1 Notmuch 0.10 (2011-xx-xx)
2 =========================
4 New build and testing features
5 ------------------------------
7 Emacs tests are now done in dtach. This means that dtach is now
8 needed to run the notmuch test suite, at least until the checking for
9 prerequisites is improved.
11 New command-line features
12 -------------------------
14 Add "notmuch restore --accumulate" option
16 The --accumulate switch causes the union of the existing and new tags to be
17 applied, instead of replacing each message's tags as they are read in from
20 Add search terms to "notmuch dump"
22 The dump command now takes an optional search term much like notmuch
23 search/show/tag. The output file argument of dump is deprecated in
24 favour of using stdout.
26 Add "notmuch search" --offset and --limit options
28 The search command now takes options --offset=[-]N and --limit=N to limit
29 the number of results shown.
31 Add "notmuch count --output" option
33 The count command is now capable of counting threads in addition to
34 messages. This is selected using the new --output=(threads|messages) option.
39 Add tab-completion for notmuch-search and notmuch-search-filter
41 These functions now support completion tags for query parts
44 Turn "id:MSG-ID" links into buttons associated with notmuch searches
46 Text of the form "id:MSG-ID" in mails is now a clickable button that
47 opens a notmuch search for the given message id.
52 Emacs now constructs large search buffers more efficiently
54 Search avoids opening and parsing message files
56 We now store more information in the database so search no longer
57 has to open every message file to get basic headers. This can
58 improve search speed by as much as 10X, but taking advantage of this
59 requires a database rebuild:
61 notmuch dump > notmuch.dump
62 # Backup, then remove notmuch database ($MAIL/.notmuch)
64 notmuch restore notmuch.dump
66 New collection of add-on tools
67 ------------------------------
69 The source directory "contrib" contains tools built on notmuch. These
70 tools are not part of notmuch, and you should check their individual
71 licenses. Feel free to report problems with them to the notmuch
74 nmbug - share tags with a given prefix
76 nmbug helps maintain a git repo containing all tags with a given
77 prefix (by default "notmuch::"). Tags can be shared by commiting
78 them to git in one location and restoring in another.
80 Notmuch 0.9 (2011-10-01)
81 ========================
86 Correct handling of interruptions during "notmuch new"
88 "notmuch new" now operates as a series of small, self-consistent
89 transactions, so it can correctly resume after an interruption or
90 crash. Previously, interruption could lose existing tags, fail to
91 detect messages on resume, or leave the database in a state
92 temporarily or permanently inconsistent with the mail store.
99 notmuch_database_begin_atomic and notmuch_database_end_atomic allow
100 multiple database operations to be performed atomically.
102 notmuch_database_find_message_by_filename does exactly what it says.
106 notmuch_database_find_message (and n_d_f_m_by_filename) now return
107 a status indicator and uses an output parameter for the
108 message. This change required changing the SONAME of libnotmuch to
111 Python bindings changes
112 -----------------------
114 - Re-encode python unicode objects to utf-8 before passing back to
116 - Support Database().begin_atomic()/end_atomic()
117 - Support Database().find_message_by_filename()
118 NB! This needs a db opened in READ-WRITE mode currently, or it will crash
119 the python process. The is a limitation (=bug) of the underlying libnotmuch.
120 - Fixes where we would not throw NotmuchErrors when we should (Justus Winter)
121 - Update for n_d_find_message* API changes (see above).
123 Ruby bindings changes
124 ---------------------
126 - Wrap new library functions notmuch_database_{begin,end}_atomic.
127 - Add new exception Notmuch::UnbalancedAtomicError.
128 - Rename destroy to destroy! according to Ruby naming conventions.
129 - Update for n_d_find_message* API changes (see above).
134 * Add gpg callback to crypto sigstatus buttons to retrieve/refresh
136 * Add notmuch-show-refresh-view function (and corresponding binding)
137 to refresh the view of a notmuch-show buffer.
139 Reply formatting cleanup
140 ------------------------
142 "notmuch reply" no longer includes notification that non-leafnode
143 MIME parts are being suppressed.
145 Notmuch 0.8 (2011-09-10)
146 ========================
148 Improved handling of message/rfc822 parts
150 Both in the CLI and the emacs interface. Output of rfc822 parts now
151 includes the primary headers, as well as the body and all subparts.
152 Output of the completely raw rfc822-formatted message, including all
153 headers, is unfortunately not yet supported (but hopefully will be
156 Improved Build system portability
158 Certain parts of the shell script generating notmuch.sym were
159 specific to the GNU versions of sed and nm. The new version should
160 be more portable to e.g. OpenBSD.
162 Documentation update for Ruby bindings
164 Added documentation, typo fixes, and improved support for rdoc.
166 Unicode, iterator, PEP8 changes for python bindings
168 - PEP8 (code formatting) changes for python files.
169 - Remove Tags.__len__ ; see 0.6 release notes for motivation.
170 - Decode headers as UTF8, encode (unicode) database paths as UTF8.
172 Notmuch 0.7 (2011-08-01)
173 ========================
175 Vim interface improvements
176 --------------------------
178 Jason Woofenden provided a number of bug fixes for the Vim interface
180 * fix citation/signature fold lengths
181 * fix cig/cit parsing within multipart/*
182 * fix on-screen instructions for show-signature
183 * fix from list reformatting in search view
184 * fix space key: now archives (did opposite)
186 Uwe Kleine-König contributed
188 * use full path for sendmail/doc fix
189 * fix compose temp file name
191 Python Bindings changes
192 -----------------------
194 Sebastian Spaeth contributed two changes related to unicode and UTF8:
196 * message tags are now explicitly unicode
197 * query string is encoded as a UTF8 byte string
199 Build-System improvments
200 ------------------------
202 Generate notmuch.sym after the relevant object files
204 This fixes a bug in parallel building. Thanks to Thomas Jost for the
207 Notmuch 0.6.1 (2011-07-17)
208 ==========================
213 Re-export Xapian exception typeinfo symbols.
215 It turned out our aggressive symbol hiding caused problems for
216 people running gcc 4.4.5.
