags *")
451 The "notmuch search-tags" sub-command has been redundant since the
452 addition of the --output=tags option to "notmuch search". We now
453 make that more clear by deprecating "notmuch search-tags", (dropping
454 it from the documentation). We do continue to support the old syntax
455 by translating it internally to the new call.
457 Performance improvements
458 ------------------------
459 Faster searches (by doing fewer searches to construct threads)
461 Whenever a user asks for search results as threads, notmuch first
462 performs a search for messages matching the query, then performs
463 additional searches to find other messages in the resulting threads.
465 Removing inefficiencies and redundancies in these secondary searches
466 results in a measured speedups of 1.5x for a typical search.
468 Faster searches (by doing fewer passes to gather message data)
470 Optimizing Xapian data access patterns (using a single pass to get
471 all message-document data rather than a pass for each data type)
472 results in a measured speedup of 1.7x for a typical search.
474 The benefits of this optimization combine with the preceding
475 optimization. With both in place, Austin Clements measured a speedup
476 of 2.5x for a search of all messages in his inbox (was 4.5s, now
477 1.8s). Thanks, Austin!
479 Faster initial indexing
481 More efficient indexing of new messages results in a measured
482 speedup of 1.4x for the initial indexing of 3 GB of mail (1h 14m
483 rather than 1h 46m). Thanks to Austin Clements and Michal Sojka.
485 Make "notmuch new" faster for unchanged directories
487 Optimizing to not do any further examinations of sub-directories
488 when the filesystem indicates that a directory is unchanged from the
489 last "notmuch new" results in measured speedups of 8.5 for the "No
490 new mail" case, (was 0.77s, now 0.09s). Thanks to Karel Zak.
492 New emacs-interface features
493 ----------------------------
495 Support for PGP/MIME (GnuPG)
497 Automatically indicate validity of signatures for multipart/signed
498 messages. Automatically display decrypted content for
499 multipart/encrypted messages. See the emacs variable
500 notmuch-crypto-process-mime for more information. Note that this
501 needs gpg-agent and a pinentry tool just as the command line tools.
502 Also note there is no support SMIME yet.
504 Output of pipe command is now displayed if pipe command fails
506 This is extremely useful in the common use case of piping a patch to
507 "git am". If git fails to cleanly merge the patch the error messages
508 from the failed merge are now clearly displayed to the user, (where
509 previously they were silently hidden from the user).
511 User-selectable From address
513 A user can choose which configured email addresses should be used as
514 the From address whenever composing a new message. To do so, simply
515 press C-u before the command which will open a new message. Emacs
516 will prompt for the from address to use.
518 The user can customize the "Notmuch Identities" setting in the
519 notmuch customize group in order to use addresses other than those in
520 the notmuch configuration file if desired.
522 The user can also choose to always be prompted for the from address
523 when composing a new message (without having to use C-u) by setting
524 the "Notmuch Always Prompt For Sender" option in the notmuch
527 Hiding of repeated subjects in collapsed thread view
529 In notmuch-show mode, if a collapsed message has the same subject as
530 its parent, the subject is not shown.
532 Automatic detection and hiding of original message in top-posted message
534 When a message contains a line looking something like:
536 ----- Original Message -----
538 emacs hides this and all subsequent lines as an "original message",
539 (allowing the user to click or press enter on the "original message"
540 button to display it again). This makes the handling of top-posted
541 citations work much like conventional citations.
543 New hooks for running code when tags are modified
545 Some users want to perform additional actions whenever a particular
546 tag is added/removed from a message. This could be used to, for
547 example, interface with some external spam-recognition training
548 tool. To facilitate this, two new hooks are added which can be
549 modified in the following settings of the notmuch customize group:
551 Notmuch Before Tag Hook
552 Notmuch After Tag Hook
554 New optional support for hiding some multipart/alternative parts
556 Many emails are sent with redundant content within a
557 multipart/alternative group (such as a text/plain part as well as a
558 text/html part). Users can configure the setting:
560 Notmuch Show All Multipart/Alternative Parts
562 to "off" in the notmuch customize group to have the interface
563 automatically hide some part alternatives (such as text/html
564 parts). This new part hiding is not configured by default yet
565 because there's not yet a simple way to re-display such a hidden
566 part if it is not actually redundant with a displayed part.
568 Better rendering of text/x-vcalendar parts
570 These parts are now displayed in a format suitable for use with the
573 Avoid getting confused by Subject and Author fields with newline characters
575 Replacing all characters with ASCII code less than 32 with a question mark.
577 Cleaner display of From line in email messages (remove double quotes,
578 and drop "name" if it's actually just a repeat of the email address).
