1 New command-line features
2 -------------------------
3 New "notmuch show --format=raw" for getting at original email contents
5 This new feature allows for a fully-functional email client to be
6 built on top of the notmuch command-line without needing any direct
7 access to the mail store itself.
9 For example, it's now possible to run "emacs -f notmuch" on a local
10 machine with only ssh access to the mail store/notmuch database. To
11 do this, simply set the notmuch-command variable in emacs to the
12 name of a script containing:
14 ssh user@host notmuch "$@"
16 If the ssh client has enabled connection sharing (ControlMaster
17 option in OpenSSH), the emacs interface can be quite responsive this
22 Fix "notmuch search" to print nothing when nothing matches
24 The 0.4 release had a bug in which:
26 notmuch search <expression-with-no-matches>
28 would produce a single blank line of output, (where previous
29 versions would produce no output. This fix also causes a change in
30 the --format=json output, (which would previously produce "[]" and
31 now produces nothing).
33 Notmuch 0.4 (2010-11-01)
34 ========================
35 New command-line features
36 -------------------------
37 notmuch search --output=(summary|threads|messages|tags|files)
39 This new option allows for particular items to be returned from
40 notmuch searches. The "summary" option is the default and behaves
41 just as "notmuch search" has historically behaved.
43 The new option values allow for thread IDs, message IDs, lists of
44 tags, and lists of filenames to be returned from searches. It is
45 expected that this new option will be very useful in shell
48 for file in $(notmuch search --output=files <search-terms>); do
49 <operations-on> "$file"
52 notmuch show --format=mbox <search-specification>
54 This new option allows for the messages matching a search
55 specification to be presented as an mbox. Specifically the "mboxrd"
56 format is used which allows for reversible quoting of lines
57 beginning with "From ". A reader should remove a single '>' from the
58 beginning of all lines beginning with one or more '>' characters
59 followed by the 5 characters "From ".
61 notmuch config [get|set] <section>.<item> [value ...]
63 The new top-level "config" command allows for any value in the
64 notmuch configuration file to be queried or set to a new value. Both
65 single-valued and multi-valued items are supported, as our any
66 custom items stored in the configuration file.
68 Avoid setting Bcc header in "notmuch reply"
70 We decided that this was a bit heavy-handed as the actual mail
71 user-agent should be responsible for setting any Bcc option. Also,
72 see below for the notmuch/emacs user-agent now setting an Fcc by
73 default rather than Bcc.
77 Add notmuch_query_get_query_string and notmuch_query_get_sort
79 These are simply functions for querying properties of a
80 notmuch_query_t object.
84 Enable Fcc of all sent messages by default (to "sent" directory)
86 All messages sent from the emacs interface will now be saved to the
87 notmuch mail store where they will be incorporated to the database
88 by the next "notmuch new". By default, messages are saved to the
89 "sent" directory at the top-level of the mail store. This directory
90 can be customized by means of the "Notmuch Fcc Dirs" option in the
91 notmuch customize interface.
93 Ability to all open messages in a thread to a pipe
95 Historically, the '|' keybinding allows for piping a single message
96 to an external command. Now, by prefixing this key with a prefix
97 argument, (for example, by pressing "Control-U |"), all open
98 messages in the current thread will be sent to the external command.
100 Optional support for detecting inline patches
102 This hook is disabled by default but can be enabled with a checkbox
103 under "Notmuch Show Insert Text/Plain Hook" in the notmuch customize
104 interface. It allows for inline patches to be detected and treated
105 as if they were attachments, (with context-sensitive highlighting).
107 Automatically tag messages as "replied" when sending a reply
109 Messages replied to within the emacs interface will now be tagged as
110 "replied". This feature can easily be customized to add or remove
111 other tags as well. For example, a user might use a tag of
112 "needs-reply" and can configure this feature to automatically remove
113 that tag when replying. See "Notmuch Message Mark Replied" in the
114 notmuch customize interface.
116 Allow search-result color specifications to overlay each other
118 For example, one tag can specify the background color of matching
119 lines, while another can specify the foreground. With this change,
120 both settings will now be visible simultaneously, (which was not the
121 case in previous releases). See "Notmuch Search Line Faces" in the
122 notmuch customize interface.