218 Notmuch 0.6 (2011-07-01)
219 =======================
220 New, general features
221 ---------------------
222 Folder-based searching
224 Notmuch queries can now include a search term to match the
225 directories in which mail files are stored (within the mail
226 storage). The syntax is as follows:
230 For example, one might use things such as:
236 to match any path containing a directory "spam", "work/todo", or
237 containing a directory starting with "2011-", respectively.
239 This feature is particularly useful for users of delivery-agent
240 software (such as procmail or maildrop) that is filtering mail and
241 delivering it to particular folders, or users of systems such as
242 Gmail that use filesystem directories to indicate message tags.
244 NOTE: Only messages that are newly indexed with this version of
245 notmuch will be searchable with folder: terms. In order to enable
246 this feature for all mail, the entire notmuch index will need to be
249 notmuch dump > notmuch.dump
250 # Backup, then remove notmuch database ($MAIL/.notmuch)
252 notmuch restore notmuch.dump
256 Both the command line interface and the emacs-interface have new
257 support for PGP/MIME, detailed below. Thanks to Daniel Kahn Gillmor
258 and Jameson Graef Rollins for making this happen.
260 New, automatic tags: "signed" and "encrypted"
262 These tags will automatically be applied to messages containing
263 multipart/signed and multipart/encrypted parts.
265 NOTE: Only messages that are newly indexed with this version of
266 notmuch will receive these tags.
268 New command-line features
269 -------------------------
270 Add new "notmuch show --verify" option for signature verification
272 This option instruct notmuch to verify the signature of
273 PGP/MIME-signed parts.
275 Add new "notmuch show --decrypt" and "notmuch reply --decrypt" options
277 This option instructs notmuch to decrypt PGP/MIME-encrypted parts.
278 Note that this feature currently requires gpg-agent and a passphrase entry
279 tool (e.g. pinentry-gtk or pinentry-curses).
281 Proper nesting of multipart parts in "notmuch show" output
283 MIME parts are now display with proper nesting to reflect original
284 MIME hierarchy of a message. This allows clients to correctly
285 analyze the MIME structure, (such as, for example, determining to
286 which parts a signature part applies).
288 Add new "notmuch show --part" option
290 This is a replacement for the older "notmuch part" command, (which
291 is now deprecated—it should still work as always, but is no longer
292 documented). Putting part output under "notmuch show" allows for all
293 of the "notmuch show" options to be applied when extracting a single
294 part, (such as --format=json for extracting a message part with JSON
297 Deprecate "notmuch search-tags", (in favor of "notmuch search --output=tags *")
299 The "notmuch search-tags" sub-command has been redundant since the
300 addition of the --output=tags option to "notmuch search". We now
301 make that more clear by deprecating "notmuch search-tags", (dropping
302 it from the documentation). We do continue to support the old syntax
303 by translating it internally to the new call.
305 Performance improvements
306 ------------------------
307 Faster searches (by doing fewer searches to construct threads)
309 Whenever a user asks for search results as threads, notmuch first
310 performs a search for messages matching the query, then performs
311 additional searches to find other messages in the resulting threads.
313 Removing inefficiencies and redundancies in these secondary searches
314 results in a measured speedups of 1.5x for a typical search.
316 Faster searches (by doing fewer passes to gather message data)
318 Optimizing Xapian data access patterns (using a single pass to get
319 all message-document data rather than a pass for each data type)
320 results in a measured speedup of 1.7x for a typical search.
322 The benefits of this optimization combine with the preceding
323 optimization. With both in place, Austin Clements measured a speedup
324 of 2.5x for a search of all messages in his inbox (was 4.5s, now
325 1.8s). Thanks, Austin!
327 Faster initial indexing
329 More efficient indexing of new messages results in a measured
330 speedup of 1.4x for the initial indexing of 3 GB of mail (1h 14m
331 rather than 1h 46m). Thanks to Austin Clements and Michal Sojka.
333 Make "notmuch new" faster for unchanged directories
335 Optimizing to not do any further examinations of sub-directories
336 when the filesystem indicates that a directory is unchanged from the
337 last "notmuch new" results in measured speedups of 8.5 for the "No
338 new mail" case, (was 0.77s, now 0.09s). Thanks to Karel Zak.
340 New emacs-interface features
341 ----------------------------
343 Support for PGP/MIME (GnuPG)
345 Automatically indicate validity of signatures for multipart/signed
346 messages. Automatically display decrypted content for
347 multipart/encrypted messages. See the emacs variable
348 notmuch-crypto-process-mime for more information. Note that this
349 needs gpg-agent and a pinentry tool just as the command line tools.
350 Also note there is no support SMIME yet.
352 Output of pipe command is now displayed if pipe command fails
354 This is extremely useful in the common use case of piping a patch to
355 "git am". If git fails to cleanly merge the patch the error messages
356 from the failed merge are now clearly displayed to the user, (where
357 previously they were silently hidden from the user).