580 Vim interface improvements
581 --------------------------
582 Felipe Contreras provided a number of updates for the vim interface:
584 * Using sendmail directly rather than mailx,
585 * Implementing archive in show view
586 * Add support to mark as read in show and search views
587 * Add delete commands
590 Bindings improvements
591 ---------------------
592 Ruby bindings are now much more complete
594 Including QUERY.sort, QUERY.to_s, MESSAGE.maildir_flags_to_tags,
595 MESSAGE.tags_to_maildir_flags, and MESSAGE.get_filenames
597 * Python bindings have been updated and extended
598 (docs online at http://packages.python.org/notmuch/)
601 - Message().get_filenames(),
602 - Message().tags_to_maildir_flags(),Message().maildir_flags_to_tags()
603 - list(Threads()) and list(Messages) works now
605 - Message().__cmp__() and __hash__()
606 These allow, for example:
609 As well as set arithmetic on Messages():
611 s1, s2= set(msgs1), set(msgs2)
616 - len(Messages()) as it exhausted the iterator.
617 Use len(list(Messages())) or
618 Query.count_messages() to get the length.
620 Added initial Go bindings in bindings/go
622 New build-system features
623 -------------------------
624 Added support for building in a directory other than the source directory
626 This can be used with the widely-supported idiom of simply running
627 the configure script from some other directory:
634 Fix to save configure options for future, implicit runs of configure
636 When a user updates the source (such as with "git pull") calling
637 "make" may cause an automatic re-run of the configure script. When
638 this happens, the configure script will automatically be called with
639 the same options the user originally passed in the most-recent
640 manual invocation of configure.
642 New test-suite feature
643 ----------------------
644 Binary for bash for running test suite now located via PATH.
646 The notmuch test suite requires a fairly recent version of bash (>=
647 bash 4). As some systems supply an older version of bash at
648 /bin/bash, the test suite is now updated to search $PATH to locate
649 the bash binary. This allows users of systems with old /bin/bash to
650 simply install bash >= 4 somewhere on $PATH before /bin and then use
653 Support for testing output with a trailing newline.
655 Previously, some tests would fail to notice a difference in the
656 presence/absence of a trailing newline in a program output, (which
657 has led to bugs in the past). Now, carefully-written tests (using
658 test_expect_equal_file rather than test_expect_equal) will detect
659 any change in the presence/absence of a trailing newline. Many tests
660 are updated to take advantage of this.
662 Avoiding accessing user's $HOME while running test suite
664 The test suite now carefully creates its own HOME directory. This
665 allows the test suite to be run with no existing HOME directory, (as
666 some build systems apparently do), and avoids test-suite differences
667 due to configuration files in the users HOME directory.
672 Output *all* files for "notmuch search --output=files"
674 For the cases where multiple files have the same Message ID,
675 previous versions of notmuch would output only one such file. This
676 command is now fixed to correctly output all files.
678 Fixed spurious search results from "overlapped" indexing of addresses
680 This fixed a bug where a search for:
682 to:user@elsewhere.com
684 would incorrectly match a message sent:
686 To: user@example,com, someone@elsewhere.com
688 Fix --output=json when search has no results
690 A bug present since notmuch 0.4 had caused searches with no results
691 to produce an invalid json object. This is now fixed to cleanly
692 return a valid json object representing an empty array "[]" as
695 fix the automatic detection of the From address for "notmuch reply"
696 from the Received headers in some cases.
698 Fix core dump on DragonFlyBSD due to -1 return value from
699 sysconf(_SC_GETPW_R_SIZE_MAX).
701 Cleaned up several memory leaks
703 Eliminated a few, rare segmentation faults and a double-free.
705 Fix libnotmuch library to only export notmuch API functions
707 Previous release of the notmuch library also exported some Xapian
708 C++ exception type symbols. These were never part of the library
709 interface and were never intended to be exported.
711 Emacs-interface bug fixes
712 -------------------------
713 Display any unexpected output or errors from "notmuch search" invocations
715 Previously any misformatted output or trailing error messages were
716 silently ignored. This output is now clearly displayed. This fix was
717 very helpful in identifying and fixing the bug described below.
