1 Notmuch 0.11 (201x-xx-xx)
2 =========================
4 New command-line features
5 -------------------------
9 Hooks have been introduced to notmuch. Hooks are scripts that notmuch
10 invokes before and after certain actions. Initially, "notmuch new"
11 supports "pre-new" and "post-new" hooks that are run before and after
12 importing new messages into the database.
17 Support "notmuch new" as a notmuch-poll-script
19 It's now possible to use "notmuch new" as a notmuch-poll-script
20 directly. This is also the new default. This allows taking better
21 advantage of the "notmuch new" hooks from emacs without intermediate
24 Improvements in saved search management
26 New saved searches are now appended to the list of saved searches,
27 not inserted in front. It's also possible to define a sort function
28 for displaying saved searches; alphabetical sort is provided.
33 Automatic tag query optimization
35 "notmuch tag" now automatically optimizes the user's query to
36 exclude messages whose tags won't change. In the past, we've
37 suggested that people do this by hand; this is no longer necessary.
42 Reduction of memory leaks
44 Two memory leaks when searching and showing messages were identified
45 and fixed in this release.
50 The tool contrib/notmuch-deliver helps with initial delivery and
51 tagging of mail (replacing running notmuch new).
54 Notmuch 0.10.2 (2011-12-04)
55 ===========================
60 Fix crash in python bindings.
62 The python bindings did not call g_type_init, which caused crashes
63 for some, but not all users.
65 Notmuch 0.10.1 (2011-11-25)
66 ===========================
73 Argument processing changes in 0.10 introduced a bug where "notmuch
74 --help" crashed while "notmuch help" worked fine. This is fixed in
77 Notmuch 0.10 (2011-11-23)
78 =========================
80 New build and testing features
81 ------------------------------
83 Emacs tests are now done in dtach. This means that dtach is now
84 needed to run the notmuch test suite, at least until the checking for
85 prerequisites is improved.
87 Full test coverage of the stashing feature in Emacs.
89 New command-line features
90 -------------------------
92 Add "notmuch restore --accumulate" option
94 The --accumulate switch causes the union of the existing and new tags to be
95 applied, instead of replacing each message's tags as they are read in from
98 Add search terms to "notmuch dump"
100 The dump command now takes an optional search term much like notmuch
101 search/show/tag. The output file argument of dump is deprecated in
102 favour of using stdout.
104 Add "notmuch search" --offset and --limit options
106 The search command now takes options --offset=[-]N and --limit=N to limit
107 the number of results shown.
109 Add "notmuch count --output" option
111 The count command is now capable of counting threads in addition to
112 messages. This is selected using the new --output=(threads|messages) option.
114 New emacs UI features
115 ---------------------
117 Add tab-completion for notmuch-search and notmuch-search-filter
119 These functions now support completion tags for query parts
120 starting with "tag:".
122 Turn "id:MSG-ID" links into buttons associated with notmuch searches
124 Text of the form "id:MSG-ID" in mails is now a clickable button that
125 opens a notmuch search for the given message id.
127 Add keybinding ('c I') for stashing Message-ID's without an id: prefix
129 Reduces manual labour when stashing them for use outside notmuch.
131 Do not query on notmuch-search exit
133 It is harmless to kill the external notmuch process, so the user
134 is no longer interrogated when they interrupt a search.
139 Emacs now constructs large search buffers more efficiently
141 Search avoids opening and parsing message files
143 We now store more information in the database so search no longer
144 has to open every message file to get basic headers. This can
145 improve search speed by as much as 10X, but taking advantage of this
146 requires a database rebuild:
148 notmuch dump > notmuch.dump
149 # Backup, then remove notmuch database ($MAIL/.notmuch)
151 notmuch restore notmuch.dump
153 New collection of add-on tools
154 ------------------------------
156 The source directory "contrib" contains tools built on notmuch. These
157 tools are not part of notmuch, and you should check their individual
158 licenses. Feel free to report problems with them to the notmuch
161 nmbug - share tags with a given prefix
163 nmbug helps maintain a git repo containing all tags with a given
164 prefix (by default "notmuch::"). Tags can be shared by commiting
165 them to git in one location and restoring in another.
167 Notmuch 0.9 (2011-10-01)
168 ========================
170 New, general features
171 ---------------------
173 Correct handling of interruptions during "notmuch new"
175 "notmuch new" now operates as a series of small, self-consistent
176 transactions, so it can correctly resume after an interruption or
177 crash. Previously, interruption could lose existing tags, fail to
178 detect messages on resume, or leave the database in a state
179 temporarily or permanently inconsistent with the mail store.
186 notmuch_database_begin_atomic and notmuch_database_end_atomic allow
187 multiple database operations to be performed atomically.
189 notmuch_database_find_message_by_filename does exactly what it says.