359 User-selectable From address
361 A user can choose which configured email addresses should be used as
362 the From address whenever composing a new message. To do so, simply
363 press C-u before the command which will open a new message. Emacs
364 will prompt for the from address to use.
366 The user can customize the "Notmuch Identities" setting in the
367 notmuch customize group in order to use addresses other than those in
368 the notmuch configuration file if desired.
370 The user can also choose to always be prompted for the from address
371 when composing a new message (without having to use C-u) by setting
372 the "Notmuch Always Prompt For Sender" option in the notmuch
375 Hiding of repeated subjects in collapsed thread view
377 In notmuch-show mode, if a collapsed message has the same subject as
378 its parent, the subject is not shown.
380 Automatic detection and hiding of original message in top-posted message
382 When a message contains a line looking something like:
384 ----- Original Message -----
386 emacs hides this and all subsequent lines as an "original message",
387 (allowing the user to click or press enter on the "original message"
388 button to display it again). This makes the handling of top-posted
389 citations work much like conventional citations.
391 New hooks for running code when tags are modified
393 Some users want to perform additional actions whenever a particular
394 tag is added/removed from a message. This could be used to, for
395 example, interface with some external spam-recognition training
396 tool. To facilitate this, two new hooks are added which can be
397 modified in the following settings of the notmuch customize group:
399 Notmuch Before Tag Hook
400 Notmuch After Tag Hook
402 New optional support for hiding some multipart/alternative parts
404 Many emails are sent with redundant content within a
405 multipart/alternative group (such as a text/plain part as well as a
406 text/html part). Users can configure the setting:
408 Notmuch Show All Multipart/Alternative Parts
410 to "off" in the notmuch customize group to have the interface
411 automatically hide some part alternatives (such as text/html
412 parts). This new part hiding is not configured by default yet
413 because there's not yet a simple way to re-display such a hidden
414 part if it is not actually redundant with a displayed part.
416 Better rendering of text/x-vcalendar parts
418 These parts are now displayed in a format suitable for use with the
421 Avoid getting confused by Subject and Author fields with newline characters
423 Replacing all characters with ASCII code less than 32 with a question mark.
425 Cleaner display of From line in email messages (remove double quotes,
426 and drop "name" if it's actually just a repeat of the email address).
428 Vim interface improvements
429 --------------------------
430 Felipe Contreras provided a number of updates for the vim interface:
432 * Using sendmail directly rather than mailx,
433 * Implementing archive in show view
434 * Add support to mark as read in show and search views
435 * Add delete commands
438 Bindings improvements
439 ---------------------
440 Ruby bindings are now much more complete
442 Including QUERY.sort, QUERY.to_s, MESSAGE.maildir_flags_to_tags,
443 MESSAGE.tags_to_maildir_flags, and MESSAGE.get_filenames
445 * Python bindings have been upodated and extended
446 (docs online at http://packages.python.org/notmuch/)
449 - Message().get_filenames(),
450 - Message().tags_to_maildir_flags(),Message().maildir_flags_to_tags()
451 - list(Threads()) and list(Messages) works now
453 - Message().__cmp__() and __hash__()
454 These allow, for example:
457 As well as set arithmetic on Messages():
459 s1, s2= set(msgs1), set(msgs2)
464 - len(Messages()) as it exausted the iterator.
465 Use len(list(Messages())) or
466 Query.count_messages() to get the length.
468 Added initial Go bindings in bindings/go
470 New build-system features
471 -------------------------
472 Added support for building in a directory other than the source directory
474 This can be used with the widely-supported idiom of simply running
475 the configure script from some other directory:
482 Fix to save configure options for future, implicit runs of configure
484 When a user updates the source (such as with "git pull") calling
485 "make" may cause an automatic re-run of the configure script. When
486 this happens, the configure script will automatically be called with
487 the same options the user originally passed in the most-recent
488 manual invocation of configure.
490 New test-suite feature
491 ----------------------
492 Binary for bash for running test suite now located via PATH.
494 The notmuch test suite requires a fairly recent version of bash (>=
495 bash 4). As some systems supply an older version of bash at
496 /bin/bash, the test suite is now updated to search $PATH to locate
497 the bash binary. This allows users of systems with old /bin/bash to
498 simply install bash >= 4 somewhere on $PATH before /bin and then use
501 Support for testing output with a trailing newline.
503 Previously, some tests would fail to notice a difference in the
504 presence/absence of a trailing newline in a program output, (which
505 has led to bugs in the past). Now, carefully-written tests (using
506 test_expect_equal_file rather than test_expect_equal) will detect
507 any change in the presence/absence of a trailing newline. Many tests
508 are updated to take advantage of this.
510 Avoiding accessing user's $HOME while running test suite
512 The test suite now carefully creates its own HOME directory. This
513 allows the test suite to be run with no existing HOME directory, (as
514 some build systems apparently do), and avoids test-suite differences
515 due to configuration files in the users HOME directory.
520 Output *all* files for "notmuch search --output=files"
522 For the cases where multiple files have the same Message ID,
523 previous versions of notmuch would output only one such file. This
524 command is now fixed to correctly output all files.
526 Fixed spurious search results from "overlapped" indexing of addresses
528 This fixed a bug where a search for:
530 to:user@elsewhere.com
532 would incorrectly match a message sent:
534 To: user@example,com, someone@elsewhere.com
536 Fix --output=json when search has no results
538 A bug present since notmuch 0.4 had caused searches with no results
539 to produce an invalid json object. This is now fixed to cleanly
540 return a valid json object representing an empty array "[]" as
543 fix the automatic detection of the From address for "notmuch reply"
544 from the Received headers in some cases.
