1 Notmuch 0.4 (2010-11-01)
2 ========================
3 New command-line features
4 -------------------------
5 notmuch search --output=(summary|threads|messages|tags|files)
7 This new option allows for particular items to be returned from
8 notmuch searches. The "summary" option is the default and behaves
9 just as "notmuch search" has historically behaved.
11 The new option values allow for thread IDs, message IDs, lists of
12 tags, and lists of filenames to be returned from searches. It is
13 expected that this new option will be very useful in shell
16 for file in $(notmuch search --output=files <search-terms>); do
17 <operations-on> "$file"
20 notmuch show --format=mbox <search-specification>
22 This new option allows for the messages matching a search
23 specification to be presented as an mbox. Specifically the "mboxrd"
24 format is used which allows for reversible quoting of lines
25 beginning with "From ". A reader should remove a single '>' from the
26 beginning of all lines beginning with one or more '>' characters
27 followed by the 5 characters "From ".
29 notmuch config [get|set] <section>.<item> [value ...]
31 The new top-level "config" command allows for any value in the
32 notmuch configuration file to be queried or set to a new value. Both
33 single-valued and multi-valued items are supported, as our any
34 custom items stored in the configuration file.
36 Avoid setting Bcc header in "notmuch reply"
38 We decided that this was a bit heavy-handed as the actual mail
39 user-agent should be responsible for setting any Bcc option. Also,
40 see below for the notmuch/emacs user-agent now setting an Fcc by
41 default rather than Bcc.
45 Add notmuch_query_get_query_string and notmuch_query_get_sort
47 These are simply functions for querying properties of a
48 notmuch_query_t object.
52 Enable Fcc of all sent messages by default (to "sent" directory)
54 All messages sent from the emacs interface will now be saved to the
55 notmuch mail store where they will be incorporated to the database
56 by the next "notmuch new". By default, messages are saved to the
57 "sent" directory at the top-level of the mail store. This directory
58 can be customized by means of the "Notmuch Fcc Dirs" option in the
59 notmuch customize interface.
61 Ability to all open messages in a thread to a pipe
63 Historically, the '|' keybinding allows for piping a single message
64 to an external command. Now, by prefixing this key with a prefix
65 argument, (for example, by pressing "Control-U |"), all open
66 messages in the current thread will be sent to the external command.
68 Optional support for detecting inline patches
70 This hook is disabled by default but can be enabled with a checkbox
71 under "Notmuch Show Insert Text/Plain Hook" in the notmuch customize
72 interface. It allows for inline patches to be detected and treated
73 as if they were attachments, (with context-sensitive highlighting).
75 Automatically tag messages as "replied" when sending a reply
77 Messages replied to within the emacs interface will now be tagged as
78 "replied". This feature can easily be customized to add or remove
79 other tags as well. For example, a user might use a tag of
80 "needs-reply" and can configure this feature to automatically remove
81 that tag when replying. See "Notmuch Message Mark Replied" in the
82 notmuch customize interface.
84 Allow search-result color specifications to overlay each other
86 For example, one tag can specify the background color of matching
87 lines, while another can specify the foreground. With this change,
88 both settings will now be visible simultaneously, (which was not the
89 case in previous releases). See "Notmuch Search Line Faces" in the
90 notmuch customize interface.
92 Make hidden author names still available for incremental search.
94 When there is insufficient space to display all authors of a thread
95 in search results, the names of hidden authors are now still made
96 available to emacs' incremental search commands. As the user
97 searches, matching lines will temporarily expand to show the hidden
100 New binding of Control-TAB (works like TAB in reverse)
102 Many notmuch nodes already use TAB to navigate forward through
103 various items allowing actions, (message headers, email attachments,
104 etc.). The new Control-TAB binding operates similarly but in the
107 New build-system features
108 -------------------------
109 Various portability fixes have been applied
111 These include fixes for build failures on at least Solaris, FreeBSD,
112 and Fedora systems. We're hopeful that the notmuch code base is now
113 more portable than ever before.
115 Arrange for libnotmuch to be found automatically after make install
117 The notmuch build system is now careful to help the user avoid
118 errors of the form "libnotmuch.so could not be found" immediately
119 after installing. This support takes two forms:
121 1. If the library is installed to a system directory,
122 (configured in /etc/ld.so.conf), then "make install" will
123 automatically run ldconfig.