719 Fix bug where some threads would be missing from large search results
721 When a search returned a "large" number of results, the emacs
722 interface was incorrectly dropping one thread every time the output
723 of the "notmuch search" process spanned the emacs read-buffer. This
726 Avoid re-compression of .gz files (and similar) when saving attachment
728 Emacs was being too clever for its own good and trying to
729 re-compress pre-compressed .gz files when saving such attachments
730 (potentially corrupting the attachment). The emacs interface is
731 fixed to avoid this bug.
733 Fix hiding of a message when a previously-hidden citation is visible
735 Previously the citation would remain visible in this case. This is
736 fixed so that hiding a message hides all parts.
738 Notmuch 0.5 (2010-11-11)
739 ========================
740 New, general features
741 ---------------------
742 Maildir-flag synchronization
744 Notmuch now knows how to synchronize flags in maildir filenames with
745 tags in the notmuch database. The following flag/tag mappings are
754 'S' unread (added when 'S' flag is not present)
756 The synchronization occurs in both directions, (for example, adding
757 the 'S' flag to a file will cause the "unread" tag to be added, and
758 adding the "replied" tag to a message will cause the file to be
759 renamed with an 'R' flag).
761 This synchronization is enabled by default for users of the
762 command-line interface, (though only files in directories named
763 "cur" or "new" will be renamed). It can be disabled by setting the
764 new maildir.synchronize_flags option in the configuration file. For
767 notmuch config set maildir.synchronize_flags false
769 Users upgrading may also want to run "notmuch setup" once (just
770 accept the existing configuration) to get a new, nicely-commented
771 [maildir] section added to the configuration file.
773 For users of the notmuch library, the new synchronization
774 functionality is available with the following two new functions:
776 notmuch_message_maildir_flags_to_tags
777 notmuch_message_tags_to_maildir_flags
779 It is anticipated that future improvements to this support will
780 allow for safe synchronization of the 'T' flag with the "deleted"
781 tag, as well as support for custom flag/tag mappings.
785 Support for querying multiple filenames for a single message
787 It is common for the mailstore to contain multiple files with the
788 same message ID. Previously, notmuch would always hide these
789 duplicate files, (returning a single, arbitrary filename with
790 notmuch_message_get_filename).
792 With this release, library users can access all filenames for a
793 message with the new function:
795 notmuch_message_get_filenames
797 Together with notmuch_filenames_valid, notmuch_filenames_get, and
798 notmuch_filenames_move_to_next it is now possible to iterate over
799 all available filenames for a given message.
801 New command-line features
802 -------------------------
803 New "notmuch show --format=raw" for getting at original email contents
805 This new feature allows for a fully-functional email client to be
806 built on top of the notmuch command-line without needing any direct
807 access to the mail store itself.
809 For example, it's now possible to run "emacs -f notmuch" on a local
810 machine with only ssh access to the mail store/notmuch database. To
811 do this, simply set the notmuch-command variable in emacs to the
812 name of a script containing:
814 ssh user@host notmuch "$@"
816 If the ssh client has enabled connection sharing (ControlMaster
817 option in OpenSSH), the emacs interface can be quite responsive this
822 Fix "notmuch search" to print nothing when nothing matches
824 The 0.4 release had a bug in which:
826 notmuch search <expression-with-no-matches>
828 would produce a single blank line of output, (where previous
829 versions would produce no output. This fix also causes a change in
830 the --format=json output, (which would previously produce "[]" and
831 now produces nothing).
833 Emacs interface improvements
834 ----------------------------
835 Fix to allow pipe ('|') command to work when using notmuch over ssh
837 Fix count of lines in hidden signatures.
839 Omit repeated subject lines in (collapsed) thread display.
841 Display current thread subject in a header line.
843 Provide a "c i" binding to copy a thread ID from the search view.
845 Allow for notmuch-fcc-dirs to have a value of nil.
847 Also, the more complex form of notmuch-fcc-dirs now has a slightly
848 different format. It no longer has a special first-element, fallback
849 string. Instead it's now a list of cons cells where the car of each
850 cell is a regular expression to be matched against the sender
851 address, and the cdr is the name of a folder to use for an FCC. So
852 the old fallback behavior can be achieved by including a final cell
853 of (".*" . "default-fcc-folder").
855 Vim interface improvements
856 --------------------------
857 Felipe Contreras provided a number of updates for the vim interface.
859 These include optimizations, support for newer versions of vim, fixed
860 support for sending mail on modern systems, new commands, and
865 Added initial ruby bindings in bindings/ruby
867 Notmuch 0.4 (2010-11-01)
868 ========================
869 New command-line features
870 -------------------------
871 notmuch search --output=(summary|threads|messages|tags|files)
873 This new option allows for particular items to be returned from
874 notmuch searches. The "summary" option is the default and behaves
875 just as "notmuch search" has historically behaved.