546 Fix core dump on DragonFlyBSD due to -1 return value from
547 sysconf(_SC_GETPW_R_SIZE_MAX).
549 Cleaned up several memory leaks
551 Eliminated a few, rare segmentation faults and a double-free.
553 Fix libnotmuch library to only export notmuch API functions
555 Previous release of the notmuch library also exported some Xapian
556 C++ exception type symbols. These were never part of the library
557 interface and were never intended to be exported.
559 Emacs-interface bug fixes
560 -------------------------
561 Display any unexpected output or errors from "notmuch search" invocations
563 Previously any misformatted output or trailing error messages were
564 silently ignored. This output is now clearly displayed. This fix was
565 very helpful in identifying and fixing the bug described below.
567 Fix bug where some threads would be missing from large search results
569 When a search returned a "large" number of results, the emacs
570 interface was incorrectly dropping one thread every time the output
571 of the "notmuch search" process spanned the emacs read-buffer. This
574 Avoid re-compression of .gz files (and similar) when saving attachment
576 Emacs was being too clever for its own good and trying to
577 re-compress pre-compressed .gz files when saving such attachments
578 (potentially corrupting the attachment). The emacs interface is
579 fixed to avoid this bug.
581 Fix hiding of a message when a previously-hidden citation is visible
583 Previously the citation would remain visible in this case. This is
584 fixed so that hiding a message hides all parts.
586 Notmuch 0.5 (2010-11-11)
587 ========================
588 New, general features
589 ---------------------
590 Maildir-flag synchronization
592 Notmuch now knows how to synchronize flags in maildir filenames with
593 tags in the notmuch database. The following flag/tag mappings are
602 'S' unread (added when 'S' flag is not present)
604 The synchronization occurs in both directions, (for example, adding
605 the 'S' flag to a file will cause the "unread" tag to be added, and
606 adding the "replied" tag to a message will cause the file to be
607 renamed with an 'R' flag).
609 This synchronization is enabled by default for users of the
610 command-line interface, (though only files in directories named
611 "cur" or "new" will be renamed). It can be disabled by setting the
612 new maildir.synchronize_flags option in the configuration file. For
615 notmuch config set maildir.synchronize_flags false
617 Users upgrading may also want to run "notmuch setup" once (just
618 accept the existing configuration) to get a new, nicely-commented
619 [maildir] section added to the configuration file.
621 For users of the notmuch library, the new synchronization
622 functionality is available with the following two new functions:
624 notmuch_message_maildir_flags_to_tags
625 notmuch_message_tags_to_maildir_flags
627 It is anticipated that future improvements to this support will
628 allow for safe synchronization of the 'T' flag with the "deleted"
629 tag, as well as support for custom flag/tag mappings.
633 Support for querying multiple filenames for a single message
635 It is common for the mailstore to contain multiple files with the
636 same message ID. Previously, notmuch would always hide these
637 duplicate files, (returning a single, arbitrary filename with
638 notmuch_message_get_filename).
640 With this release, library users can access all filenames for a
641 message with the new function:
643 notmuch_message_get_filenames
645 Together with notmuch_filenames_valid, notmuch_filenames_get, and
646 notmuch_filenames_move_to_next it is now possible to iterate over
647 all available filenames for a given message.
649 New command-line features
650 -------------------------
651 New "notmuch show --format=raw" for getting at original email contents
653 This new feature allows for a fully-functional email client to be
654 built on top of the notmuch command-line without needing any direct
655 access to the mail store itself.
657 For example, it's now possible to run "emacs -f notmuch" on a local
658 machine with only ssh access to the mail store/notmuch database. To
659 do this, simply set the notmuch-command variable in emacs to the
660 name of a script containing:
662 ssh user@host notmuch "$@"
664 If the ssh client has enabled connection sharing (ControlMaster
665 option in OpenSSH), the emacs interface can be quite responsive this
670 Fix "notmuch search" to print nothing when nothing matches
672 The 0.4 release had a bug in which:
674 notmuch search <expression-with-no-matches>
676 would produce a single blank line of output, (where previous
677 versions would produce no output. This fix also causes a change in
678 the --format=json output, (which would previously produce "[]" and
679 now produces nothing).
681 Emacs interface improvements
682 ----------------------------
683 Fix to allow pipe ('|') command to work when using notmuch over ssh
685 Fix count of lines in hidden signatures.
687 Omit repeated subject lines in (collapsed) thread display.
689 Display current thread subject in a header line.
691 Provide a "c i" binding to copy a thread ID from the search view.
693 Allow for notmuch-fcc-dirs to have a value of nil.
695 Also, the more complex form of notmuch-fcc-dirs now has a slightly
696 different format. It no longer has a special first-element, fallback
697 string. Instead it's now a list of cons cells where the car of each
698 cell is a regular expression to be matched against the sender
699 address, and the cdr is the name of a folder to use for an FCC. So
700 the old fallback behavior can be achieved by including a final cell
701 of (".*" . "default-fcc-folder").
703 Vim interface improvements
704 --------------------------
705 Felipe Contreras provided a number of updates for the vim interface.
707 These include optimizations, support for newer versions of vim, fixed
708 support for sending mail on modern systems, new commands, and
713 Added initial ruby bindings in bindings/ruby
715 Notmuch 0.4 (2010-11-01)
716 ========================
717 New command-line features
718 -------------------------
719 notmuch search --output=(summary|threads|messages|tags|files)
721 This new option allows for particular items to be returned from
722 notmuch searches. The "summary" option is the default and behaves
723 just as "notmuch search" has historically behaved.
