1 Notmuch 0.8 (2011-09-05)
2 ========================
4 Improved handling of message/rfc822 parts
6 Both in the CLI and the emacs interface. Output of rfc822 parts now
7 includes the primary headers, as well as the body and all subparts.
8 Output of the completely raw rfc822-formatted message, including all
9 headers, is unfortunately not yet supported (but hopefully will be
12 Improved Build system portability
14 Certain parts of the shell script generating notmuch.sym were
15 specific to the GNU versions of sed and nm. The new version should
16 be more portable to e.g. OpenBSD.
18 Notmuch 0.7 (2011-08-01)
19 ========================
21 Vim interface improvements
22 --------------------------
24 Jason Woofenden provided a number of bug fixes for the Vim interface
26 * fix citation/signature fold lengths
27 * fix cig/cit parsing within multipart/*
28 * fix on-screen instructions for show-signature
29 * fix from list reformatting in search view
30 * fix space key: now archives (did opposite)
32 Uwe Kleine-König contributed
34 * use full path for sendmail/doc fix
35 * fix compose temp file name
37 Python Bindings changes
38 -----------------------
40 Sebastian Spaeth contributed two changes related to unicode and UTF8:
42 * message tags are now explicitly unicode
43 * query string is encoded as a UTF8 byte string
45 Build-System improvments
46 ------------------------
48 Generate notmuch.sym after the relevant object files
50 This fixes a bug in parallel building. Thanks to Thomas Jost for the
53 Notmuch 0.6.1 (2011-07-17)
54 ==========================
59 Re-export Xapian exception typeinfo symbols.
61 It turned out our aggressive symbol hiding caused problems for
62 people running gcc 4.4.5.
64 Notmuch 0.6 (2011-07-01)
65 =======================
68 Folder-based searching
70 Notmuch queries can now include a search term to match the
71 directories in which mail files are stored (within the mail
72 storage). The syntax is as follows:
76 For example, one might use things such as:
82 to match any path containing a directory "spam", "work/todo", or
83 containing a directory starting with "2011-", respectively.
85 This feature is particularly useful for users of delivery-agent
86 software (such as procmail or maildrop) that is filtering mail and
87 delivering it to particular folders, or users of systems such as
88 Gmail that use filesystem directories to indicate message tags.
90 NOTE: Only messages that are newly indexed with this version of
91 notmuch will be searchable with folder: terms. In order to enable
92 this feature for all mail, the entire notmuch index will need to be
95 notmuch dump > notmuch.dump
96 # Backup, then remove notmuch database ($MAIL/.notmuch)
98 notmuch restore notmuch.dump
102 Both the command line interface and the emacs-interface have new
103 support for PGP/MIME, detailed below. Thanks to Daniel Kahn Gillmor
104 and Jameson Graef Rollins for making this happen.
106 New, automatic tags: "signed" and "encrypted"
108 These tags will automatically be applied to messages containing
109 multipart/signed and multipart/encrypted parts.
111 NOTE: Only messages that are newly indexed with this version of
112 notmuch will receive these tags.
114 New command-line features
115 -------------------------
116 Add new "notmuch show --verify" option for signature verification
118 This option instruct notmuch to verify the signature of
119 PGP/MIME-signed parts.
121 Add new "notmuch show --decrypt" and "notmuch reply --decrypt" options
123 This option instructs notmuch to decrypt PGP/MIME-encrypted parts.
124 Note that this feature currently requires gpg-agent and a passphrase entry
125 tool (e.g. pinentry-gtk or pinentry-curses).
127 Proper nesting of multipart parts in "notmuch show" output
129 MIME parts are now display with proper nesting to reflect original
130 MIME hierarchy of a message. This allows clients to correctly
131 analyze the MIME structure, (such as, for example, determining to
132 which parts a signature part applies).
134 Add new "notmuch show --part" option
136 This is a replacement for the older "notmuch part" command, (which
137 is now deprecated—it should still work as always, but is no longer
138 documented). Putting part output under "notmuch show" allows for all
139 of the "notmuch show" options to be applied when extracting a single
140 part, (such as --format=json for extracting a message part with JSON
143 Deprecate "notmuch search-tags", (in favor of "notmuch search --output=tags *")
145 The "notmuch search-tags" sub-command has been redundant since the
146 addition of the --output=tags option to "notmuch search". We now
147 make that more clear by deprecating "notmuch search-tags", (dropping
148 it from the documentation). We do continue to support the old syntax
149 by translating it internally to the new call.
151 Performance improvements
152 ------------------------
153 Faster searches (by doing fewer searches to construct threads)
155 Whenever a user asks for search results as threads, notmuch first
156 performs a search for messages matching the query, then performs
157 additional searches to find other messages in the resulting threads.
159 Removing inefficiencies and redundancies in these secondary searches
160 results in a measured speedups of 1.5x for a typical search.