125 2. If the library is installed to a non-system directory, the
126 build system adds a DR_RUNPATH entry to the final binary
127 pointing to the directory to which the library is installed.
129 When this support works, the user should be able to run notmuch
130 immediately after "make install", without any errors trying to find
131 the notmuch library, and without having to manually set environment
132 variables such as LD_LIBRARY_PATH.
134 Check compiler/linker options before using them
136 The configure script now carefully checks that any desired
137 compilation options, (whether for enabling compiler warnings, or for
138 embedding rpath, etc.), are supported. Only supported options are
139 used in the resulting Makefile.
141 New test-suite features
142 -----------------------
143 New modularization of test suite.
145 Thanks to a gracious relicensing of the test-suite infrastructure
146 from the git project, notmuch now has a modular test suite. This
147 provides the ability to run individual sections of the test suite
148 rather than the whole things. It also provides better summary of
149 test results, with support for tests that are expected to fail
150 (BROKEN and FIXED) in addition to PASS and FAIL. Finally, it makes
151 it easy to run the test suite within valgrind (pass --valgrind to
152 notmuch-test or to any sub-script) which has been very useful.
154 New testing of emacs interface.
156 The test suite has been augmented to allow automated testing of the
157 emacs interfaces. So far, this includes basic searches, display of
158 threads, and tag manipulation. This also includes a test that a new
159 message can successfully be sent out through a (dummy) SMTP server
160 and that said message is successfully integrated into the notmuch
161 database via the FCC setting.
165 Fix potential corruption of database when "notmuch new " is interrupted.
167 Previously, an interruption of "notmuch new" would (rarely) result
168 in a corrupt database. The corruption would manifest itself by a
169 persistent error of the form:
171 document ID of 1234 has no thread ID
173 The message-adding code has been carefully audited and reworked to
174 avoid this sort of corruption regardless of when it is interrupted.
176 Fix failure with extremely long message ID headers.
178 Previously, a message with an extremely long message ID, (say, more
179 than 300 characters), would fail to be added to notmuch, (triggering
180 Xapian exceptions). This has now been fixed.
182 Fix for messages with "charset=unknown-8bit"
184 Previously, messages with this charset would cause notmuch to emit a
185 GMime warning, (which would then trip up emacs or other interfaces
186 parsing the notmuch results).
188 Fix notmuch_query_search_threads function to return NULL on any exception
190 Fix "notmuch search" to return non-zero if notmuch_query_search_threads fails
192 Previously, this command could confusingly report a Xapian
193 exception, yet still return an error code of 0. It now correctly
194 returns a failing error code of 1 in this case.
198 Fix to handle a message with a subject containing, for example "[1234]"
200 Previously, a message subject containing a sequence of digits within
201 square brackets would cause the emacs interface to mis-parse the
202 output of "notmuch search". This would result in the message being
203 mis-displayed and prevent the user from manipulating the message in
206 Fix to correctly handle message IDs containing ".."
208 The emacs interface now properly quotes message IDs to avoid a
209 Xapian bug in which the ".." within a message ID would be
210 misinterpreted as a numeric range specification.
214 The python bindings for notmuch have been updated to work with python3.
216 Debian-specific fixes
217 ---------------------
218 Fix emacs initialization so "M-x notmuch" works for users by default.
220 Now, a new Debian user can immediately run "emacs -f notmuch" after
221 "apt-get install notmuch". Previously, the user would have had to
222 edit the ~/.emacs file to add "(require 'notmuch)" before this would
225 Notmuch 0.3.1 (2010-04-27)
226 ==========================
229 Fix an infinite loop in "notmuch reply"
231 This bug could be triggered by replying to a message where the
232 user's primary email address did not appear in the To: header and
233 the user had not configured any secondary email addresses. The bug
234 was a simple re-use of the same iterator variable in nested loops.
236 Fix a potential SEGV in "notmuch search"
238 This bug could be triggered by an author name ending in a ','.
239 Admittedly - that's almost certainly a spam email, but we never
240 want notmuch to crash.
244 Fix calculations for line wrapping in the primary "notmuch" view.
246 Fix Fcc support to prompt to create a directory if the specified Fcc
247 directory does not exist.
251 Fix build on OpenSolaris (at least) due to missing 'extern "C"' block.
253 Without this, the C++ sources could not find strcasestr and the
254 final linking of notmuch would fail.