725 The new option values allow for thread IDs, message IDs, lists of
726 tags, and lists of filenames to be returned from searches. It is
727 expected that this new option will be very useful in shell
728 scripts. For example:
730 for file in $(notmuch search --output=files <search-terms>); do
731 <operations-on> "$file"
734 notmuch show --format=mbox <search-specification>
736 This new option allows for the messages matching a search
737 specification to be presented as an mbox. Specifically the "mboxrd"
738 format is used which allows for reversible quoting of lines
739 beginning with "From ". A reader should remove a single '>' from the
740 beginning of all lines beginning with one or more '>' characters
741 followed by the 5 characters "From ".
743 notmuch config [get|set] <section>.<item> [value ...]
745 The new top-level "config" command allows for any value in the
746 notmuch configuration file to be queried or set to a new value. Both
747 single-valued and multi-valued items are supported, as our any
748 custom items stored in the configuration file.
750 Avoid setting Bcc header in "notmuch reply"
752 We decided that this was a bit heavy-handed as the actual mail
753 user-agent should be responsible for setting any Bcc option. Also,
754 see below for the notmuch/emacs user-agent now setting an Fcc by
755 default rather than Bcc.
759 Add notmuch_query_get_query_string and notmuch_query_get_sort
761 These are simply functions for querying properties of a
762 notmuch_query_t object.
766 Enable Fcc of all sent messages by default (to "sent" directory)
768 All messages sent from the emacs interface will now be saved to the
769 notmuch mail store where they will be incorporated to the database
770 by the next "notmuch new". By default, messages are saved to the
771 "sent" directory at the top-level of the mail store. This directory
772 can be customized by means of the "Notmuch Fcc Dirs" option in the
773 notmuch customize interface.
775 Ability to all open messages in a thread to a pipe
777 Historically, the '|' keybinding allows for piping a single message
778 to an external command. Now, by prefixing this key with a prefix
779 argument, (for example, by pressing "Control-U |"), all open
780 messages in the current thread will be sent to the external command.
782 Optional support for detecting inline patches
784 This hook is disabled by default but can be enabled with a checkbox
785 under "Notmuch Show Insert Text/Plain Hook" in the notmuch customize
786 interface. It allows for inline patches to be detected and treated
787 as if they were attachments, (with context-sensitive highlighting).
789 Automatically tag messages as "replied" when sending a reply
791 Messages replied to within the emacs interface will now be tagged as
792 "replied". This feature can easily be customized to add or remove
793 other tags as well. For example, a user might use a tag of
794 "needs-reply" and can configure this feature to automatically remove
795 that tag when replying. See "Notmuch Message Mark Replied" in the
796 notmuch customize interface.
798 Allow search-result color specifications to overlay each other
800 For example, one tag can specify the background color of matching
801 lines, while another can specify the foreground. With this change,
802 both settings will now be visible simultaneously, (which was not the
803 case in previous releases). See "Notmuch Search Line Faces" in the
804 notmuch customize interface.
806 Make hidden author names still available for incremental search.
808 When there is insufficient space to display all authors of a thread
809 in search results, the names of hidden authors are now still made
810 available to emacs' incremental search commands. As the user
811 searches, matching lines will temporarily expand to show the hidden
814 New binding of Control-TAB (works like TAB in reverse)
816 Many notmuch nodes already use TAB to navigate forward through
817 various items allowing actions, (message headers, email attachments,
818 etc.). The new Control-TAB binding operates similarly but in the
821 New build-system features
822 -------------------------
823 Various portability fixes have been applied
825 These include fixes for build failures on at least Solaris, FreeBSD,
826 and Fedora systems. We're hopeful that the notmuch code base is now
827 more portable than ever before.
829 Arrange for libnotmuch to be found automatically after make install
831 The notmuch build system is now careful to help the user avoid
832 errors of the form "libnotmuch.so could not be found" immediately
833 after installing. This support takes two forms:
835 1. If the library is installed to a system directory,
836 (configured in /etc/ld.so.conf), then "make install" will
837 automatically run ldconfig.
839 2. If the library is installed to a non-system directory, the
840 build system adds a DR_RUNPATH entry to the final binary
841 pointing to the directory to which the library is installed.
843 When this support works, the user should be able to run notmuch
844 immediately after "make install", without any errors trying to find
845 the notmuch library, and without having to manually set environment
846 variables such as LD_LIBRARY_PATH.
848 Check compiler/linker options before using them
850 The configure script now carefully checks that any desired
851 compilation options, (whether for enabling compiler warnings, or for
852 embedding rpath, etc.), are supported. Only supported options are
853 used in the resulting Makefile.
855 New test-suite features
856 -----------------------
857 New modularization of test suite.
859 Thanks to a gracious relicensing of the test-suite infrastructure
860 from the git project, notmuch now has a modular test suite. This
861 provides the ability to run individual sections of the test suite
862 rather than the whole things. It also provides better summary of
863 test results, with support for tests that are expected to fail
864 (BROKEN and FIXED) in addition to PASS and FAIL. Finally, it makes
865 it easy to run the test suite within valgrind (pass --valgrind to
866 notmuch-test or to any sub-script) which has been very useful.
868 New testing of emacs interface.
870 The test suite has been augmented to allow automated testing of the
871 emacs interfaces. So far, this includes basic searches, display of
872 threads, and tag manipulation. This also includes a test that a new
873 message can successfully be sent out through a (dummy) SMTP server
874 and that said message is successfully integrated into the notmuch
875 database via the FCC setting.