877 The new option values allow for thread IDs, message IDs, lists of
878 tags, and lists of filenames to be returned from searches. It is
879 expected that this new option will be very useful in shell
880 scripts. For example:
882 for file in $(notmuch search --output=files <search-terms>); do
883 <operations-on> "$file"
886 notmuch show --format=mbox <search-specification>
888 This new option allows for the messages matching a search
889 specification to be presented as an mbox. Specifically the "mboxrd"
890 format is used which allows for reversible quoting of lines
891 beginning with "From ". A reader should remove a single '>' from the
892 beginning of all lines beginning with one or more '>' characters
893 followed by the 5 characters "From ".
895 notmuch config [get|set] <section>.<item> [value ...]
897 The new top-level "config" command allows for any value in the
898 notmuch configuration file to be queried or set to a new value. Both
899 single-valued and multi-valued items are supported, as our any
900 custom items stored in the configuration file.
902 Avoid setting Bcc header in "notmuch reply"
904 We decided that this was a bit heavy-handed as the actual mail
905 user-agent should be responsible for setting any Bcc option. Also,
906 see below for the notmuch/emacs user-agent now setting an Fcc by
907 default rather than Bcc.
911 Add notmuch_query_get_query_string and notmuch_query_get_sort
913 These are simply functions for querying properties of a
914 notmuch_query_t object.
918 Enable Fcc of all sent messages by default (to "sent" directory)
920 All messages sent from the emacs interface will now be saved to the
921 notmuch mail store where they will be incorporated to the database
922 by the next "notmuch new". By default, messages are saved to the
923 "sent" directory at the top-level of the mail store. This directory
924 can be customized by means of the "Notmuch Fcc Dirs" option in the
925 notmuch customize interface.
927 Ability to all open messages in a thread to a pipe
929 Historically, the '|' keybinding allows for piping a single message
930 to an external command. Now, by prefixing this key with a prefix
931 argument, (for example, by pressing "Control-U |"), all open
932 messages in the current thread will be sent to the external command.
934 Optional support for detecting inline patches
936 This hook is disabled by default but can be enabled with a checkbox
937 under "Notmuch Show Insert Text/Plain Hook" in the notmuch customize
938 interface. It allows for inline patches to be detected and treated
939 as if they were attachments, (with context-sensitive highlighting).
941 Automatically tag messages as "replied" when sending a reply
943 Messages replied to within the emacs interface will now be tagged as
944 "replied". This feature can easily be customized to add or remove
945 other tags as well. For example, a user might use a tag of
946 "needs-reply" and can configure this feature to automatically remove
947 that tag when replying. See "Notmuch Message Mark Replied" in the
948 notmuch customize interface.
950 Allow search-result color specifications to overlay each other
952 For example, one tag can specify the background color of matching
953 lines, while another can specify the foreground. With this change,
954 both settings will now be visible simultaneously, (which was not the
955 case in previous releases). See "Notmuch Search Line Faces" in the
956 notmuch customize interface.
958 Make hidden author names still available for incremental search.
960 When there is insufficient space to display all authors of a thread
961 in search results, the names of hidden authors are now still made
962 available to emacs' incremental search commands. As the user
963 searches, matching lines will temporarily expand to show the hidden
966 New binding of Control-TAB (works like TAB in reverse)
968 Many notmuch nodes already use TAB to navigate forward through
969 various items allowing actions, (message headers, email attachments,
970 etc.). The new Control-TAB binding operates similarly but in the
973 New build-system features
974 -------------------------
975 Various portability fixes have been applied
977 These include fixes for build failures on at least Solaris, FreeBSD,
978 and Fedora systems. We're hopeful that the notmuch code base is now
979 more portable than ever before.
981 Arrange for libnotmuch to be found automatically after make install
983 The notmuch build system is now careful to help the user avoid
984 errors of the form "libnotmuch.so could not be found" immediately
985 after installing. This support takes two forms:
987 1. If the library is installed to a system directory,
988 (configured in /etc/ld.so.conf), then "make install" will
989 automatically run ldconfig.
991 2. If the library is installed to a non-system directory, the
992 build system adds a DR_RUNPATH entry to the final binary
993 pointing to the directory to which the library is installed.
995 When this support works, the user should be able to run notmuch
996 immediately after "make install", without any errors trying to find
997 the notmuch library, and without having to manually set environment
998 variables such as LD_LIBRARY_PATH.