162 Faster searches (by doing fewer passes to gather message data)
164 Optimizing Xapian data access patterns (using a single pass to get
165 all message-document data rather than a pass for each data type)
166 results in a measured speedup of 1.7x for a typical search.
168 The benefits of this optimization combine with the preceding
169 optimization. With both in place, Austin Clements measured a speedup
170 of 2.5x for a search of all messages in his inbox (was 4.5s, now
171 1.8s). Thanks, Austin!
173 Faster initial indexing
175 More efficient indexing of new messages results in a measured
176 speedup of 1.4x for the initial indexing of 3 GB of mail (1h 14m
177 rather than 1h 46m). Thanks to Austin Clements and Michal Sojka.
179 Make "notmuch new" faster for unchanged directories
181 Optimizing to not do any further examinations of sub-directories
182 when the filesystem indicates that a directory is unchanged from the
183 last "notmuch new" results in measured speedups of 8.5 for the "No
184 new mail" case, (was 0.77s, now 0.09s). Thanks to Karel Zak.
186 New emacs-interface features
187 ----------------------------
189 Support for PGP/MIME (GnuPG)
191 Automatically indicate validity of signatures for multipart/signed
192 messages. Automatically display decrypted content for
193 multipart/encrypted messages. See the emacs variable
194 notmuch-crypto-process-mime for more information. Note that this
195 needs gpg-agent and a pinentry tool just as the command line tools.
196 Also note there is no support SMIME yet.
198 Output of pipe command is now displayed if pipe command fails
200 This is extremely useful in the common use case of piping a patch to
201 "git am". If git fails to cleanly merge the patch the error messages
202 from the failed merge are now clearly displayed to the user, (where
203 previously they were silently hidden from the user).
205 User-selectable From address
207 A user can choose which configured email addresses should be used as
208 the From address whenever composing a new message. To do so, simply
209 press C-u before the command which will open a new message. Emacs
210 will prompt for the from address to use.
212 The user can customize the "Notmuch Identities" setting in the
213 notmuch customize group in order to use addresses other than those in
214 the notmuch configuration file if desired.
216 The user can also choose to always be prompted for the from address
217 when composing a new message (without having to use C-u) by setting
218 the "Notmuch Always Prompt For Sender" option in the notmuch
221 Hiding of repeated subjects in collapsed thread view
223 In notmuch-show mode, if a collapsed message has the same subject as
224 its parent, the subject is not shown.
226 Automatic detection and hiding of original message in top-posted message
228 When a message contains a line looking something like:
230 ----- Original Message -----
232 emacs hides this and all subsequent lines as an "original message",
233 (allowing the user to click or press enter on the "original message"
234 button to display it again). This makes the handling of top-posted
235 citations work much like conventional citations.
237 New hooks for running code when tags are modified
239 Some users want to perform additional actions whenever a particular
240 tag is added/removed from a message. This could be used to, for
241 example, interface with some external spam-recognition training
242 tool. To facilitate this, two new hooks are added which can be
243 modified in the following settings of the notmuch customize group:
245 Notmuch Before Tag Hook
246 Notmuch After Tag Hook
248 New optional support for hiding some multipart/alternative parts
250 Many emails are sent with redundant content within a
251 multipart/alternative group (such as a text/plain part as well as a
252 text/html part). Users can configure the setting:
254 Notmuch Show All Multipart/Alternative Parts
256 to "off" in the notmuch customize group to have the interface
257 automatically hide some part alternatives (such as text/html
258 parts). This new part hiding is not configured by default yet
259 because there's not yet a simple way to re-display such a hidden
260 part if it is not actually redundant with a displayed part.
262 Better rendering of text/x-vcalendar parts
264 These parts are now displayed in a format suitable for use with the
267 Avoid getting confused by Subject and Author fields with newline characters
269 Replacing all characters with ASCII code less than 32 with a question mark.
271 Cleaner display of From line in email messages (remove double quotes,
272 and drop "name" if it's actually just a repeat of the email address).
274 Vim interface improvements
275 --------------------------
276 Felipe Contreras provided a number of updates for the vim interface:
278 * Using sendmail directly rather than mailx,
279 * Implementing archive in show view
280 * Add support to mark as read in show and search views
281 * Add delete commands
284 Bindings improvements
285 ---------------------
286 Ruby bindings are now much more complete
288 Including QUERY.sort, QUERY.to_s, MESSAGE.maildir_flags_to_tags,
289 MESSAGE.tags_to_maildir_flags, and MESSAGE.get_filenames
291 * Python bindings have been upodated and extended
292 (docs online at http://packages.python.org/notmuch/)
295 - Message().get_filenames(),
296 - Message().tags_to_maildir_flags(),Message().maildir_flags_to_tags()
297 - list(Threads()) and list(Messages) works now
299 - Message().__cmp__() and __hash__()
300 These allow, for example:
303 As well as set arithmetic on Messages():
305 s1, s2= set(msgs1), set(msgs2)
310 - len(Messages()) as it exausted the iterator.