256 Notmuch 0.3 (2010-04-27)
257 ========================
258 New command-line features
259 -------------------------
260 User-configurable tags for new messages
262 A new "new.tags" option is available in the configuration file to
263 determine which tags are applied to new messages. Run "notmuch
264 setup" to generate new documentation within ~/.notmuch-config on how
265 to specify this value.
267 Threads search results named based on subjects that match search
269 This means that when new mails arrived to a thread you've previously
270 read, and the new mails have a new subject, you will see that
271 subject in the search results rather than the old subject.
273 Faster operation of "notmuch tag" (avoid unneeded sorting)
275 Since the user just wants to tag all matching messages, we can make
276 things perform a bit faster by avoiding the sort.
278 Even Better guessing of From: header for "notmuch reply"
280 Notmuch now looks at a number of headers when trying to figure out
281 the best From: header to use in a reply. This is helpful if you have
282 several configured email addresses, and you also subscribe to various
283 mailing lists with different addresses, (so that mails you are
284 replying to won't always include your subscribed address in the To:
287 Indication of author names that match a search
289 When notmuch displays threads as the result of a search, it now
290 lists the authors that match the search before listing the other
291 authors in the thread. It inserts a pipe '|' symbol between the last
292 matching and first non-matching author. This is especially useful in
293 a search that includes tag:unread. Now the authors of the unread
294 messages in the thread are listed first.
298 Sebastian Spaeth has contributed his python bindings for the notmuch
299 library to the central repository. These bindings were previously
300 known as "cnotmuch" within python but have now been renamed to be
301 accessible with a simple, and more official-looking "import notmuch".
303 The bindings have already proven very useful as people proficient in
304 python have been able to easily develop programs to do notmuch-based
305 searches for email-address completion, maildir-flag synchronization,
308 These bindings are available within the bindings/python directory, but
309 are not yet integrated into the top-level Makefiles, nor the top-level
310 package-building scripts. Improvements are welcome.
312 Emacs interface improvements
313 ----------------------------
314 An entirely new initial view for notmuch, (friendly yet powerful)
316 Some of us call the new view "notmuch hello" but you can get at it
317 by simply calling "emacs -f notmuch". The new view provides a search
318 bar where new searches can be performed. It also displays a list of
319 recent searches, along with a button to save any of these, giving it
320 a new name as a "saved search". Many people find these "saved
321 searches" one of the most convenient ways of organizing their mail,
322 (providing all of the features of "folders" in other mail clients,
323 but without any of the disadvantages).
325 Finally, this view can also optionally display all of the tags that
326 exist in the database, along with a count for each tag, and a custom
327 search of messages with that tag that's simply a click (or keypress)
330 Note: For users that liked the original mode of "emacs -f notmuch"
331 immediately displaying a particular search result, we
332 recommend instead running something like:
334 emacs --eval '(notmuch search "tag:inbox" t)'
336 The "t" means to sort the messages in an "oldest first" order,
337 (as notmuch would do previously by default). You can also
338 leave that off to have your search results in "newest first"
341 Full-featured "customize" support for configuring notmuch
343 Notmuch now plugs in well to the emacs "customize" mode to make it
344 much simpler to find things about the notmuch interface that can be
347 You can get to this mode by starting at the main "Customize" menu in
348 emacs, then browsing through "Applications", "Mail", and
349 "Notmuch". Or you can go straight to "M-x customize-group"
352 Once you're at the customize screen, you'll see a list of documented
353 options that can be manipulated along with checkboxes, drop-down
354 selectors, and text-entry boxes for configuring the various
357 Support for doing tab-completion of email addresses
359 This support currently relies on an external program,
360 (notmuch-addresses), that is not yet shipped with notmuch
361 itself. But multiple, suitable implementations of this program have
362 already been written that generate address completions by doing
363 notmuch searches of your email collection. For example, providing
364 first those addresses that you have composed messages to in the
367 One such program (implemented in python with the python bindings to
368 notmuch) is available via:
370 git clone http://jkr.acm.jhu.edu/git/notmuch_addresses.git
372 Install that program as notmuch-addresses on your PATH, and then
373 hitting TAB on a partial email address or name within the To: or Cc:
374 line of an email message will provide matching completions.
376 Support for file-based (Fcc) delivery of sent messages to mail store
378 This isn't yet enabled by default. To enable this, one will have to
379 set the "Notmuch Fcc Dirs" setting within the notmuch customize
380 screen, (see its documentation there for details). We anticipate
381 making this automatic in a future release.
