1 Notmuch 0.5 (2010-11-11)
2 ========================
5 Maildir-flag synchronization
7 Notmuch now knows how to synchronize flags in maildir filenames with
8 tags in the notmuch database. The following flag/tag mappings are
17 'S' unread (added when 'S' flag is not present)
19 The synchronization occurs in both directions, (for example, adding
20 the 'S' flag to a file will cause the "unread" tag to be added, and
21 adding the "replied" tag to a message will cause the file to be
22 renamed with an 'R' flag).
24 This synchronization is enabled by default for users of the
25 command-line interface, (though only files in directories named
26 "cur" or "new" will be renamed). It can be disabled by setting the
27 new maildir.synchronize_flags option in the configuration file. For
30 notmuch config set maildir.synchronize_flags false
32 Users upgrading may also want to run "notmuch setup" once (just
33 accept the existing configuration) to get a new, nicely-commented
34 [maildir] section added to the configuration file.
36 For users of the notmuch library, the new synchronization
37 functionality is available with the following two new functions:
39 notmuch_message_maildir_flags_to_tags
40 notmuch_message_tags_to_maildir_flags
42 It is anticipated that future improvements to this support will
43 allow for safe synchronization of the 'T' flag with the "deleted"
44 tag, as well as support for custom flag/tag mappings.
48 Support for querying multiple filenames for a single message
50 It is common for the mailstore to contain multiple files with the
51 same message ID. Previously, notmuch would always hide these
52 duplicate files, (returning a single, arbitrary filename with
53 notmuch_message_get_filename).
55 With this release, library users can access all filenames for a
56 message with the new function:
58 notmuch_message_get_filenames
60 Together with notmuch_filenames_valid, notmuch_filenames_get, and
61 notmuch_filenames_move_to_next it is now possible to iterate over
62 all available filenames for a given message.
64 New command-line features
65 -------------------------
66 New "notmuch show --format=raw" for getting at original email contents
68 This new feature allows for a fully-functional email client to be
69 built on top of the notmuch command-line without needing any direct
70 access to the mail store itself.
72 For example, it's now possible to run "emacs -f notmuch" on a local
73 machine with only ssh access to the mail store/notmuch database. To
74 do this, simply set the notmuch-command variable in emacs to the
75 name of a script containing:
77 ssh user@host notmuch "$@"
79 If the ssh client has enabled connection sharing (ControlMaster
80 option in OpenSSH), the emacs interface can be quite responsive this
85 Fix "notmuch search" to print nothing when nothing matches
87 The 0.4 release had a bug in which:
89 notmuch search <expression-with-no-matches>
91 would produce a single blank line of output, (where previous
92 versions would produce no output. This fix also causes a change in
93 the --format=json output, (which would previously produce "[]" and
94 now produces nothing).
96 Emacs interface improvements
97 ----------------------------
98 Fix to allow pipe ('|') command to work when using notmuch over ssh
100 Fix count of lines in hidden signatures.
102 Omit repeated subject lines in (collapsed) thread display.
104 Display current thread subject in a header line.
106 Provide a "c i" binding to copy a thread ID from the search view.
108 Allow for notmuch-fcc-dirs to have a value of nil.
110 Also, the more complex form of notmuch-fcc-dirs now has a slightly
111 different format. It no longer has a special first-element, fallback
112 string. Instead it's now a list of cons cells where the car of each
113 cell is a regular expression to be matched against the sender
114 address, and the cdr is the name of a folder to use for an FCC. So
115 the old fallback behavior can be achieved by including a fineal cell
116 of (".*" . "default-fcc-folder").
118 Vim interface improvements
119 --------------------------
120 Felipe Contreras provided a number of updates for the vim interface.
122 These include optimiations, support for newer versions of vim, fixed
123 support for sending mail on modern systmms, new commands, and
128 Added initial ruby bindings in bindings/ruby
130 Notmuch 0.4 (2010-11-01)
131 ========================
132 New command-line features
133 -------------------------
134 notmuch search --output=(summary|threads|messages|tags|files)
136 This new option allows for particular items to be returned from
137 notmuch searches. The "summary" option is the default and behaves
138 just as "notmuch search" has historically behaved.