311 Use len(list(Messages())) or
312 Query.count_messages() to get the length.
314 Added initial Go bindings in bindings/go
316 New build-system features
317 -------------------------
318 Added support for building in a directory other than the source directory
320 This can be used with the widely-supported idiom of simply running
321 the configure script from some other directory:
328 Fix to save configure options for future, implicit runs of configure
330 When a user updates the source (such as with "git pull") calling
331 "make" may cause an automatic re-run of the configure script. When
332 this happens, the configure script will automatically be called with
333 the same options the user originally passed in the most-recent
334 manual invocation of configure.
336 New test-suite feature
337 ----------------------
338 Binary for bash for running test suite now located via PATH.
340 The notmuch test suite requires a fairly recent version of bash (>=
341 bash 4). As some systems supply an older version of bash at
342 /bin/bash, the test suite is now updated to search $PATH to locate
343 the bash binary. This allows users of systems with old /bin/bash to
344 simply install bash >= 4 somewhere on $PATH before /bin and then use
347 Support for testing output with a trailing newline.
349 Previously, some tests would fail to notice a difference in the
350 presence/absence of a trailing newline in a program output, (which
351 has led to bugs in the past). Now, carefully-written tests (using
352 test_expect_equal_file rather than test_expect_equal) will detect
353 any change in the presence/absence of a trailing newline. Many tests
354 are updated to take advantage of this.
356 Avoiding accessing user's $HOME while running test suite
358 The test suite now carefully creates its own HOME directory. This
359 allows the test suite to be run with no existing HOME directory, (as
360 some build systems apparently do), and avoids test-suite differences
361 due to configuration files in the users HOME directory.
366 Output *all* files for "notmuch search --output=files"
368 For the cases where multiple files have the same Message ID,
369 previous versions of notmuch would output only one such file. This
370 command is now fixed to correctly output all files.
372 Fixed spurious search results from "overlapped" indexing of addresses
374 This fixed a bug where a search for:
376 to:user@elsewhere.com
378 would incorrectly match a message sent:
380 To: user@example,com, someone@elsewhere.com
382 Fix --output=json when search has no results
384 A bug present since notmuch 0.4 had caused searches with no results
385 to produce an invalid json object. This is now fixed to cleanly
386 return a valid json object representing an empty array "[]" as
389 fix the automatic detection of the From address for "notmuch reply"
390 from the Received headers in some cases.
392 Fix core dump on DragonFlyBSD due to -1 return value from
393 sysconf(_SC_GETPW_R_SIZE_MAX).
395 Cleaned up several memory leaks
397 Eliminated a few, rare segmentation faults and a double-free.
399 Fix libnotmuch library to only export notmuch API functions
401 Previous release of the notmuch library also exported some Xapian
402 C++ exception type symbols. These were never part of the library
403 interface and were never intended to be exported.
405 Emacs-interface bug fixes
406 -------------------------
407 Display any unexpected output or errors from "notmuch search" invocations
409 Previously any misformatted output or trailing error messages were
410 silently ignored. This output is now clearly displayed. This fix was
411 very helpful in identifying and fixing the bug described below.
413 Fix bug where some threads would be missing from large search results
415 When a search returned a "large" number of results, the emacs
416 interface was incorrectly dropping one thread every time the output
417 of the "notmuch search" process spanned the emacs read-buffer. This
420 Avoid re-compression of .gz files (and similar) when saving attachment
422 Emacs was being too clever for its own good and trying to
423 re-compress pre-compressed .gz files when saving such attachments
424 (potentially corrupting the attachment). The emacs interface is
425 fixed to avoid this bug.
427 Fix hiding of a message when a previously-hidden citation is visible
429 Previously the citation would remain visible in this case. This is
430 fixed so that hiding a message hides all parts.
432 Notmuch 0.5 (2010-11-11)
433 ========================
434 New, general features
435 ---------------------
436 Maildir-flag synchronization
438 Notmuch now knows how to synchronize flags in maildir filenames with
439 tags in the notmuch database. The following flag/tag mappings are
448 'S' unread (added when 'S' flag is not present)
450 The synchronization occurs in both directions, (for example, adding
451 the 'S' flag to a file will cause the "unread" tag to be added, and
452 adding the "replied" tag to a message will cause the file to be
453 renamed with an 'R' flag).
455 This synchronization is enabled by default for users of the
456 command-line interface, (though only files in directories named
457 "cur" or "new" will be renamed). It can be disabled by setting the
458 new maildir.synchronize_flags option in the configuration file. For
461 notmuch config set maildir.synchronize_flags false
463 Users upgrading may also want to run "notmuch setup" once (just
464 accept the existing configuration) to get a new, nicely-commented
465 [maildir] section added to the configuration file.
467 For users of the notmuch library, the new synchronization
468 functionality is available with the following two new functions:
470 notmuch_message_maildir_flags_to_tags
471 notmuch_message_tags_to_maildir_flags
473 It is anticipated that future improvements to this support will
474 allow for safe synchronization of the 'T' flag with the "deleted"
475 tag, as well as support for custom flag/tag mappings.