124 Make hidden author names still available for incremental search.
126 When there is insufficient space to display all authors of a thread
127 in search results, the names of hidden authors are now still made
128 available to emacs' incremental search commands. As the user
129 searches, matching lines will temporarily expand to show the hidden
132 New binding of Control-TAB (works like TAB in reverse)
134 Many notmuch nodes already use TAB to navigate forward through
135 various items allowing actions, (message headers, email attachments,
136 etc.). The new Control-TAB binding operates similarly but in the
139 New build-system features
140 -------------------------
141 Various portability fixes have been applied
143 These include fixes for build failures on at least Solaris, FreeBSD,
144 and Fedora systems. We're hopeful that the notmuch code base is now
145 more portable than ever before.
147 Arrange for libnotmuch to be found automatically after make install
149 The notmuch build system is now careful to help the user avoid
150 errors of the form "libnotmuch.so could not be found" immediately
151 after installing. This support takes two forms:
153 1. If the library is installed to a system directory,
154 (configured in /etc/ld.so.conf), then "make install" will
155 automatically run ldconfig.
157 2. If the library is installed to a non-system directory, the
158 build system adds a DR_RUNPATH entry to the final binary
159 pointing to the directory to which the library is installed.
161 When this support works, the user should be able to run notmuch
162 immediately after "make install", without any errors trying to find
163 the notmuch library, and without having to manually set environment
164 variables such as LD_LIBRARY_PATH.
166 Check compiler/linker options before using them
168 The configure script now carefully checks that any desired
169 compilation options, (whether for enabling compiler warnings, or for
170 embedding rpath, etc.), are supported. Only supported options are
171 used in the resulting Makefile.
173 New test-suite features
174 -----------------------
175 New modularization of test suite.
177 Thanks to a gracious relicensing of the test-suite infrastructure
178 from the git project, notmuch now has a modular test suite. This
179 provides the ability to run individual sections of the test suite
180 rather than the whole things. It also provides better summary of
181 test results, with support for tests that are expected to fail
182 (BROKEN and FIXED) in addition to PASS and FAIL. Finally, it makes
183 it easy to run the test suite within valgrind (pass --valgrind to
184 notmuch-test or to any sub-script) which has been very useful.
186 New testing of emacs interface.
188 The test suite has been augmented to allow automated testing of the
189 emacs interfaces. So far, this includes basic searches, display of
190 threads, and tag manipulation. This also includes a test that a new
191 message can successfully be sent out through a (dummy) SMTP server
192 and that said message is successfully integrated into the notmuch
193 database via the FCC setting.
197 Fix potential corruption of database when "notmuch new " is interrupted.
199 Previously, an interruption of "notmuch new" would (rarely) result
200 in a corrupt database. The corruption would manifest itself by a
201 persistent error of the form:
203 document ID of 1234 has no thread ID
205 The message-adding code has been carefully audited and reworked to
206 avoid this sort of corruption regardless of when it is interrupted.
208 Fix failure with extremely long message ID headers.
210 Previously, a message with an extremely long message ID, (say, more
211 than 300 characters), would fail to be added to notmuch, (triggering
212 Xapian exceptions). This has now been fixed.
214 Fix for messages with "charset=unknown-8bit"
216 Previously, messages with this charset would cause notmuch to emit a
217 GMime warning, (which would then trip up emacs or other interfaces
218 parsing the notmuch results).
220 Fix notmuch_query_search_threads function to return NULL on any exception
222 Fix "notmuch search" to return non-zero if notmuch_query_search_threads fails
224 Previously, this command could confusingly report a Xapian
225 exception, yet still return an error code of 0. It now correctly
226 returns a failing error code of 1 in this case.
230 Fix to handle a message with a subject containing, for example "[1234]"
232 Previously, a message subject containing a sequence of digits within
233 square brackets would cause the emacs interface to mis-parse the
234 output of "notmuch search". This would result in the message being
235 mis-displayed and prevent the user from manipulating the message in
238 Fix to correctly handle message IDs containing ".."
240 The emacs interface now properly quotes message IDs to avoid a
241 Xapian bug in which the ".." within a message ID would be
242 misinterpreted as a numeric range specification.
246 The python bindings for notmuch have been updated to work with python3.
248 Debian-specific fixes
249 ---------------------
250 Fix emacs initialization so "M-x notmuch" works for users by default.
252 Now, a new Debian user can immediately run "emacs -f notmuch" after
253 "apt-get install notmuch". Previously, the user would have had to
254 edit the ~/.emacs file to add "(require 'notmuch)" before this would
257 Notmuch 0.3.1 (2010-04-27)
258 ==========================
261 Fix an infinite loop in "notmuch reply"
263 This bug could be triggered by replying to a message where the
264 user's primary email address did not appear in the To: header and
265 the user had not configured any secondary email addresses. The bug
266 was a simple re-use of the same iterator variable in nested loops.