1000 Check compiler/linker options before using them
1002 The configure script now carefully checks that any desired
1003 compilation options, (whether for enabling compiler warnings, or for
1004 embedding rpath, etc.), are supported. Only supported options are
1005 used in the resulting Makefile.
1007 New test-suite features
1008 -----------------------
1009 New modularization of test suite.
1011 Thanks to a gracious relicensing of the test-suite infrastructure
1012 from the git project, notmuch now has a modular test suite. This
1013 provides the ability to run individual sections of the test suite
1014 rather than the whole things. It also provides better summary of
1015 test results, with support for tests that are expected to fail
1016 (BROKEN and FIXED) in addition to PASS and FAIL. Finally, it makes
1017 it easy to run the test suite within valgrind (pass --valgrind to
1018 notmuch-test or to any sub-script) which has been very useful.
1020 New testing of emacs interface.
1022 The test suite has been augmented to allow automated testing of the
1023 emacs interfaces. So far, this includes basic searches, display of
1024 threads, and tag manipulation. This also includes a test that a new
1025 message can successfully be sent out through a (dummy) SMTP server
1026 and that said message is successfully integrated into the notmuch
1027 database via the FCC setting.
1031 Fix potential corruption of database when "notmuch new " is interrupted.
1033 Previously, an interruption of "notmuch new" would (rarely) result
1034 in a corrupt database. The corruption would manifest itself by a
1035 persistent error of the form:
1037 document ID of 1234 has no thread ID
1039 The message-adding code has been carefully audited and reworked to
1040 avoid this sort of corruption regardless of when it is interrupted.
1042 Fix failure with extremely long message ID headers.
1044 Previously, a message with an extremely long message ID, (say, more
1045 than 300 characters), would fail to be added to notmuch, (triggering
1046 Xapian exceptions). This has now been fixed.
1048 Fix for messages with "charset=unknown-8bit"
1050 Previously, messages with this charset would cause notmuch to emit a
1051 GMime warning, (which would then trip up emacs or other interfaces
1052 parsing the notmuch results).
1054 Fix notmuch_query_search_threads function to return NULL on any exception
1056 Fix "notmuch search" to return non-zero if notmuch_query_search_threads fails
1058 Previously, this command could confusingly report a Xapian
1059 exception, yet still return an error code of 0. It now correctly
1060 returns a failing error code of 1 in this case.
1064 Fix to handle a message with a subject containing, for example "[1234]"
1066 Previously, a message subject containing a sequence of digits within
1067 square brackets would cause the emacs interface to mis-parse the
1068 output of "notmuch search". This would result in the message being
1069 mis-displayed and prevent the user from manipulating the message in
1070 the emacs interface.
1072 Fix to correctly handle message IDs containing ".."
1074 The emacs interface now properly quotes message IDs to avoid a
1075 Xapian bug in which the ".." within a message ID would be
1076 misinterpreted as a numeric range specification.
1078 Python-binding fixes
1079 --------------------
1080 The python bindings for notmuch have been updated to work with python3.
1082 Debian-specific fixes
1083 ---------------------
1084 Fix emacs initialization so "M-x notmuch" works for users by default.
1086 Now, a new Debian user can immediately run "emacs -f notmuch" after
1087 "apt-get install notmuch". Previously, the user would have had to
1088 edit the ~/.emacs file to add "(require 'notmuch)" before this would
1091 Notmuch 0.3.1 (2010-04-27)
1092 ==========================
1095 Fix an infinite loop in "notmuch reply"
1097 This bug could be triggered by replying to a message where the
1098 user's primary email address did not appear in the To: header and
1099 the user had not configured any secondary email addresses. The bug
1100 was a simple re-use of the same iterator variable in nested loops.
1102 Fix a potential SEGV in "notmuch search"
1104 This bug could be triggered by an author name ending in a ','.
1105 Admittedly - that's almost certainly a spam email, but we never
1106 want notmuch to crash.
1110 Fix calculations for line wrapping in the primary "notmuch" view.
1112 Fix Fcc support to prompt to create a directory if the specified Fcc
1113 directory does not exist.
1117 Fix build on OpenSolaris (at least) due to missing 'extern "C"' block.
1119 Without this, the C++ sources could not find strcasestr and the
1120 final linking of notmuch would fail.
1122 Notmuch 0.3 (2010-04-27)
1123 ========================
1124 New command-line features
1125 -------------------------
1126 User-configurable tags for new messages
1128 A new "new.tags" option is available in the configuration file to
1129 determine which tags are applied to new messages. Run "notmuch
1130 setup" to generate new documentation within ~/.notmuch-config on how
1131 to specify this value.