479 Support for querying multiple filenames for a single message
481 It is common for the mailstore to contain multiple files with the
482 same message ID. Previously, notmuch would always hide these
483 duplicate files, (returning a single, arbitrary filename with
484 notmuch_message_get_filename).
486 With this release, library users can access all filenames for a
487 message with the new function:
489 notmuch_message_get_filenames
491 Together with notmuch_filenames_valid, notmuch_filenames_get, and
492 notmuch_filenames_move_to_next it is now possible to iterate over
493 all available filenames for a given message.
495 New command-line features
496 -------------------------
497 New "notmuch show --format=raw" for getting at original email contents
499 This new feature allows for a fully-functional email client to be
500 built on top of the notmuch command-line without needing any direct
501 access to the mail store itself.
503 For example, it's now possible to run "emacs -f notmuch" on a local
504 machine with only ssh access to the mail store/notmuch database. To
505 do this, simply set the notmuch-command variable in emacs to the
506 name of a script containing:
508 ssh user@host notmuch "$@"
510 If the ssh client has enabled connection sharing (ControlMaster
511 option in OpenSSH), the emacs interface can be quite responsive this
516 Fix "notmuch search" to print nothing when nothing matches
518 The 0.4 release had a bug in which:
520 notmuch search <expression-with-no-matches>
522 would produce a single blank line of output, (where previous
523 versions would produce no output. This fix also causes a change in
524 the --format=json output, (which would previously produce "[]" and
525 now produces nothing).
527 Emacs interface improvements
528 ----------------------------
529 Fix to allow pipe ('|') command to work when using notmuch over ssh
531 Fix count of lines in hidden signatures.
533 Omit repeated subject lines in (collapsed) thread display.
535 Display current thread subject in a header line.
537 Provide a "c i" binding to copy a thread ID from the search view.
539 Allow for notmuch-fcc-dirs to have a value of nil.
541 Also, the more complex form of notmuch-fcc-dirs now has a slightly
542 different format. It no longer has a special first-element, fallback
543 string. Instead it's now a list of cons cells where the car of each
544 cell is a regular expression to be matched against the sender
545 address, and the cdr is the name of a folder to use for an FCC. So
546 the old fallback behavior can be achieved by including a final cell
547 of (".*" . "default-fcc-folder").
549 Vim interface improvements
550 --------------------------
551 Felipe Contreras provided a number of updates for the vim interface.
553 These include optimizations, support for newer versions of vim, fixed
554 support for sending mail on modern systems, new commands, and
559 Added initial ruby bindings in bindings/ruby
561 Notmuch 0.4 (2010-11-01)
562 ========================
563 New command-line features
564 -------------------------
565 notmuch search --output=(summary|threads|messages|tags|files)
567 This new option allows for particular items to be returned from
568 notmuch searches. The "summary" option is the default and behaves
569 just as "notmuch search" has historically behaved.
571 The new option values allow for thread IDs, message IDs, lists of
572 tags, and lists of filenames to be returned from searches. It is
573 expected that this new option will be very useful in shell
574 scripts. For example:
576 for file in $(notmuch search --output=files <search-terms>); do
577 <operations-on> "$file"
580 notmuch show --format=mbox <search-specification>
582 This new option allows for the messages matching a search
583 specification to be presented as an mbox. Specifically the "mboxrd"
584 format is used which allows for reversible quoting of lines
585 beginning with "From ". A reader should remove a single '>' from the
586 beginning of all lines beginning with one or more '>' characters
587 followed by the 5 characters "From ".
589 notmuch config [get|set] <section>.<item> [value ...]
591 The new top-level "config" command allows for any value in the
592 notmuch configuration file to be queried or set to a new value. Both
593 single-valued and multi-valued items are supported, as our any
594 custom items stored in the configuration file.
596 Avoid setting Bcc header in "notmuch reply"
598 We decided that this was a bit heavy-handed as the actual mail
599 user-agent should be responsible for setting any Bcc option. Also,
600 see below for the notmuch/emacs user-agent now setting an Fcc by
601 default rather than Bcc.
605 Add notmuch_query_get_query_string and notmuch_query_get_sort
607 These are simply functions for querying properties of a
608 notmuch_query_t object.
612 Enable Fcc of all sent messages by default (to "sent" directory)
614 All messages sent from the emacs interface will now be saved to the
615 notmuch mail store where they will be incorporated to the database
616 by the next "notmuch new". By default, messages are saved to the
617 "sent" directory at the top-level of the mail store. This directory
618 can be customized by means of the "Notmuch Fcc Dirs" option in the
619 notmuch customize interface.
621 Ability to all open messages in a thread to a pipe
623 Historically, the '|' keybinding allows for piping a single message
624 to an external command. Now, by prefixing this key with a prefix
625 argument, (for example, by pressing "Control-U |"), all open
626 messages in the current thread will be sent to the external command.