879 Fix potential corruption of database when "notmuch new " is interrupted.
881 Previously, an interruption of "notmuch new" would (rarely) result
882 in a corrupt database. The corruption would manifest itself by a
883 persistent error of the form:
885 document ID of 1234 has no thread ID
887 The message-adding code has been carefully audited and reworked to
888 avoid this sort of corruption regardless of when it is interrupted.
890 Fix failure with extremely long message ID headers.
892 Previously, a message with an extremely long message ID, (say, more
893 than 300 characters), would fail to be added to notmuch, (triggering
894 Xapian exceptions). This has now been fixed.
896 Fix for messages with "charset=unknown-8bit"
898 Previously, messages with this charset would cause notmuch to emit a
899 GMime warning, (which would then trip up emacs or other interfaces
900 parsing the notmuch results).
902 Fix notmuch_query_search_threads function to return NULL on any exception
904 Fix "notmuch search" to return non-zero if notmuch_query_search_threads fails
906 Previously, this command could confusingly report a Xapian
907 exception, yet still return an error code of 0. It now correctly
908 returns a failing error code of 1 in this case.
912 Fix to handle a message with a subject containing, for example "[1234]"
914 Previously, a message subject containing a sequence of digits within
915 square brackets would cause the emacs interface to mis-parse the
916 output of "notmuch search". This would result in the message being
917 mis-displayed and prevent the user from manipulating the message in
920 Fix to correctly handle message IDs containing ".."
922 The emacs interface now properly quotes message IDs to avoid a
923 Xapian bug in which the ".." within a message ID would be
924 misinterpreted as a numeric range specification.
928 The python bindings for notmuch have been updated to work with python3.
930 Debian-specific fixes
931 ---------------------
932 Fix emacs initialization so "M-x notmuch" works for users by default.
934 Now, a new Debian user can immediately run "emacs -f notmuch" after
935 "apt-get install notmuch". Previously, the user would have had to
936 edit the ~/.emacs file to add "(require 'notmuch)" before this would
939 Notmuch 0.3.1 (2010-04-27)
940 ==========================
943 Fix an infinite loop in "notmuch reply"
945 This bug could be triggered by replying to a message where the
946 user's primary email address did not appear in the To: header and
947 the user had not configured any secondary email addresses. The bug
948 was a simple re-use of the same iterator variable in nested loops.
950 Fix a potential SEGV in "notmuch search"
952 This bug could be triggered by an author name ending in a ','.
953 Admittedly - that's almost certainly a spam email, but we never
954 want notmuch to crash.
958 Fix calculations for line wrapping in the primary "notmuch" view.
960 Fix Fcc support to prompt to create a directory if the specified Fcc
961 directory does not exist.
965 Fix build on OpenSolaris (at least) due to missing 'extern "C"' block.
967 Without this, the C++ sources could not find strcasestr and the
968 final linking of notmuch would fail.
970 Notmuch 0.3 (2010-04-27)
971 ========================
972 New command-line features
973 -------------------------
974 User-configurable tags for new messages
976 A new "new.tags" option is available in the configuration file to
977 determine which tags are applied to new messages. Run "notmuch
978 setup" to generate new documentation within ~/.notmuch-config on how
979 to specify this value.
981 Threads search results named based on subjects that match search
983 This means that when new mails arrived to a thread you've previously
984 read, and the new mails have a new subject, you will see that
985 subject in the search results rather than the old subject.
987 Faster operation of "notmuch tag" (avoid unneeded sorting)
989 Since the user just wants to tag all matching messages, we can make
990 things perform a bit faster by avoiding the sort.
992 Even Better guessing of From: header for "notmuch reply"
994 Notmuch now looks at a number of headers when trying to figure out
995 the best From: header to use in a reply. This is helpful if you have
996 several configured email addresses, and you also subscribe to various
997 mailing lists with different addresses, (so that mails you are
998 replying to won't always include your subscribed address in the To:
1001 Indication of author names that match a search
1003 When notmuch displays threads as the result of a search, it now
1004 lists the authors that match the search before listing the other
1005 authors in the thread. It inserts a pipe '|' symbol between the last
1006 matching and first non-matching author. This is especially useful in
1007 a search that includes tag:unread. Now the authors of the unread
1008 messages in the thread are listed first.
1010 New: Python bindings
1011 --------------------
1012 Sebastian Spaeth has contributed his python bindings for the notmuch
1013 library to the central repository. These bindings were previously
1014 known as "cnotmuch" within python but have now been renamed to be
1015 accessible with a simple, and more official-looking "import notmuch".
1017 The bindings have already proven very useful as people proficient in
1018 python have been able to easily develop programs to do notmuch-based
1019 searches for email-address completion, maildir-flag synchronization,
1022 These bindings are available within the bindings/python directory, but
1023 are not yet integrated into the top-level Makefiles, nor the top-level
1024 package-building scripts. Improvements are welcome.
1026 Emacs interface improvements
1027 ----------------------------
1028 An entirely new initial view for notmuch, (friendly yet powerful)
1030 Some of us call the new view "notmuch hello" but you can get at it
1031 by simply calling "emacs -f notmuch". The new view provides a search
1032 bar where new searches can be performed. It also displays a list of
1033 recent searches, along with a button to save any of these, giving it
1034 a new name as a "saved search". Many people find these "saved
1035 searches" one of the most convenient ways of organizing their mail,
1036 (providing all of the features of "folders" in other mail clients,
1037 but without any of the disadvantages).