268 Fix a potential SEGV in "notmuch search"
270 This bug could be triggered by an author name ending in a ','.
271 Admittedly - that's almost certainly a spam email, but we never
272 want notmuch to crash.
276 Fix calculations for line wrapping in the primary "notmuch" view.
278 Fix Fcc support to prompt to create a directory if the specified Fcc
279 directory does not exist.
283 Fix build on OpenSolaris (at least) due to missing 'extern "C"' block.
285 Without this, the C++ sources could not find strcasestr and the
286 final linking of notmuch would fail.
288 Notmuch 0.3 (2010-04-27)
289 ========================
290 New command-line features
291 -------------------------
292 User-configurable tags for new messages
294 A new "new.tags" option is available in the configuration file to
295 determine which tags are applied to new messages. Run "notmuch
296 setup" to generate new documentation within ~/.notmuch-config on how
297 to specify this value.
299 Threads search results named based on subjects that match search
301 This means that when new mails arrived to a thread you've previously
302 read, and the new mails have a new subject, you will see that
303 subject in the search results rather than the old subject.
305 Faster operation of "notmuch tag" (avoid unneeded sorting)
307 Since the user just wants to tag all matching messages, we can make
308 things perform a bit faster by avoiding the sort.
310 Even Better guessing of From: header for "notmuch reply"
312 Notmuch now looks at a number of headers when trying to figure out
313 the best From: header to use in a reply. This is helpful if you have
314 several configured email addresses, and you also subscribe to various
315 mailing lists with different addresses, (so that mails you are
316 replying to won't always include your subscribed address in the To:
319 Indication of author names that match a search
321 When notmuch displays threads as the result of a search, it now
322 lists the authors that match the search before listing the other
323 authors in the thread. It inserts a pipe '|' symbol between the last
324 matching and first non-matching author. This is especially useful in
325 a search that includes tag:unread. Now the authors of the unread
326 messages in the thread are listed first.
330 Sebastian Spaeth has contributed his python bindings for the notmuch
331 library to the central repository. These bindings were previously
332 known as "cnotmuch" within python but have now been renamed to be
333 accessible with a simple, and more official-looking "import notmuch".
335 The bindings have already proven very useful as people proficient in
336 python have been able to easily develop programs to do notmuch-based
337 searches for email-address completion, maildir-flag synchronization,
340 These bindings are available within the bindings/python directory, but
341 are not yet integrated into the top-level Makefiles, nor the top-level
342 package-building scripts. Improvements are welcome.
344 Emacs interface improvements
345 ----------------------------
346 An entirely new initial view for notmuch, (friendly yet powerful)
348 Some of us call the new view "notmuch hello" but you can get at it
349 by simply calling "emacs -f notmuch". The new view provides a search
350 bar where new searches can be performed. It also displays a list of
351 recent searches, along with a button to save any of these, giving it
352 a new name as a "saved search". Many people find these "saved
353 searches" one of the most convenient ways of organizing their mail,
354 (providing all of the features of "folders" in other mail clients,
355 but without any of the disadvantages).
357 Finally, this view can also optionally display all of the tags that
358 exist in the database, along with a count for each tag, and a custom
359 search of messages with that tag that's simply a click (or keypress)
362 Note: For users that liked the original mode of "emacs -f notmuch"
363 immediately displaying a particular search result, we
364 recommend instead running something like:
366 emacs --eval '(notmuch search "tag:inbox" t)'
368 The "t" means to sort the messages in an "oldest first" order,
369 (as notmuch would do previously by default). You can also
370 leave that off to have your search results in "newest first"
373 Full-featured "customize" support for configuring notmuch
375 Notmuch now plugs in well to the emacs "customize" mode to make it
376 much simpler to find things about the notmuch interface that can be
379 You can get to this mode by starting at the main "Customize" menu in
380 emacs, then browsing through "Applications", "Mail", and
381 "Notmuch". Or you can go straight to "M-x customize-group"
384 Once you're at the customize screen, you'll see a list of documented
385 options that can be manipulated along with checkboxes, drop-down
386 selectors, and text-entry boxes for configuring the various
389 Support for doing tab-completion of email addresses
391 This support currently relies on an external program,
392 (notmuch-addresses), that is not yet shipped with notmuch
393 itself. But multiple, suitable implementations of this program have
394 already been written that generate address completions by doing
395 notmuch searches of your email collection. For example, providing
396 first those addresses that you have composed messages to in the
399 One such program (implemented in python with the python bindings to
400 notmuch) is available via:
402 git clone http://jkr.acm.jhu.edu/git/notmuch_addresses.git
404 Install that program as notmuch-addresses on your PATH, and then
405 hitting TAB on a partial email address or name within the To: or Cc:
406 line of an email message will provide matching completions.