140 The new option values allow for thread IDs, message IDs, lists of
141 tags, and lists of filenames to be returned from searches. It is
142 expected that this new option will be very useful in shell
143 scripts. For example:
145 for file in $(notmuch search --output=files <search-terms>); do
146 <operations-on> "$file"
149 notmuch show --format=mbox <search-specification>
151 This new option allows for the messages matching a search
152 specification to be presented as an mbox. Specifically the "mboxrd"
153 format is used which allows for reversible quoting of lines
154 beginning with "From ". A reader should remove a single '>' from the
155 beginning of all lines beginning with one or more '>' characters
156 followed by the 5 characters "From ".
158 notmuch config [get|set] <section>.<item> [value ...]
160 The new top-level "config" command allows for any value in the
161 notmuch configuration file to be queried or set to a new value. Both
162 single-valued and multi-valued items are supported, as our any
163 custom items stored in the configuration file.
165 Avoid setting Bcc header in "notmuch reply"
167 We decided that this was a bit heavy-handed as the actual mail
168 user-agent should be responsible for setting any Bcc option. Also,
169 see below for the notmuch/emacs user-agent now setting an Fcc by
170 default rather than Bcc.
174 Add notmuch_query_get_query_string and notmuch_query_get_sort
176 These are simply functions for querying properties of a
177 notmuch_query_t object.
181 Enable Fcc of all sent messages by default (to "sent" directory)
183 All messages sent from the emacs interface will now be saved to the
184 notmuch mail store where they will be incorporated to the database
185 by the next "notmuch new". By default, messages are saved to the
186 "sent" directory at the top-level of the mail store. This directory
187 can be customized by means of the "Notmuch Fcc Dirs" option in the
188 notmuch customize interface.
190 Ability to all open messages in a thread to a pipe
192 Historically, the '|' keybinding allows for piping a single message
193 to an external command. Now, by prefixing this key with a prefix
194 argument, (for example, by pressing "Control-U |"), all open
195 messages in the current thread will be sent to the external command.
197 Optional support for detecting inline patches
199 This hook is disabled by default but can be enabled with a checkbox
200 under "Notmuch Show Insert Text/Plain Hook" in the notmuch customize
201 interface. It allows for inline patches to be detected and treated
202 as if they were attachments, (with context-sensitive highlighting).
204 Automatically tag messages as "replied" when sending a reply
206 Messages replied to within the emacs interface will now be tagged as
207 "replied". This feature can easily be customized to add or remove
208 other tags as well. For example, a user might use a tag of
209 "needs-reply" and can configure this feature to automatically remove
210 that tag when replying. See "Notmuch Message Mark Replied" in the
211 notmuch customize interface.
213 Allow search-result color specifications to overlay each other
215 For example, one tag can specify the background color of matching
216 lines, while another can specify the foreground. With this change,
217 both settings will now be visible simultaneously, (which was not the
218 case in previous releases). See "Notmuch Search Line Faces" in the
219 notmuch customize interface.
221 Make hidden author names still available for incremental search.
223 When there is insufficient space to display all authors of a thread
224 in search results, the names of hidden authors are now still made
225 available to emacs' incremental search commands. As the user
226 searches, matching lines will temporarily expand to show the hidden
229 New binding of Control-TAB (works like TAB in reverse)
231 Many notmuch nodes already use TAB to navigate forward through
232 various items allowing actions, (message headers, email attachments,
233 etc.). The new Control-TAB binding operates similarly but in the
236 New build-system features
237 -------------------------
238 Various portability fixes have been applied
240 These include fixes for build failures on at least Solaris, FreeBSD,
241 and Fedora systems. We're hopeful that the notmuch code base is now
242 more portable than ever before.
244 Arrange for libnotmuch to be found automatically after make install
246 The notmuch build system is now careful to help the user avoid
247 errors of the form "libnotmuch.so could not be found" immediately
248 after installing. This support takes two forms:
250 1. If the library is installed to a system directory,
251 (configured in /etc/ld.so.conf), then "make install" will
252 automatically run ldconfig.
254 2. If the library is installed to a non-system directory, the
255 build system adds a DR_RUNPATH entry to the final binary
256 pointing to the directory to which the library is installed.
258 When this support works, the user should be able to run notmuch
259 immediately after "make install", without any errors trying to find
260 the notmuch library, and without having to manually set environment
261 variables such as LD_LIBRARY_PATH.