1133 Threads search results named based on subjects that match search
1135 This means that when new mails arrived to a thread you've previously
1136 read, and the new mails have a new subject, you will see that
1137 subject in the search results rather than the old subject.
1139 Faster operation of "notmuch tag" (avoid unneeded sorting)
1141 Since the user just wants to tag all matching messages, we can make
1142 things perform a bit faster by avoiding the sort.
1144 Even Better guessing of From: header for "notmuch reply"
1146 Notmuch now looks at a number of headers when trying to figure out
1147 the best From: header to use in a reply. This is helpful if you have
1148 several configured email addresses, and you also subscribe to various
1149 mailing lists with different addresses, (so that mails you are
1150 replying to won't always include your subscribed address in the To:
1153 Indication of author names that match a search
1155 When notmuch displays threads as the result of a search, it now
1156 lists the authors that match the search before listing the other
1157 authors in the thread. It inserts a pipe '|' symbol between the last
1158 matching and first non-matching author. This is especially useful in
1159 a search that includes tag:unread. Now the authors of the unread
1160 messages in the thread are listed first.
1162 New: Python bindings
1163 --------------------
1164 Sebastian Spaeth has contributed his python bindings for the notmuch
1165 library to the central repository. These bindings were previously
1166 known as "cnotmuch" within python but have now been renamed to be
1167 accessible with a simple, and more official-looking "import notmuch".
1169 The bindings have already proven very useful as people proficient in
1170 python have been able to easily develop programs to do notmuch-based
1171 searches for email-address completion, maildir-flag synchronization,
1174 These bindings are available within the bindings/python directory, but
1175 are not yet integrated into the top-level Makefiles, nor the top-level
1176 package-building scripts. Improvements are welcome.
1178 Emacs interface improvements
1179 ----------------------------
1180 An entirely new initial view for notmuch, (friendly yet powerful)
1182 Some of us call the new view "notmuch hello" but you can get at it
1183 by simply calling "emacs -f notmuch". The new view provides a search
1184 bar where new searches can be performed. It also displays a list of
1185 recent searches, along with a button to save any of these, giving it
1186 a new name as a "saved search". Many people find these "saved
1187 searches" one of the most convenient ways of organizing their mail,
1188 (providing all of the features of "folders" in other mail clients,
1189 but without any of the disadvantages).
1191 Finally, this view can also optionally display all of the tags that
1192 exist in the database, along with a count for each tag, and a custom
1193 search of messages with that tag that's simply a click (or keypress)
1196 Note: For users that liked the original mode of "emacs -f notmuch"
1197 immediately displaying a particular search result, we
1198 recommend instead running something like:
1200 emacs --eval '(notmuch search "tag:inbox" t)'
1202 The "t" means to sort the messages in an "oldest first" order,
1203 (as notmuch would do previously by default). You can also
1204 leave that off to have your search results in "newest first"
1207 Full-featured "customize" support for configuring notmuch
1209 Notmuch now plugs in well to the emacs "customize" mode to make it
1210 much simpler to find things about the notmuch interface that can be
1211 tweaked by the user.
1213 You can get to this mode by starting at the main "Customize" menu in
1214 emacs, then browsing through "Applications", "Mail", and
1215 "Notmuch". Or you can go straight to "M-x customize-group"
1218 Once you're at the customize screen, you'll see a list of documented
1219 options that can be manipulated along with checkboxes, drop-down
1220 selectors, and text-entry boxes for configuring the various
1223 Support for doing tab-completion of email addresses
1225 This support currently relies on an external program,
1226 (notmuch-addresses), that is not yet shipped with notmuch
1227 itself. But multiple, suitable implementations of this program have
1228 already been written that generate address completions by doing
1229 notmuch searches of your email collection. For example, providing
1230 first those addresses that you have composed messages to in the
1233 One such program (implemented in python with the python bindings to
1234 notmuch) is available via:
1236 git clone http://jkr.acm.jhu.edu/git/notmuch_addresses.git
1238 Install that program as notmuch-addresses on your PATH, and then
1239 hitting TAB on a partial email address or name within the To: or Cc:
1240 line of an email message will provide matching completions.
1242 Support for file-based (Fcc) delivery of sent messages to mail store
1244 This isn't yet enabled by default. To enable this, one will have to
1245 set the "Notmuch Fcc Dirs" setting within the notmuch customize
1246 screen, (see its documentation there for details). We anticipate
1247 making this automatic in a future release.