628 Optional support for detecting inline patches
630 This hook is disabled by default but can be enabled with a checkbox
631 under "Notmuch Show Insert Text/Plain Hook" in the notmuch customize
632 interface. It allows for inline patches to be detected and treated
633 as if they were attachments, (with context-sensitive highlighting).
635 Automatically tag messages as "replied" when sending a reply
637 Messages replied to within the emacs interface will now be tagged as
638 "replied". This feature can easily be customized to add or remove
639 other tags as well. For example, a user might use a tag of
640 "needs-reply" and can configure this feature to automatically remove
641 that tag when replying. See "Notmuch Message Mark Replied" in the
642 notmuch customize interface.
644 Allow search-result color specifications to overlay each other
646 For example, one tag can specify the background color of matching
647 lines, while another can specify the foreground. With this change,
648 both settings will now be visible simultaneously, (which was not the
649 case in previous releases). See "Notmuch Search Line Faces" in the
650 notmuch customize interface.
652 Make hidden author names still available for incremental search.
654 When there is insufficient space to display all authors of a thread
655 in search results, the names of hidden authors are now still made
656 available to emacs' incremental search commands. As the user
657 searches, matching lines will temporarily expand to show the hidden
660 New binding of Control-TAB (works like TAB in reverse)
662 Many notmuch nodes already use TAB to navigate forward through
663 various items allowing actions, (message headers, email attachments,
664 etc.). The new Control-TAB binding operates similarly but in the
667 New build-system features
668 -------------------------
669 Various portability fixes have been applied
671 These include fixes for build failures on at least Solaris, FreeBSD,
672 and Fedora systems. We're hopeful that the notmuch code base is now
673 more portable than ever before.
675 Arrange for libnotmuch to be found automatically after make install
677 The notmuch build system is now careful to help the user avoid
678 errors of the form "libnotmuch.so could not be found" immediately
679 after installing. This support takes two forms:
681 1. If the library is installed to a system directory,
682 (configured in /etc/ld.so.conf), then "make install" will
683 automatically run ldconfig.
685 2. If the library is installed to a non-system directory, the
686 build system adds a DR_RUNPATH entry to the final binary
687 pointing to the directory to which the library is installed.
689 When this support works, the user should be able to run notmuch
690 immediately after "make install", without any errors trying to find
691 the notmuch library, and without having to manually set environment
692 variables such as LD_LIBRARY_PATH.
694 Check compiler/linker options before using them
696 The configure script now carefully checks that any desired
697 compilation options, (whether for enabling compiler warnings, or for
698 embedding rpath, etc.), are supported. Only supported options are
699 used in the resulting Makefile.
701 New test-suite features
702 -----------------------
703 New modularization of test suite.
705 Thanks to a gracious relicensing of the test-suite infrastructure
706 from the git project, notmuch now has a modular test suite. This
707 provides the ability to run individual sections of the test suite
708 rather than the whole things. It also provides better summary of
709 test results, with support for tests that are expected to fail
710 (BROKEN and FIXED) in addition to PASS and FAIL. Finally, it makes
711 it easy to run the test suite within valgrind (pass --valgrind to
712 notmuch-test or to any sub-script) which has been very useful.
714 New testing of emacs interface.
716 The test suite has been augmented to allow automated testing of the
717 emacs interfaces. So far, this includes basic searches, display of
718 threads, and tag manipulation. This also includes a test that a new
719 message can successfully be sent out through a (dummy) SMTP server
720 and that said message is successfully integrated into the notmuch
721 database via the FCC setting.
725 Fix potential corruption of database when "notmuch new " is interrupted.
727 Previously, an interruption of "notmuch new" would (rarely) result
728 in a corrupt database. The corruption would manifest itself by a
729 persistent error of the form:
731 document ID of 1234 has no thread ID
733 The message-adding code has been carefully audited and reworked to
734 avoid this sort of corruption regardless of when it is interrupted.
736 Fix failure with extremely long message ID headers.
738 Previously, a message with an extremely long message ID, (say, more
739 than 300 characters), would fail to be added to notmuch, (triggering
740 Xapian exceptions). This has now been fixed.
742 Fix for messages with "charset=unknown-8bit"
744 Previously, messages with this charset would cause notmuch to emit a
745 GMime warning, (which would then trip up emacs or other interfaces
746 parsing the notmuch results).
748 Fix notmuch_query_search_threads function to return NULL on any exception
750 Fix "notmuch search" to return non-zero if notmuch_query_search_threads fails
752 Previously, this command could confusingly report a Xapian
753 exception, yet still return an error code of 0. It now correctly
754 returns a failing error code of 1 in this case.
758 Fix to handle a message with a subject containing, for example "[1234]"
760 Previously, a message subject containing a sequence of digits within
761 square brackets would cause the emacs interface to mis-parse the
762 output of "notmuch search". This would result in the message being
763 mis-displayed and prevent the user from manipulating the message in
766 Fix to correctly handle message IDs containing ".."
768 The emacs interface now properly quotes message IDs to avoid a
769 Xapian bug in which the ".." within a message ID would be
770 misinterpreted as a numeric range specification.