408 Support for file-based (Fcc) delivery of sent messages to mail store
410 This isn't yet enabled by default. To enable this, one will have to
411 set the "Notmuch Fcc Dirs" setting within the notmuch customize
412 screen, (see its documentation there for details). We anticipate
413 making this automatic in a future release.
415 New 'G' key binding to trigger mail refresh (G == "Get new mail")
417 The 'G' key works wherever '=' works. Before refreshing the screen
418 it calls an external program that can be used to poll email servers,
419 run notmuch new and setup specific tags for the new emails. The
420 script to be called should be configured with the "Notmuch Poll
421 Script" setting in the customize interface. This script will
422 typically invoke "notmuch new" and then perhaps several "notmuch
425 Implement emacs message display with the JSON output from notmuch.
427 This is much more robust than the previous implementation, (where
428 some HTML mails and mail quoting the notmuch code with the delimiter
429 characters in it would cause the parser to fall over).
431 Better handling of HTML messages and MIME attachments (inline images!)
433 Allow for any MIME parts that emacs can display to be displayed
434 inline. This includes inline viewing of image attachments, (provided
435 the window is large enough to fit the image at its natural size).
437 Much more robust handling of HTML messages. Currently both text/plain
438 and text/html alternates will be rendered next to each other. In a
439 future release, users will be able to decide to see only one or the
440 other representation.
442 Each attachment now has its own button so that attachments can be
443 saved individually (the 'w' key is still available to save all
446 Customizable support for tidying of text/plain message content
448 Many new functions are available for tidying up message
449 content. These include options such as wrapping long lines,
450 compressing duplicate blank lines, etc.
452 Most of these are disabled by default, but can easily be enabled by
453 clicking the available check boxes under the "Notmuch Show Insert
454 Text/Plain Hook" within the notmuch customize screen.
456 New support for searchable citations (even when hidden)
458 When portions of overly-long citations are hidden, the contents of
459 these citations will still be available for emacs' standard
460 "incremental search" functions. When the search matches any portion
461 of a hidden citation, the citation will become visible temporarily
462 to display the search result.
464 More flexible handling of header visibility
466 As an answer to complaints from many users, the To, Cc, and Date
467 headers of messages are no longer hidden by default. For those users
468 that liked that these were hidden, a new "Notmuch Messages Headers
469 Visible" option in the customize interface can be set to nil. The
470 visibility of headers can still be toggled on a per-message basis
471 with the 'h' keybinding.
473 For users that don't want to see some subset of those headers, the
474 new "Notmuch Message Headers" variable can be customized to list
475 only those headers that should be present in the display of a message.
477 The Return key now toggles message visibility anywhere
479 Previously this worked only on the first summary-line of a message.
481 Customizable formatting of search results
483 The user can easily customize the order, width, and formatting of
484 the various fields in a "notmuch search" buffer. See the "Notmuch
485 Search Result Format" section of the customize interface.
487 Generate nicer names for search buffers when using a saved search.
489 Add a notmuch User-Agent header when sending mail from notmuch/emacs.
491 New keybinding (M-Ret) to open all collapsed messages in a thread.
495 Provide a new NOTMUCH_SORT_UNSORTED value for queries
497 This can be somewhat faster when sorting simply isn't desired. For
498 example when collecting a set of messages that will all be
499 manipulated identically, (adding a tag, removing a tag, deleting the
500 messages), then there's no advantage to sorting the messages by
505 Fix to compile against GMime 2.6
507 Previously notmuch insisted on being able to find GMime 2.4, (even
508 though GMime 2.6 would have worked all along).
510 Fix configure script to accept (and ignore) various standard options.
512 For example, those that the gentoo build scripts expect configure to
513 accept are now all accepted.
517 A large number of new tests for the many new features.
519 Better display of output from failed tests.
521 Now shows failures with diff rather than forcing the user to gaze at
522 complete actual and expected output looking for deviation.
524 Notmuch 0.2 (2010-04-16)
525 ========================
526 This is the second release of the notmuch mail system, with actual
527 detailed release notes this time!
529 This release consists of a number of minor new features that make
530 notmuch more pleasant to use, and a few fairly major bug fixes.
532 We didn't quite hit our release target of "about a week" from the 0.1
533 release, (0.2 is happening 11 days after 0.1), but we hope to do
534 better for next week. Look forward to some major features coming to
535 notmuch in subsequent releases.