383 New 'G' key binding to trigger mail refresh (G == "Get new mail")
385 The 'G' key works wherever '=' works. Before refreshing the screen
386 it calls an external program that can be used to poll email servers,
387 run notmuch new and setup specific tags for the new emails. The
388 script to be called should be configured with the "Notmuch Poll
389 Script" setting in the customize interface. This script will
390 typically invoke "notmuch new" and then perhaps several "notmuch
393 Implement emacs message display with the JSON output from notmuch.
395 This is much more robust than the previous implementation, (where
396 some HTML mails and mail quoting the notmuch code with the delimiter
397 characters in it would cause the parser to fall over).
399 Better handling of HTML messages and MIME attachments (inline images!)
401 Allow for any MIME parts that emacs can display to be displayed
402 inline. This includes inline viewing of image attachments, (provided
403 the window is large enough to fit the image at its natural size).
405 Much more robust handling of HTML messages. Currently both text/plain
406 and text/html alternates will be rendered next to each other. In a
407 future release, users will be able to decide to see only one or the
408 other representation.
410 Each attachment now has its own button so that attachments can be
411 saved individually (the 'w' key is still available to save all
414 Customizable support for tidying of text/plain message content
416 Many new functions are available for tidying up message
417 content. These include options such as wrapping long lines,
418 compressing duplicate blank lines, etc.
420 Most of these are disabled by default, but can easily be enabled by
421 clicking the available check boxes under the "Notmuch Show Insert
422 Text/Plain Hook" within the notmuch customize screen.
424 New support for searchable citations (even when hidden)
426 When portions of overly-long citations are hidden, the contents of
427 these citations will still be available for emacs' standard
428 "incremental search" functions. When the search matches any portion
429 of a hidden citation, the citation will become visible temporarily
430 to display the search result.
432 More flexible handling of header visibility
434 As an answer to complaints from many users, the To, Cc, and Date
435 headers of messages are no longer hidden by default. For those users
436 that liked that these were hidden, a new "Notmuch Messages Headers
437 Visible" option in the customize interface can be set to nil. The
438 visibility of headers can still be toggled on a per-message basis
439 with the 'h' keybinding.
441 For users that don't want to see some subset of those headers, the
442 new "Notmuch Message Headers" variable can be customized to list
443 only those headers that should be present in the display of a message.
445 The Return key now toggles message visibility anywhere
447 Previously this worked only on the first summary-line of a message.
449 Customizable formatting of search results
451 The user can easily customize the order, width, and formatting of
452 the various fields in a "notmuch search" buffer. See the "Notmuch
453 Search Result Format" section of the customize interface.
455 Generate nicer names for search buffers when using a saved search.
457 Add a notmuch User-Agent header when sending mail from notmuch/emacs.
459 New keybinding (M-Ret) to open all collapsed messages in a thread.
463 Provide a new NOTMUCH_SORT_UNSORTED value for queries
465 This can be somewhat faster when sorting simply isn't desired. For
466 example when collecting a set of messages that will all be
467 manipulated identically, (adding a tag, removing a tag, deleting the
468 messages), then there's no advantage to sorting the messages by
473 Fix to compile against GMime 2.6
475 Previously notmuch insisted on being able to find GMime 2.4, (even
476 though GMime 2.6 would have worked all along).
478 Fix configure script to accept (and ignore) various standard options.
480 For example, those that the gentoo build scripts expect configure to
481 accept are now all accepted.
485 A large number of new tests for the many new features.
487 Better display of output from failed tests.
489 Now shows failures with diff rather than forcing the user to gaze at
490 complete actual and expected output looking for deviation.
492 Notmuch 0.2 (2010-04-16)
493 ========================
494 This is the second release of the notmuch mail system, with actual
495 detailed release notes this time!
497 This release consists of a number of minor new features that make
498 notmuch more pleasant to use, and a few fairly major bug fixes.
500 We didn't quite hit our release target of "about a week" from the 0.1
501 release, (0.2 is happening 11 days after 0.1), but we hope to do
502 better for next week. Look forward to some major features coming to
503 notmuch in subsequent releases.