774 The python bindings for notmuch have been updated to work with python3.
776 Debian-specific fixes
777 ---------------------
778 Fix emacs initialization so "M-x notmuch" works for users by default.
780 Now, a new Debian user can immediately run "emacs -f notmuch" after
781 "apt-get install notmuch". Previously, the user would have had to
782 edit the ~/.emacs file to add "(require 'notmuch)" before this would
785 Notmuch 0.3.1 (2010-04-27)
786 ==========================
789 Fix an infinite loop in "notmuch reply"
791 This bug could be triggered by replying to a message where the
792 user's primary email address did not appear in the To: header and
793 the user had not configured any secondary email addresses. The bug
794 was a simple re-use of the same iterator variable in nested loops.
796 Fix a potential SEGV in "notmuch search"
798 This bug could be triggered by an author name ending in a ','.
799 Admittedly - that's almost certainly a spam email, but we never
800 want notmuch to crash.
804 Fix calculations for line wrapping in the primary "notmuch" view.
806 Fix Fcc support to prompt to create a directory if the specified Fcc
807 directory does not exist.
811 Fix build on OpenSolaris (at least) due to missing 'extern "C"' block.
813 Without this, the C++ sources could not find strcasestr and the
814 final linking of notmuch would fail.
816 Notmuch 0.3 (2010-04-27)
817 ========================
818 New command-line features
819 -------------------------
820 User-configurable tags for new messages
822 A new "new.tags" option is available in the configuration file to
823 determine which tags are applied to new messages. Run "notmuch
824 setup" to generate new documentation within ~/.notmuch-config on how
825 to specify this value.
827 Threads search results named based on subjects that match search
829 This means that when new mails arrived to a thread you've previously
830 read, and the new mails have a new subject, you will see that
831 subject in the search results rather than the old subject.
833 Faster operation of "notmuch tag" (avoid unneeded sorting)
835 Since the user just wants to tag all matching messages, we can make
836 things perform a bit faster by avoiding the sort.
838 Even Better guessing of From: header for "notmuch reply"
840 Notmuch now looks at a number of headers when trying to figure out
841 the best From: header to use in a reply. This is helpful if you have
842 several configured email addresses, and you also subscribe to various
843 mailing lists with different addresses, (so that mails you are
844 replying to won't always include your subscribed address in the To:
847 Indication of author names that match a search
849 When notmuch displays threads as the result of a search, it now
850 lists the authors that match the search before listing the other
851 authors in the thread. It inserts a pipe '|' symbol between the last
852 matching and first non-matching author. This is especially useful in
853 a search that includes tag:unread. Now the authors of the unread
854 messages in the thread are listed first.
858 Sebastian Spaeth has contributed his python bindings for the notmuch
859 library to the central repository. These bindings were previously
860 known as "cnotmuch" within python but have now been renamed to be
861 accessible with a simple, and more official-looking "import notmuch".
863 The bindings have already proven very useful as people proficient in
864 python have been able to easily develop programs to do notmuch-based
865 searches for email-address completion, maildir-flag synchronization,
868 These bindings are available within the bindings/python directory, but
869 are not yet integrated into the top-level Makefiles, nor the top-level
870 package-building scripts. Improvements are welcome.
872 Emacs interface improvements
873 ----------------------------
874 An entirely new initial view for notmuch, (friendly yet powerful)
876 Some of us call the new view "notmuch hello" but you can get at it
877 by simply calling "emacs -f notmuch". The new view provides a search
878 bar where new searches can be performed. It also displays a list of
879 recent searches, along with a button to save any of these, giving it
880 a new name as a "saved search". Many people find these "saved
881 searches" one of the most convenient ways of organizing their mail,
882 (providing all of the features of "folders" in other mail clients,
883 but without any of the disadvantages).
885 Finally, this view can also optionally display all of the tags that
886 exist in the database, along with a count for each tag, and a custom
887 search of messages with that tag that's simply a click (or keypress)
890 Note: For users that liked the original mode of "emacs -f notmuch"
891 immediately displaying a particular search result, we
892 recommend instead running something like:
894 emacs --eval '(notmuch search "tag:inbox" t)'
896 The "t" means to sort the messages in an "oldest first" order,
897 (as notmuch would do previously by default). You can also
898 leave that off to have your search results in "newest first"
901 Full-featured "customize" support for configuring notmuch
903 Notmuch now plugs in well to the emacs "customize" mode to make it
904 much simpler to find things about the notmuch interface that can be
907 You can get to this mode by starting at the main "Customize" menu in
908 emacs, then browsing through "Applications", "Mail", and
909 "Notmuch". Or you can go straight to "M-x customize-group"
912 Once you're at the customize screen, you'll see a list of documented
913 options that can be manipulated along with checkboxes, drop-down
914 selectors, and text-entry boxes for configuring the various
917 Support for doing tab-completion of email addresses
919 This support currently relies on an external program,
920 (notmuch-addresses), that is not yet shipped with notmuch
921 itself. But multiple, suitable implementations of this program have
922 already been written that generate address completions by doing
923 notmuch searches of your email collection. For example, providing
924 first those addresses that you have composed messages to in the
927 One such program (implemented in python with the python bindings to
928 notmuch) is available via:
930 git clone http://jkr.acm.jhu.edu/git/notmuch_addresses.git
932 Install that program as notmuch-addresses on your PATH, and then
933 hitting TAB on a partial email address or name within the To: or Cc:
934 line of an email message will provide matching completions.