263 Check compiler/linker options before using them
265 The configure script now carefully checks that any desired
266 compilation options, (whether for enabling compiler warnings, or for
267 embedding rpath, etc.), are supported. Only supported options are
268 used in the resulting Makefile.
270 New test-suite features
271 -----------------------
272 New modularization of test suite.
274 Thanks to a gracious relicensing of the test-suite infrastructure
275 from the git project, notmuch now has a modular test suite. This
276 provides the ability to run individual sections of the test suite
277 rather than the whole things. It also provides better summary of
278 test results, with support for tests that are expected to fail
279 (BROKEN and FIXED) in addition to PASS and FAIL. Finally, it makes
280 it easy to run the test suite within valgrind (pass --valgrind to
281 notmuch-test or to any sub-script) which has been very useful.
283 New testing of emacs interface.
285 The test suite has been augmented to allow automated testing of the
286 emacs interfaces. So far, this includes basic searches, display of
287 threads, and tag manipulation. This also includes a test that a new
288 message can successfully be sent out through a (dummy) SMTP server
289 and that said message is successfully integrated into the notmuch
290 database via the FCC setting.
294 Fix potential corruption of database when "notmuch new " is interrupted.
296 Previously, an interruption of "notmuch new" would (rarely) result
297 in a corrupt database. The corruption would manifest itself by a
298 persistent error of the form:
300 document ID of 1234 has no thread ID
302 The message-adding code has been carefully audited and reworked to
303 avoid this sort of corruption regardless of when it is interrupted.
305 Fix failure with extremely long message ID headers.
307 Previously, a message with an extremely long message ID, (say, more
308 than 300 characters), would fail to be added to notmuch, (triggering
309 Xapian exceptions). This has now been fixed.
311 Fix for messages with "charset=unknown-8bit"
313 Previously, messages with this charset would cause notmuch to emit a
314 GMime warning, (which would then trip up emacs or other interfaces
315 parsing the notmuch results).
317 Fix notmuch_query_search_threads function to return NULL on any exception
319 Fix "notmuch search" to return non-zero if notmuch_query_search_threads fails
321 Previously, this command could confusingly report a Xapian
322 exception, yet still return an error code of 0. It now correctly
323 returns a failing error code of 1 in this case.
327 Fix to handle a message with a subject containing, for example "[1234]"
329 Previously, a message subject containing a sequence of digits within
330 square brackets would cause the emacs interface to mis-parse the
331 output of "notmuch search". This would result in the message being
332 mis-displayed and prevent the user from manipulating the message in
335 Fix to correctly handle message IDs containing ".."
337 The emacs interface now properly quotes message IDs to avoid a
338 Xapian bug in which the ".." within a message ID would be
339 misinterpreted as a numeric range specification.
343 The python bindings for notmuch have been updated to work with python3.
345 Debian-specific fixes
346 ---------------------
347 Fix emacs initialization so "M-x notmuch" works for users by default.
349 Now, a new Debian user can immediately run "emacs -f notmuch" after
350 "apt-get install notmuch". Previously, the user would have had to
351 edit the ~/.emacs file to add "(require 'notmuch)" before this would
354 Notmuch 0.3.1 (2010-04-27)
355 ==========================
358 Fix an infinite loop in "notmuch reply"
360 This bug could be triggered by replying to a message where the
361 user's primary email address did not appear in the To: header and
362 the user had not configured any secondary email addresses. The bug
363 was a simple re-use of the same iterator variable in nested loops.
365 Fix a potential SEGV in "notmuch search"
367 This bug could be triggered by an author name ending in a ','.
368 Admittedly - that's almost certainly a spam email, but we never
369 want notmuch to crash.
373 Fix calculations for line wrapping in the primary "notmuch" view.
375 Fix Fcc support to prompt to create a directory if the specified Fcc
376 directory does not exist.
380 Fix build on OpenSolaris (at least) due to missing 'extern "C"' block.
382 Without this, the C++ sources could not find strcasestr and the
383 final linking of notmuch would fail.
385 Notmuch 0.3 (2010-04-27)
386 ========================
387 New command-line features
388 -------------------------
389 User-configurable tags for new messages
391 A new "new.tags" option is available in the configuration file to
392 determine which tags are applied to new messages. Run "notmuch
393 setup" to generate new documentation within ~/.notmuch-config on how
394 to specify this value.