1249 New 'G' key binding to trigger mail refresh (G == "Get new mail")
1251 The 'G' key works wherever '=' works. Before refreshing the screen
1252 it calls an external program that can be used to poll email servers,
1253 run notmuch new and setup specific tags for the new emails. The
1254 script to be called should be configured with the "Notmuch Poll
1255 Script" setting in the customize interface. This script will
1256 typically invoke "notmuch new" and then perhaps several "notmuch
1259 Implement emacs message display with the JSON output from notmuch.
1261 This is much more robust than the previous implementation, (where
1262 some HTML mails and mail quoting the notmuch code with the delimiter
1263 characters in it would cause the parser to fall over).
1265 Better handling of HTML messages and MIME attachments (inline images!)
1267 Allow for any MIME parts that emacs can display to be displayed
1268 inline. This includes inline viewing of image attachments, (provided
1269 the window is large enough to fit the image at its natural size).
1271 Much more robust handling of HTML messages. Currently both text/plain
1272 and text/html alternates will be rendered next to each other. In a
1273 future release, users will be able to decide to see only one or the
1274 other representation.
1276 Each attachment now has its own button so that attachments can be
1277 saved individually (the 'w' key is still available to save all
1280 Customizable support for tidying of text/plain message content
1282 Many new functions are available for tidying up message
1283 content. These include options such as wrapping long lines,
1284 compressing duplicate blank lines, etc.
1286 Most of these are disabled by default, but can easily be enabled by
1287 clicking the available check boxes under the "Notmuch Show Insert
1288 Text/Plain Hook" within the notmuch customize screen.
1290 New support for searchable citations (even when hidden)
1292 When portions of overly-long citations are hidden, the contents of
1293 these citations will still be available for emacs' standard
1294 "incremental search" functions. When the search matches any portion
1295 of a hidden citation, the citation will become visible temporarily
1296 to display the search result.
1298 More flexible handling of header visibility
1300 As an answer to complaints from many users, the To, Cc, and Date
1301 headers of messages are no longer hidden by default. For those users
1302 that liked that these were hidden, a new "Notmuch Messages Headers
1303 Visible" option in the customize interface can be set to nil. The
1304 visibility of headers can still be toggled on a per-message basis
1305 with the 'h' keybinding.
1307 For users that don't want to see some subset of those headers, the
1308 new "Notmuch Message Headers" variable can be customized to list
1309 only those headers that should be present in the display of a message.
1311 The Return key now toggles message visibility anywhere
1313 Previously this worked only on the first summary-line of a message.
1315 Customizable formatting of search results
1317 The user can easily customize the order, width, and formatting of
1318 the various fields in a "notmuch search" buffer. See the "Notmuch
1319 Search Result Format" section of the customize interface.
1321 Generate nicer names for search buffers when using a saved search.
1323 Add a notmuch User-Agent header when sending mail from notmuch/emacs.
1325 New keybinding (M-Ret) to open all collapsed messages in a thread.
1329 Provide a new NOTMUCH_SORT_UNSORTED value for queries
1331 This can be somewhat faster when sorting simply isn't desired. For
1332 example when collecting a set of messages that will all be
1333 manipulated identically, (adding a tag, removing a tag, deleting the
1334 messages), then there's no advantage to sorting the messages by
1339 Fix to compile against GMime 2.6
1341 Previously notmuch insisted on being able to find GMime 2.4, (even
1342 though GMime 2.6 would have worked all along).
1344 Fix configure script to accept (and ignore) various standard options.
1346 For example, those that the Gentoo build scripts expect configure to
1347 accept are now all accepted.
1351 A large number of new tests for the many new features.
1353 Better display of output from failed tests.
1355 Now shows failures with diff rather than forcing the user to gaze at
1356 complete actual and expected output looking for deviation.
1358 Notmuch 0.2 (2010-04-16)
1359 ========================
1360 This is the second release of the notmuch mail system, with actual
1361 detailed release notes this time!
1363 This release consists of a number of minor new features that make
1364 notmuch more pleasant to use, and a few fairly major bug fixes.
1366 We didn't quite hit our release target of "about a week" from the 0.1
1367 release, (0.2 is happening 11 days after 0.1), but we hope to do
1368 better for next week. Look forward to some major features coming to
1369 notmuch in subsequent releases.