936 Support for file-based (Fcc) delivery of sent messages to mail store
938 This isn't yet enabled by default. To enable this, one will have to
939 set the "Notmuch Fcc Dirs" setting within the notmuch customize
940 screen, (see its documentation there for details). We anticipate
941 making this automatic in a future release.
943 New 'G' key binding to trigger mail refresh (G == "Get new mail")
945 The 'G' key works wherever '=' works. Before refreshing the screen
946 it calls an external program that can be used to poll email servers,
947 run notmuch new and setup specific tags for the new emails. The
948 script to be called should be configured with the "Notmuch Poll
949 Script" setting in the customize interface. This script will
950 typically invoke "notmuch new" and then perhaps several "notmuch
953 Implement emacs message display with the JSON output from notmuch.
955 This is much more robust than the previous implementation, (where
956 some HTML mails and mail quoting the notmuch code with the delimiter
957 characters in it would cause the parser to fall over).
959 Better handling of HTML messages and MIME attachments (inline images!)
961 Allow for any MIME parts that emacs can display to be displayed
962 inline. This includes inline viewing of image attachments, (provided
963 the window is large enough to fit the image at its natural size).
965 Much more robust handling of HTML messages. Currently both text/plain
966 and text/html alternates will be rendered next to each other. In a
967 future release, users will be able to decide to see only one or the
968 other representation.
970 Each attachment now has its own button so that attachments can be
971 saved individually (the 'w' key is still available to save all
974 Customizable support for tidying of text/plain message content
976 Many new functions are available for tidying up message
977 content. These include options such as wrapping long lines,
978 compressing duplicate blank lines, etc.
980 Most of these are disabled by default, but can easily be enabled by
981 clicking the available check boxes under the "Notmuch Show Insert
982 Text/Plain Hook" within the notmuch customize screen.
984 New support for searchable citations (even when hidden)
986 When portions of overly-long citations are hidden, the contents of
987 these citations will still be available for emacs' standard
988 "incremental search" functions. When the search matches any portion
989 of a hidden citation, the citation will become visible temporarily
990 to display the search result.
992 More flexible handling of header visibility
994 As an answer to complaints from many users, the To, Cc, and Date
995 headers of messages are no longer hidden by default. For those users
996 that liked that these were hidden, a new "Notmuch Messages Headers
997 Visible" option in the customize interface can be set to nil. The
998 visibility of headers can still be toggled on a per-message basis
999 with the 'h' keybinding.
1001 For users that don't want to see some subset of those headers, the
1002 new "Notmuch Message Headers" variable can be customized to list
1003 only those headers that should be present in the display of a message.
1005 The Return key now toggles message visibility anywhere
1007 Previously this worked only on the first summary-line of a message.
1009 Customizable formatting of search results
1011 The user can easily customize the order, width, and formatting of
1012 the various fields in a "notmuch search" buffer. See the "Notmuch
1013 Search Result Format" section of the customize interface.
1015 Generate nicer names for search buffers when using a saved search.
1017 Add a notmuch User-Agent header when sending mail from notmuch/emacs.
1019 New keybinding (M-Ret) to open all collapsed messages in a thread.
1023 Provide a new NOTMUCH_SORT_UNSORTED value for queries
1025 This can be somewhat faster when sorting simply isn't desired. For
1026 example when collecting a set of messages that will all be
1027 manipulated identically, (adding a tag, removing a tag, deleting the
1028 messages), then there's no advantage to sorting the messages by
1033 Fix to compile against GMime 2.6
1035 Previously notmuch insisted on being able to find GMime 2.4, (even
1036 though GMime 2.6 would have worked all along).
1038 Fix configure script to accept (and ignore) various standard options.
1040 For example, those that the Gentoo build scripts expect configure to
1041 accept are now all accepted.
1045 A large number of new tests for the many new features.
1047 Better display of output from failed tests.
1049 Now shows failures with diff rather than forcing the user to gaze at
1050 complete actual and expected output looking for deviation.
1052 Notmuch 0.2 (2010-04-16)
1053 ========================
1054 This is the second release of the notmuch mail system, with actual
1055 detailed release notes this time!