396 Threads search results named based on subjects that match search
398 This means that when new mails arrived to a thread you've previously
399 read, and the new mails have a new subject, you will see that
400 subject in the search results rather than the old subject.
402 Faster operation of "notmuch tag" (avoid unneeded sorting)
404 Since the user just wants to tag all matching messages, we can make
405 things perform a bit faster by avoiding the sort.
407 Even Better guessing of From: header for "notmuch reply"
409 Notmuch now looks at a number of headers when trying to figure out
410 the best From: header to use in a reply. This is helpful if you have
411 several configured email addresses, and you also subscribe to various
412 mailing lists with different addresses, (so that mails you are
413 replying to won't always include your subscribed address in the To:
416 Indication of author names that match a search
418 When notmuch displays threads as the result of a search, it now
419 lists the authors that match the search before listing the other
420 authors in the thread. It inserts a pipe '|' symbol between the last
421 matching and first non-matching author. This is especially useful in
422 a search that includes tag:unread. Now the authors of the unread
423 messages in the thread are listed first.
427 Sebastian Spaeth has contributed his python bindings for the notmuch
428 library to the central repository. These bindings were previously
429 known as "cnotmuch" within python but have now been renamed to be
430 accessible with a simple, and more official-looking "import notmuch".
432 The bindings have already proven very useful as people proficient in
433 python have been able to easily develop programs to do notmuch-based
434 searches for email-address completion, maildir-flag synchronization,
437 These bindings are available within the bindings/python directory, but
438 are not yet integrated into the top-level Makefiles, nor the top-level
439 package-building scripts. Improvements are welcome.
441 Emacs interface improvements
442 ----------------------------
443 An entirely new initial view for notmuch, (friendly yet powerful)
445 Some of us call the new view "notmuch hello" but you can get at it
446 by simply calling "emacs -f notmuch". The new view provides a search
447 bar where new searches can be performed. It also displays a list of
448 recent searches, along with a button to save any of these, giving it
449 a new name as a "saved search". Many people find these "saved
450 searches" one of the most convenient ways of organizing their mail,
451 (providing all of the features of "folders" in other mail clients,
452 but without any of the disadvantages).
454 Finally, this view can also optionally display all of the tags that
455 exist in the database, along with a count for each tag, and a custom
456 search of messages with that tag that's simply a click (or keypress)
459 Note: For users that liked the original mode of "emacs -f notmuch"
460 immediately displaying a particular search result, we
461 recommend instead running something like:
463 emacs --eval '(notmuch search "tag:inbox" t)'
465 The "t" means to sort the messages in an "oldest first" order,
466 (as notmuch would do previously by default). You can also
467 leave that off to have your search results in "newest first"
470 Full-featured "customize" support for configuring notmuch
472 Notmuch now plugs in well to the emacs "customize" mode to make it
473 much simpler to find things about the notmuch interface that can be
476 You can get to this mode by starting at the main "Customize" menu in
477 emacs, then browsing through "Applications", "Mail", and
478 "Notmuch". Or you can go straight to "M-x customize-group"
481 Once you're at the customize screen, you'll see a list of documented
482 options that can be manipulated along with checkboxes, drop-down
483 selectors, and text-entry boxes for configuring the various
486 Support for doing tab-completion of email addresses
488 This support currently relies on an external program,
489 (notmuch-addresses), that is not yet shipped with notmuch
490 itself. But multiple, suitable implementations of this program have
491 already been written that generate address completions by doing
492 notmuch searches of your email collection. For example, providing
493 first those addresses that you have composed messages to in the
496 One such program (implemented in python with the python bindings to
497 notmuch) is available via:
499 git clone http://jkr.acm.jhu.edu/git/notmuch_addresses.git
501 Install that program as notmuch-addresses on your PATH, and then
502 hitting TAB on a partial email address or name within the To: or Cc:
503 line of an email message will provide matching completions.
505 Support for file-based (Fcc) delivery of sent messages to mail store
507 This isn't yet enabled by default. To enable this, one will have to
508 set the "Notmuch Fcc Dirs" setting within the notmuch customize
509 screen, (see its documentation there for details). We anticipate
510 making this automatic in a future release.