541 Better guessing of From: header.
543 Notmuch now tries harder to guess which configured address should be
544 used as the From: line in a "notmuch reply". It will examine the
545 Received: headers if it fails to find any configured address in To:
546 or Cc:. This allows it to often choose the correct address even when
547 replying to a message sent to a mailing list, and not directly to a
550 Make "notmuch count" with no arguments count all messages
552 Previously, it was hard to construct a search term that was
553 guaranteed to match all messages.
555 Provide a new special-case search term of "*" to match all messages.
557 This can be used in any command accepting a search term, such as
558 "notmuch search '*'". Note that you'll want to take care that the
559 shell doesn't expand * against the current files. And note that the
560 support for "*" is a special case. It's only meaningful as a single
561 search term and loses its special meaning when combined with any
564 Automatically detect thread connections even when a parent message is
567 Previously, if two or more message were received with a common
568 parent, but that parent was not received, then these messages would
569 not be recognized as belonging to the same thread. This is now fixed
570 so that such messages are properly connected in a thread.
574 Fix potential data loss in "notmuch new" with SIGINT
576 One code path in "notmuch new" was not properly handling
577 SIGINT. Previously, this could lead to messages being removed from
578 the database (and their tags being lost) if the user pressed
579 Control-C while "notmuch new" was working.
581 Fix segfault when a message includes a MIME part that is empty.
583 Fix handling of non-ASCII characters with --format=json
585 Previously, characters outside the range of 7-bit ASCII were
586 silently dropped from the JSON output. This led to corrupted display
587 of utf-8 content in the upcoming notmuch web-based frontends.
589 Fix headers to be properly decoded in "notmuch reply"
591 Previously, the user might see:
593 Subject: Re: =?iso-8859-2?q?Rozlu=E8ka?=
597 Subject: Re: Rozlučka
599 The former text is properly encoded to be RFC-compliant SMTP, will
600 be sent correctly, and will be properly decoded by the
601 recipient. But the user trying to edit the reply would likely be
602 unable to read or edit that field in its encoded form.
604 Emacs client features
605 ---------------------
606 Show the last few lines of citations as well as the first few lines.
608 It's often the case that the last sentence of a citation is what is
609 being replied to directly, so the last few lines are often much more
610 important. The number of lines shown at the beginning and end of any
611 citation can be configured, (notmuch-show-citation-lines-prefix and
612 notmuch-show-citation-lines-suffix).
614 The '+' and '-' commands in the search view can now add and remove
617 Selective bulk tagging is now possible by selecting a region of
618 threads and then using either the '+' or '-' keybindings. Bulk
619 tagging is still available for all threads matching the current
620 search with th '*' binding.
622 More meaningful buffer names for thread-view buffers.
624 Notmuch now uses the Subject of the thread as the buffer
625 name. Previously it was using the thread ID, which is a meaningless
628 Provide for customized colors of threads in search view based on tags.
630 See the documentation of notmuch-search-line-faces, (or us "M-x
631 customize" and browse to the "notmuch" group within "Applications"
632 and "Mail"), for details on how to configure this colorization.
634 Build-system features
635 ---------------------
636 Add support to properly build libnotmuch on Darwin systems (OS X).
638 Add support to configure for many standard options.
640 We include actual support for:
642 --includedir --mandir --sysconfdir
644 And accept and silently ignore several more:
646 --build --infodir --libexecdir --localstatedir
647 --disable-maintainer-mode --disable-dependency-tracking
649 Install emacs client in "make install" rather than requiring a
650 separate "make install-emacs".
652 Automatically compute versions numbers between releases.
654 This support uses the git-describe notation, so a version such as
655 0.1-144-g43cbbfc indicates a version that is 144 commits since the
656 0.1 release and is available as git commit "43cbbfc".
658 Add a new "make test" target to run the test suite and actually verify
661 Notmuch 0.1 (2010-04-05)
662 ========================
663 This is the first release of the notmuch mail system.
665 It includes the libnotmuch library, the notmuch command-line
666 interface, and an emacs-based interface to notmuch.
668 Note: Notmuch will work best with Xapian 1.0.18 (or later) or Xapian
669 1.1.4 (or later). Previous versions of Xapian (whether 1.0 or 1.1) had
670 a performance bug that made notmuch very slow when modifying
671 tags. This would cause distracting pauses when reading mail while
672 notmuch would wait for Xapian when removing the "inbox" and "unread"
673 tags from messages in a thread.
projects / notmuch / blob