1057 This release consists of a number of minor new features that make
1058 notmuch more pleasant to use, and a few fairly major bug fixes.
1060 We didn't quite hit our release target of "about a week" from the 0.1
1061 release, (0.2 is happening 11 days after 0.1), but we hope to do
1062 better for next week. Look forward to some major features coming to
1063 notmuch in subsequent releases.
1069 Better guessing of From: header.
1071 Notmuch now tries harder to guess which configured address should be
1072 used as the From: line in a "notmuch reply". It will examine the
1073 Received: headers if it fails to find any configured address in To:
1074 or Cc:. This allows it to often choose the correct address even when
1075 replying to a message sent to a mailing list, and not directly to a
1078 Make "notmuch count" with no arguments count all messages
1080 Previously, it was hard to construct a search term that was
1081 guaranteed to match all messages.
1083 Provide a new special-case search term of "*" to match all messages.
1085 This can be used in any command accepting a search term, such as
1086 "notmuch search '*'". Note that you'll want to take care that the
1087 shell doesn't expand * against the current files. And note that the
1088 support for "*" is a special case. It's only meaningful as a single
1089 search term and loses its special meaning when combined with any
1092 Automatically detect thread connections even when a parent message is
1095 Previously, if two or more message were received with a common
1096 parent, but that parent was not received, then these messages would
1097 not be recognized as belonging to the same thread. This is now fixed
1098 so that such messages are properly connected in a thread.
1102 Fix potential data loss in "notmuch new" with SIGINT
1104 One code path in "notmuch new" was not properly handling
1105 SIGINT. Previously, this could lead to messages being removed from
1106 the database (and their tags being lost) if the user pressed
1107 Control-C while "notmuch new" was working.
1109 Fix segfault when a message includes a MIME part that is empty.
1111 Fix handling of non-ASCII characters with --format=json
1113 Previously, characters outside the range of 7-bit ASCII were
1114 silently dropped from the JSON output. This led to corrupted display
1115 of utf-8 content in the upcoming notmuch web-based frontends.
1117 Fix headers to be properly decoded in "notmuch reply"
1119 Previously, the user might see:
1121 Subject: Re: =?iso-8859-2?q?Rozlu=E8ka?=
1125 Subject: Re: Rozlučka
1127 The former text is properly encoded to be RFC-compliant SMTP, will
1128 be sent correctly, and will be properly decoded by the
1129 recipient. But the user trying to edit the reply would likely be
1130 unable to read or edit that field in its encoded form.
1132 Emacs client features
1133 ---------------------
1134 Show the last few lines of citations as well as the first few lines.
1136 It's often the case that the last sentence of a citation is what is
1137 being replied to directly, so the last few lines are often much more
1138 important. The number of lines shown at the beginning and end of any
1139 citation can be configured, (notmuch-show-citation-lines-prefix and
1140 notmuch-show-citation-lines-suffix).
1142 The '+' and '-' commands in the search view can now add and remove
1145 Selective bulk tagging is now possible by selecting a region of
1146 threads and then using either the '+' or '-' keybindings. Bulk
1147 tagging is still available for all threads matching the current
1148 search with the '*' binding.
1150 More meaningful buffer names for thread-view buffers.
1152 Notmuch now uses the Subject of the thread as the buffer
1153 name. Previously it was using the thread ID, which is a meaningless
1156 Provide for customized colors of threads in search view based on tags.
1158 See the documentation of notmuch-search-line-faces, (or us "M-x
1159 customize" and browse to the "notmuch" group within "Applications"
1160 and "Mail"), for details on how to configure this colorization.
1162 Build-system features
1163 ---------------------
1164 Add support to properly build libnotmuch on Darwin systems (OS X).
1166 Add support to configure for many standard options.
1168 We include actual support for:
1170 --includedir --mandir --sysconfdir
1172 And accept and silently ignore several more:
1174 --build --infodir --libexecdir --localstatedir
1175 --disable-maintainer-mode --disable-dependency-tracking
1177 Install emacs client in "make install" rather than requiring a
1178 separate "make install-emacs".
1180 Automatically compute versions numbers between releases.
1182 This support uses the git-describe notation, so a version such as
1183 0.1-144-g43cbbfc indicates a version that is 144 commits since the
1184 0.1 release and is available as git commit "43cbbfc".
1186 Add a new "make test" target to run the test suite and actually verify
1189 Notmuch 0.1 (2010-04-05)
1190 ========================
1191 This is the first release of the notmuch mail system.
1193 It includes the libnotmuch library, the notmuch command-line
1194 interface, and an emacs-based interface to notmuch.
1196 Note: Notmuch will work best with Xapian 1.0.18 (or later) or Xapian
1197 1.1.4 (or later). Previous versions of Xapian (whether 1.0 or 1.1) had
1198 a performance bug that made notmuch very slow when modifying
1199 tags. This would cause distracting pauses when reading mail while
1200 notmuch would wait for Xapian when removing the "inbox" and "unread"
1201 tags from messages in a thread.