509 Better guessing of From: header.
511 Notmuch now tries harder to guess which configured address should be
512 used as the From: line in a "notmuch reply". It will examine the
513 Received: headers if it fails to find any configured address in To:
514 or Cc:. This allows it to often choose the correct address even when
515 replying to a message sent to a mailing list, and not directly to a
518 Make "notmuch count" with no arguments count all messages
520 Previously, it was hard to construct a search term that was
521 guaranteed to match all messages.
523 Provide a new special-case search term of "*" to match all messages.
525 This can be used in any command accepting a search term, such as
526 "notmuch search '*'". Note that you'll want to take care that the
527 shell doesn't expand * against the current files. And note that the
528 support for "*" is a special case. It's only meaningful as a single
529 search term and loses its special meaning when combined with any
532 Automatically detect thread connections even when a parent message is
535 Previously, if two or more message were received with a common
536 parent, but that parent was not received, then these messages would
537 not be recognized as belonging to the same thread. This is now fixed
538 so that such messages are properly connected in a thread.
542 Fix potential data loss in "notmuch new" with SIGINT
544 One code path in "notmuch new" was not properly handling
545 SIGINT. Previously, this could lead to messages being removed from
546 the database (and their tags being lost) if the user pressed
547 Control-C while "notmuch new" was working.
549 Fix segfault when a message includes a MIME part that is empty.
551 Fix handling of non-ASCII characters with --format=json
553 Previously, characters outside the range of 7-bit ASCII were
554 silently dropped from the JSON output. This led to corrupted display
555 of utf-8 content in the upcoming notmuch web-based frontends.
557 Fix headers to be properly decoded in "notmuch reply"
559 Previously, the user might see:
561 Subject: Re: =?iso-8859-2?q?Rozlu=E8ka?=
565 Subject: Re: Rozlučka
567 The former text is properly encoded to be RFC-compliant SMTP, will
568 be sent correctly, and will be properly decoded by the
569 recipient. But the user trying to edit the reply would likely be
570 unable to read or edit that field in its encoded form.
572 Emacs client features
573 ---------------------
574 Show the last few lines of citations as well as the first few lines.
576 It's often the case that the last sentence of a citation is what is
577 being replied to directly, so the last few lines are often much more
578 important. The number of lines shown at the beginning and end of any
579 citation can be configured, (notmuch-show-citation-lines-prefix and
580 notmuch-show-citation-lines-suffix).
582 The '+' and '-' commands in the search view can now add and remove
585 Selective bulk tagging is now possible by selecting a region of
586 threads and then using either the '+' or '-' keybindings. Bulk
587 tagging is still available for all threads matching the current
588 search with th '*' binding.
590 More meaningful buffer names for thread-view buffers.
592 Notmuch now uses the Subject of the thread as the buffer
593 name. Previously it was using the thread ID, which is a meaningless
596 Provide for customized colors of threads in search view based on tags.
598 See the documentation of notmuch-search-line-faces, (or us "M-x
599 customize" and browse to the "notmuch" group within "Applications"
600 and "Mail"), for details on how to configure this colorization.
602 Build-system features
603 ---------------------
604 Add support to properly build libnotmuch on Darwin systems (OS X).
606 Add support to configure for many standard options.
608 We include actual support for:
610 --includedir --mandir --sysconfdir
612 And accept and silently ignore several more:
614 --build --infodir --libexecdir --localstatedir
615 --disable-maintainer-mode --disable-dependency-tracking
617 Install emacs client in "make install" rather than requiring a
618 separate "make install-emacs".
620 Automatically compute versions numbers between releases.
622 This support uses the git-describe notation, so a version such as
623 0.1-144-g43cbbfc indicates a version that is 144 commits since the
624 0.1 release and is available as git commit "43cbbfc".
626 Add a new "make test" target to run the test suite and actually verify
629 Notmuch 0.1 (2010-04-05)
630 ========================
631 This is the first release of the notmuch mail system.
633 It includes the libnotmuch library, the notmuch command-line
634 interface, and an emacs-based interface to notmuch.
636 Note: Notmuch will work best with Xapian 1.0.18 (or later) or Xapian
637 1.1.4 (or later). Previous versions of Xapian (whether 1.0 or 1.1) had
638 a performance bug that made notmuch very slow when modifying
639 tags. This would cause distracting pauses when reading mail while
640 notmuch would wait for Xapian when removing the "inbox" and "unread"
641 tags from messages in a thread.
projects / notmuch / blob