512 New 'G' key binding to trigger mail refresh (G == "Get new mail")
514 The 'G' key works wherever '=' works. Before refreshing the screen
515 it calls an external program that can be used to poll email servers,
516 run notmuch new and setup specific tags for the new emails. The
517 script to be called should be configured with the "Notmuch Poll
518 Script" setting in the customize interface. This script will
519 typically invoke "notmuch new" and then perhaps several "notmuch
522 Implement emacs message display with the JSON output from notmuch.
524 This is much more robust than the previous implementation, (where
525 some HTML mails and mail quoting the notmuch code with the delimiter
526 characters in it would cause the parser to fall over).
528 Better handling of HTML messages and MIME attachments (inline images!)
530 Allow for any MIME parts that emacs can display to be displayed
531 inline. This includes inline viewing of image attachments, (provided
532 the window is large enough to fit the image at its natural size).
534 Much more robust handling of HTML messages. Currently both text/plain
535 and text/html alternates will be rendered next to each other. In a
536 future release, users will be able to decide to see only one or the
537 other representation.
539 Each attachment now has its own button so that attachments can be
540 saved individually (the 'w' key is still available to save all
543 Customizable support for tidying of text/plain message content
545 Many new functions are available for tidying up message
546 content. These include options such as wrapping long lines,
547 compressing duplicate blank lines, etc.
549 Most of these are disabled by default, but can easily be enabled by
550 clicking the available check boxes under the "Notmuch Show Insert
551 Text/Plain Hook" within the notmuch customize screen.
553 New support for searchable citations (even when hidden)
555 When portions of overly-long citations are hidden, the contents of
556 these citations will still be available for emacs' standard
557 "incremental search" functions. When the search matches any portion
558 of a hidden citation, the citation will become visible temporarily
559 to display the search result.
561 More flexible handling of header visibility
563 As an answer to complaints from many users, the To, Cc, and Date
564 headers of messages are no longer hidden by default. For those users
565 that liked that these were hidden, a new "Notmuch Messages Headers
566 Visible" option in the customize interface can be set to nil. The
567 visibility of headers can still be toggled on a per-message basis
568 with the 'h' keybinding.
570 For users that don't want to see some subset of those headers, the
571 new "Notmuch Message Headers" variable can be customized to list
572 only those headers that should be present in the display of a message.
574 The Return key now toggles message visibility anywhere
576 Previously this worked only on the first summary-line of a message.
578 Customizable formatting of search results
580 The user can easily customize the order, width, and formatting of
581 the various fields in a "notmuch search" buffer. See the "Notmuch
582 Search Result Format" section of the customize interface.
584 Generate nicer names for search buffers when using a saved search.
586 Add a notmuch User-Agent header when sending mail from notmuch/emacs.
588 New keybinding (M-Ret) to open all collapsed messages in a thread.
592 Provide a new NOTMUCH_SORT_UNSORTED value for queries
594 This can be somewhat faster when sorting simply isn't desired. For
595 example when collecting a set of messages that will all be
596 manipulated identically, (adding a tag, removing a tag, deleting the
597 messages), then there's no advantage to sorting the messages by
602 Fix to compile against GMime 2.6
604 Previously notmuch insisted on being able to find GMime 2.4, (even
605 though GMime 2.6 would have worked all along).
607 Fix configure script to accept (and ignore) various standard options.
609 For example, those that the gentoo build scripts expect configure to
610 accept are now all accepted.
614 A large number of new tests for the many new features.
616 Better display of output from failed tests.
618 Now shows failures with diff rather than forcing the user to gaze at
619 complete actual and expected output looking for deviation.
621 Notmuch 0.2 (2010-04-16)
622 ========================
623 This is the second release of the notmuch mail system, with actual
624 detailed release notes this time!
626 This release consists of a number of minor new features that make
627 notmuch more pleasant to use, and a few fairly major bug fixes.
629 We didn't quite hit our release target of "about a week" from the 0.1
630 release, (0.2 is happening 11 days after 0.1), but we hope to do
631 better for next week. Look forward to some major features coming to
632 notmuch in subsequent releases.