1039 Finally, this view can also optionally display all of the tags that
1040 exist in the database, along with a count for each tag, and a custom
1041 search of messages with that tag that's simply a click (or keypress)
1044 Note: For users that liked the original mode of "emacs -f notmuch"
1045 immediately displaying a particular search result, we
1046 recommend instead running something like:
1048 emacs --eval '(notmuch search "tag:inbox" t)'
1050 The "t" means to sort the messages in an "oldest first" order,
1051 (as notmuch would do previously by default). You can also
1052 leave that off to have your search results in "newest first"
1055 Full-featured "customize" support for configuring notmuch
1057 Notmuch now plugs in well to the emacs "customize" mode to make it
1058 much simpler to find things about the notmuch interface that can be
1059 tweaked by the user.
1061 You can get to this mode by starting at the main "Customize" menu in
1062 emacs, then browsing through "Applications", "Mail", and
1063 "Notmuch". Or you can go straight to "M-x customize-group"
1066 Once you're at the customize screen, you'll see a list of documented
1067 options that can be manipulated along with checkboxes, drop-down
1068 selectors, and text-entry boxes for configuring the various
1071 Support for doing tab-completion of email addresses
1073 This support currently relies on an external program,
1074 (notmuch-addresses), that is not yet shipped with notmuch
1075 itself. But multiple, suitable implementations of this program have
1076 already been written that generate address completions by doing
1077 notmuch searches of your email collection. For example, providing
1078 first those addresses that you have composed messages to in the
1081 One such program (implemented in python with the python bindings to
1082 notmuch) is available via:
1084 git clone http://jkr.acm.jhu.edu/git/notmuch_addresses.git
1086 Install that program as notmuch-addresses on your PATH, and then
1087 hitting TAB on a partial email address or name within the To: or Cc:
1088 line of an email message will provide matching completions.
1090 Support for file-based (Fcc) delivery of sent messages to mail store
1092 This isn't yet enabled by default. To enable this, one will have to
1093 set the "Notmuch Fcc Dirs" setting within the notmuch customize
1094 screen, (see its documentation there for details). We anticipate
1095 making this automatic in a future release.
1097 New 'G' key binding to trigger mail refresh (G == "Get new mail")
1099 The 'G' key works wherever '=' works. Before refreshing the screen
1100 it calls an external program that can be used to poll email servers,
1101 run notmuch new and setup specific tags for the new emails. The
1102 script to be called should be configured with the "Notmuch Poll
1103 Script" setting in the customize interface. This script will
1104 typically invoke "notmuch new" and then perhaps several "notmuch
1107 Implement emacs message display with the JSON output from notmuch.
1109 This is much more robust than the previous implementation, (where
1110 some HTML mails and mail quoting the notmuch code with the delimiter
1111 characters in it would cause the parser to fall over).
1113 Better handling of HTML messages and MIME attachments (inline images!)
1115 Allow for any MIME parts that emacs can display to be displayed
1116 inline. This includes inline viewing of image attachments, (provided
1117 the window is large enough to fit the image at its natural size).
1119 Much more robust handling of HTML messages. Currently both text/plain
1120 and text/html alternates will be rendered next to each other. In a
1121 future release, users will be able to decide to see only one or the
1122 other representation.
1124 Each attachment now has its own button so that attachments can be
1125 saved individually (the 'w' key is still available to save all
1128 Customizable support for tidying of text/plain message content
1130 Many new functions are available for tidying up message
1131 content. These include options such as wrapping long lines,
1132 compressing duplicate blank lines, etc.
1134 Most of these are disabled by default, but can easily be enabled by
1135 clicking the available check boxes under the "Notmuch Show Insert
1136 Text/Plain Hook" within the notmuch customize screen.
1138 New support for searchable citations (even when hidden)
1140 When portions of overly-long citations are hidden, the contents of
1141 these citations will still be available for emacs' standard
1142 "incremental search" functions. When the search matches any portion
1143 of a hidden citation, the citation will become visible temporarily
1144 to display the search result.
1146 More flexible handling of header visibility
1148 As an answer to complaints from many users, the To, Cc, and Date
1149 headers of messages are no longer hidden by default. For those users
1150 that liked that these were hidden, a new "Notmuch Messages Headers
1151 Visible" option in the customize interface can be set to nil. The
1152 visibility of headers can still be toggled on a per-message basis
1153 with the 'h' keybinding.
1155 For users that don't want to see some subset of those headers, the
1156 new "Notmuch Message Headers" variable can be customized to list
1157 only those headers that should be present in the display of a message.
1159 The Return key now toggles message visibility anywhere
1161 Previously this worked only on the first summary-line of a message.
1163 Customizable formatting of search results
1165 The user can easily customize the order, width, and formatting of
1166 the various fields in a "notmuch search" buffer. See the "Notmuch
1167 Search Result Format" section of the customize interface.
1169 Generate nicer names for search buffers when using a saved search.
1171 Add a notmuch User-Agent header when sending mail from notmuch/emacs.
1173 New keybinding (M-Ret) to open all collapsed messages in a thread.
1177 Provide a new NOTMUCH_SORT_UNSORTED value for queries
1179 This can be somewhat faster when sorting simply isn't desired. For
1180 example when collecting a set of messages that will all be
1181 manipulated identically, (adding a tag, removing a tag, deleting the
1182 messages), then there's no advantage to sorting the messages by
1187 Fix to compile against GMime 2.6
1189 Previously notmuch insisted on being able to find GMime 2.4, (even
1190 though GMime 2.6 would have worked all along).