1375 Better guessing of From: header.
1377 Notmuch now tries harder to guess which configured address should be
1378 used as the From: line in a "notmuch reply". It will examine the
1379 Received: headers if it fails to find any configured address in To:
1380 or Cc:. This allows it to often choose the correct address even when
1381 replying to a message sent to a mailing list, and not directly to a
1384 Make "notmuch count" with no arguments count all messages
1386 Previously, it was hard to construct a search term that was
1387 guaranteed to match all messages.
1389 Provide a new special-case search term of "*" to match all messages.
1391 This can be used in any command accepting a search term, such as
1392 "notmuch search '*'". Note that you'll want to take care that the
1393 shell doesn't expand * against the current files. And note that the
1394 support for "*" is a special case. It's only meaningful as a single
1395 search term and loses its special meaning when combined with any
1398 Automatically detect thread connections even when a parent message is
1401 Previously, if two or more message were received with a common
1402 parent, but that parent was not received, then these messages would
1403 not be recognized as belonging to the same thread. This is now fixed
1404 so that such messages are properly connected in a thread.
1408 Fix potential data loss in "notmuch new" with SIGINT
1410 One code path in "notmuch new" was not properly handling
1411 SIGINT. Previously, this could lead to messages being removed from
1412 the database (and their tags being lost) if the user pressed
1413 Control-C while "notmuch new" was working.
1415 Fix segfault when a message includes a MIME part that is empty.
1417 Fix handling of non-ASCII characters with --format=json
1419 Previously, characters outside the range of 7-bit ASCII were
1420 silently dropped from the JSON output. This led to corrupted display
1421 of utf-8 content in the upcoming notmuch web-based frontends.
1423 Fix headers to be properly decoded in "notmuch reply"
1425 Previously, the user might see:
1427 Subject: Re: =?iso-8859-2?q?Rozlu=E8ka?=
1431 Subject: Re: Rozlučka
1433 The former text is properly encoded to be RFC-compliant SMTP, will
1434 be sent correctly, and will be properly decoded by the
1435 recipient. But the user trying to edit the reply would likely be
1436 unable to read or edit that field in its encoded form.
1438 Emacs client features
1439 ---------------------
1440 Show the last few lines of citations as well as the first few lines.
1442 It's often the case that the last sentence of a citation is what is
1443 being replied to directly, so the last few lines are often much more
1444 important. The number of lines shown at the beginning and end of any
1445 citation can be configured, (notmuch-show-citation-lines-prefix and
1446 notmuch-show-citation-lines-suffix).
1448 The '+' and '-' commands in the search view can now add and remove
1451 Selective bulk tagging is now possible by selecting a region of
1452 threads and then using either the '+' or '-' keybindings. Bulk
1453 tagging is still available for all threads matching the current
1454 search with the '*' binding.
1456 More meaningful buffer names for thread-view buffers.
1458 Notmuch now uses the Subject of the thread as the buffer
1459 name. Previously it was using the thread ID, which is a meaningless
1462 Provide for customized colors of threads in search view based on tags.
1464 See the documentation of notmuch-search-line-faces, (or us "M-x
1465 customize" and browse to the "notmuch" group within "Applications"
1466 and "Mail"), for details on how to configure this colorization.
1468 Build-system features
1469 ---------------------
1470 Add support to properly build libnotmuch on Darwin systems (OS X).
1472 Add support to configure for many standard options.
1474 We include actual support for:
1476 --includedir --mandir --sysconfdir
1478 And accept and silently ignore several more:
1480 --build --infodir --libexecdir --localstatedir
1481 --disable-maintainer-mode --disable-dependency-tracking
1483 Install emacs client in "make install" rather than requiring a
1484 separate "make install-emacs".
1486 Automatically compute versions numbers between releases.
1488 This support uses the git-describe notation, so a version such as
1489 0.1-144-g43cbbfc indicates a version that is 144 commits since the
1490 0.1 release and is available as git commit "43cbbfc".
1492 Add a new "make test" target to run the test suite and actually verify
1495 Notmuch 0.1 (2010-04-05)
1496 ========================
1497 This is the first release of the notmuch mail system.
1499 It includes the libnotmuch library, the notmuch command-line
1500 interface, and an emacs-based interface to notmuch.
1502 Note: Notmuch will work best with Xapian 1.0.18 (or later) or Xapian
1503 1.1.4 (or later). Previous versions of Xapian (whether 1.0 or 1.1) had
1504 a performance bug that made notmuch very slow when modifying
1505 tags. This would cause distracting pauses when reading mail while
1506 notmuch would wait for Xapian when removing the "inbox" and "unread"
1507 tags from messages in a thread.