638 Better guessing of From: header.
640 Notmuch now tries harder to guess which configured address should be
641 used as the From: line in a "notmuch reply". It will examine the
642 Received: headers if it fails to find any configured address in To:
643 or Cc:. This allows it to often choose the correct address even when
644 replying to a message sent to a mailing list, and not directly to a
647 Make "notmuch count" with no arguments count all messages
649 Previously, it was hard to construct a search term that was
650 guaranteed to match all messages.
652 Provide a new special-case search term of "*" to match all messages.
654 This can be used in any command accepting a search term, such as
655 "notmuch search '*'". Note that you'll want to take care that the
656 shell doesn't expand * against the current files. And note that the
657 support for "*" is a special case. It's only meaningful as a single
658 search term and loses its special meaning when combined with any
661 Automatically detect thread connections even when a parent message is
664 Previously, if two or more message were received with a common
665 parent, but that parent was not received, then these messages would
666 not be recognized as belonging to the same thread. This is now fixed
667 so that such messages are properly connected in a thread.
671 Fix potential data loss in "notmuch new" with SIGINT
673 One code path in "notmuch new" was not properly handling
674 SIGINT. Previously, this could lead to messages being removed from
675 the database (and their tags being lost) if the user pressed
676 Control-C while "notmuch new" was working.
678 Fix segfault when a message includes a MIME part that is empty.
680 Fix handling of non-ASCII characters with --format=json
682 Previously, characters outside the range of 7-bit ASCII were
683 silently dropped from the JSON output. This led to corrupted display
684 of utf-8 content in the upcoming notmuch web-based frontends.
686 Fix headers to be properly decoded in "notmuch reply"
688 Previously, the user might see:
690 Subject: Re: =?iso-8859-2?q?Rozlu=E8ka?=
694 Subject: Re: Rozlučka
696 The former text is properly encoded to be RFC-compliant SMTP, will
697 be sent correctly, and will be properly decoded by the
698 recipient. But the user trying to edit the reply would likely be
699 unable to read or edit that field in its encoded form.
701 Emacs client features
702 ---------------------
703 Show the last few lines of citations as well as the first few lines.
705 It's often the case that the last sentence of a citation is what is
706 being replied to directly, so the last few lines are often much more
707 important. The number of lines shown at the beginning and end of any
708 citation can be configured, (notmuch-show-citation-lines-prefix and
709 notmuch-show-citation-lines-suffix).
711 The '+' and '-' commands in the search view can now add and remove
714 Selective bulk tagging is now possible by selecting a region of
715 threads and then using either the '+' or '-' keybindings. Bulk
716 tagging is still available for all threads matching the current
717 search with th '*' binding.
719 More meaningful buffer names for thread-view buffers.
721 Notmuch now uses the Subject of the thread as the buffer
722 name. Previously it was using the thread ID, which is a meaningless
725 Provide for customized colors of threads in search view based on tags.
727 See the documentation of notmuch-search-line-faces, (or us "M-x
728 customize" and browse to the "notmuch" group within "Applications"
729 and "Mail"), for details on how to configure this colorization.
731 Build-system features
732 ---------------------
733 Add support to properly build libnotmuch on Darwin systems (OS X).
735 Add support to configure for many standard options.
737 We include actual support for:
739 --includedir --mandir --sysconfdir
741 And accept and silently ignore several more:
743 --build --infodir --libexecdir --localstatedir
744 --disable-maintainer-mode --disable-dependency-tracking
746 Install emacs client in "make install" rather than requiring a
747 separate "make install-emacs".
749 Automatically compute versions numbers between releases.
751 This support uses the git-describe notation, so a version such as
752 0.1-144-g43cbbfc indicates a version that is 144 commits since the
753 0.1 release and is available as git commit "43cbbfc".
755 Add a new "make test" target to run the test suite and actually verify
758 Notmuch 0.1 (2010-04-05)
759 ========================
760 This is the first release of the notmuch mail system.
762 It includes the libnotmuch library, the notmuch command-line
763 interface, and an emacs-based interface to notmuch.
765 Note: Notmuch will work best with Xapian 1.0.18 (or later) or Xapian
766 1.1.4 (or later). Previous versions of Xapian (whether 1.0 or 1.1) had
767 a performance bug that made notmuch very slow when modifying
768 tags. This would cause distracting pauses when reading mail while
769 notmuch would wait for Xapian when removing the "inbox" and "unread"
770 tags from messages in a thread.
projects / notmuch / blob