1192 Fix configure script to accept (and ignore) various standard options.
1194 For example, those that the Gentoo build scripts expect configure to
1195 accept are now all accepted.
1199 A large number of new tests for the many new features.
1201 Better display of output from failed tests.
1203 Now shows failures with diff rather than forcing the user to gaze at
1204 complete actual and expected output looking for deviation.
1206 Notmuch 0.2 (2010-04-16)
1207 ========================
1208 This is the second release of the notmuch mail system, with actual
1209 detailed release notes this time!
1211 This release consists of a number of minor new features that make
1212 notmuch more pleasant to use, and a few fairly major bug fixes.
1214 We didn't quite hit our release target of "about a week" from the 0.1
1215 release, (0.2 is happening 11 days after 0.1), but we hope to do
1216 better for next week. Look forward to some major features coming to
1217 notmuch in subsequent releases.
1223 Better guessing of From: header.
1225 Notmuch now tries harder to guess which configured address should be
1226 used as the From: line in a "notmuch reply". It will examine the
1227 Received: headers if it fails to find any configured address in To:
1228 or Cc:. This allows it to often choose the correct address even when
1229 replying to a message sent to a mailing list, and not directly to a
1232 Make "notmuch count" with no arguments count all messages
1234 Previously, it was hard to construct a search term that was
1235 guaranteed to match all messages.
1237 Provide a new special-case search term of "*" to match all messages.
1239 This can be used in any command accepting a search term, such as
1240 "notmuch search '*'". Note that you'll want to take care that the
1241 shell doesn't expand * against the current files. And note that the
1242 support for "*" is a special case. It's only meaningful as a single
1243 search term and loses its special meaning when combined with any
1246 Automatically detect thread connections even when a parent message is
1249 Previously, if two or more message were received with a common
1250 parent, but that parent was not received, then these messages would
1251 not be recognized as belonging to the same thread. This is now fixed
1252 so that such messages are properly connected in a thread.
1256 Fix potential data loss in "notmuch new" with SIGINT
1258 One code path in "notmuch new" was not properly handling
1259 SIGINT. Previously, this could lead to messages being removed from
1260 the database (and their tags being lost) if the user pressed
1261 Control-C while "notmuch new" was working.
1263 Fix segfault when a message includes a MIME part that is empty.
1265 Fix handling of non-ASCII characters with --format=json
1267 Previously, characters outside the range of 7-bit ASCII were
1268 silently dropped from the JSON output. This led to corrupted display
1269 of utf-8 content in the upcoming notmuch web-based frontends.
1271 Fix headers to be properly decoded in "notmuch reply"
1273 Previously, the user might see:
1275 Subject: Re: =?iso-8859-2?q?Rozlu=E8ka?=
1279 Subject: Re: Rozlučka
1281 The former text is properly encoded to be RFC-compliant SMTP, will
1282 be sent correctly, and will be properly decoded by the
1283 recipient. But the user trying to edit the reply would likely be
1284 unable to read or edit that field in its encoded form.
1286 Emacs client features
1287 ---------------------
1288 Show the last few lines of citations as well as the first few lines.
1290 It's often the case that the last sentence of a citation is what is
1291 being replied to directly, so the last few lines are often much more
1292 important. The number of lines shown at the beginning and end of any
1293 citation can be configured, (notmuch-show-citation-lines-prefix and
1294 notmuch-show-citation-lines-suffix).
1296 The '+' and '-' commands in the search view can now add and remove
1299 Selective bulk tagging is now possible by selecting a region of
1300 threads and then using either the '+' or '-' keybindings. Bulk
1301 tagging is still available for all threads matching the current
1302 search with the '*' binding.
1304 More meaningful buffer names for thread-view buffers.
1306 Notmuch now uses the Subject of the thread as the buffer
1307 name. Previously it was using the thread ID, which is a meaningless
1310 Provide for customized colors of threads in search view based on tags.
1312 See the documentation of notmuch-search-line-faces, (or us "M-x
1313 customize" and browse to the "notmuch" group within "Applications"
1314 and "Mail"), for details on how to configure this colorization.
1316 Build-system features
1317 ---------------------
1318 Add support to properly build libnotmuch on Darwin systems (OS X).
1320 Add support to configure for many standard options.
1322 We include actual support for:
1324 --includedir --mandir --sysconfdir
1326 And accept and silently ignore several more:
1328 --build --infodir --libexecdir --localstatedir
1329 --disable-maintainer-mode --disable-dependency-tracking
1331 Install emacs client in "make install" rather than requiring a
1332 separate "make install-emacs".
1334 Automatically compute versions numbers between releases.
1336 This support uses the git-describe notation, so a version such as
1337 0.1-144-g43cbbfc indicates a version that is 144 commits since the
1338 0.1 release and is available as git commit "43cbbfc".
1340 Add a new "make test" target to run the test suite and actually verify
1343 Notmuch 0.1 (2010-04-05)
1344 ========================
1345 This is the first release of the notmuch mail system.
1347 It includes the libnotmuch library, the notmuch command-line
1348 interface, and an emacs-based interface to notmuch.
1350 Note: Notmuch will work best with Xapian 1.0.18 (or later) or Xapian
1351 1.1.4 (or later). Previous versions of Xapian (whether 1.0 or 1.1) had
1352 a performance bug that made notmuch very slow when modifying
1353 tags. This would cause distracting pauses when reading mail while
1354 notmuch would wait for Xapian when removing the "inbox" and "unread"
1355 tags from messages in a thread.