193 notmuch_database_find_message (and n_d_f_m_by_filename) now return
194 a status indicator and uses an output parameter for the
195 message. This change required changing the SONAME of libnotmuch to
198 Python bindings changes
199 -----------------------
201 - Re-encode python unicode objects to utf-8 before passing back to
203 - Support Database().begin_atomic()/end_atomic()
204 - Support Database().find_message_by_filename()
205 NB! This needs a db opened in READ-WRITE mode currently, or it will crash
206 the python process. The is a limitation (=bug) of the underlying libnotmuch.
207 - Fixes where we would not throw NotmuchErrors when we should (Justus Winter)
208 - Update for n_d_find_message* API changes (see above).
210 Ruby bindings changes
211 ---------------------
213 - Wrap new library functions notmuch_database_{begin,end}_atomic.
214 - Add new exception Notmuch::UnbalancedAtomicError.
215 - Rename destroy to destroy! according to Ruby naming conventions.
216 - Update for n_d_find_message* API changes (see above).
221 * Add gpg callback to crypto sigstatus buttons to retrieve/refresh
223 * Add notmuch-show-refresh-view function (and corresponding binding)
224 to refresh the view of a notmuch-show buffer.
226 Reply formatting cleanup
227 ------------------------
229 "notmuch reply" no longer includes notification that non-leafnode
230 MIME parts are being suppressed.
232 Notmuch 0.8 (2011-09-10)
233 ========================
235 Improved handling of message/rfc822 parts
237 Both in the CLI and the emacs interface. Output of rfc822 parts now
238 includes the primary headers, as well as the body and all subparts.
239 Output of the completely raw rfc822-formatted message, including all
240 headers, is unfortunately not yet supported (but hopefully will be
243 Improved Build system portability
245 Certain parts of the shell script generating notmuch.sym were
246 specific to the GNU versions of sed and nm. The new version should
247 be more portable to e.g. OpenBSD.
249 Documentation update for Ruby bindings
251 Added documentation, typo fixes, and improved support for rdoc.
253 Unicode, iterator, PEP8 changes for python bindings
255 - PEP8 (code formatting) changes for python files.
256 - Remove Tags.__len__ ; see 0.6 release notes for motivation.
257 - Decode headers as UTF8, encode (unicode) database paths as UTF8.
259 Notmuch 0.7 (2011-08-01)
260 ========================
262 Vim interface improvements
263 --------------------------
265 Jason Woofenden provided a number of bug fixes for the Vim interface
267 * fix citation/signature fold lengths
268 * fix cig/cit parsing within multipart/*
269 * fix on-screen instructions for show-signature
270 * fix from list reformatting in search view
271 * fix space key: now archives (did opposite)
273 Uwe Kleine-König contributed
275 * use full path for sendmail/doc fix
276 * fix compose temp file name
278 Python Bindings changes
279 -----------------------
281 Sebastian Spaeth contributed two changes related to unicode and UTF8:
283 * message tags are now explicitly unicode
284 * query string is encoded as a UTF8 byte string
286 Build-System improvements
287 ------------------------
289 Generate notmuch.sym after the relevant object files
291 This fixes a bug in parallel building. Thanks to Thomas Jost for the
294 Notmuch 0.6.1 (2011-07-17)
295 ==========================
300 Re-export Xapian exception typeinfo symbols.
302 It turned out our aggressive symbol hiding caused problems for
303 people running gcc 4.4.5.
305 Notmuch 0.6 (2011-07-01)
306 =======================
307 New, general features
308 ---------------------
309 Folder-based searching
311 Notmuch queries can now include a search term to match the
312 directories in which mail files are stored (within the mail
313 storage). The syntax is as follows:
317 For example, one might use things such as:
323 to match any path containing a directory "spam", "work/todo", or
324 containing a directory starting with "2011-", respectively.
326 This feature is particularly useful for users of delivery-agent
327 software (such as procmail or maildrop) that is filtering mail and
328 delivering it to particular folders, or users of systems such as
329 Gmail that use filesystem directories to indicate message tags.
331 NOTE: Only messages that are newly indexed with this version of
332 notmuch will be searchable with folder: terms. In order to enable
333 this feature for all mail, the entire notmuch index will need to be
336 notmuch dump > notmuch.dump
337 # Backup, then remove notmuch database ($MAIL/.notmuch)
339 notmuch restore notmuch.dump
343 Both the command line interface and the emacs-interface have new
344 support for PGP/MIME, detailed below. Thanks to Daniel Kahn Gillmor
345 and Jameson Graef Rollins for making this happen.
347 New, automatic tags: "signed" and "encrypted"
349 These tags will automatically be applied to messages containing
350 multipart/signed and multipart/encrypted parts.
352 NOTE: Only messages that are newly indexed with this version of
353 notmuch will receive these tags.
355 New command-line features
356 -------------------------
357 Add new "notmuch show --verify" option for signature verification
359 This option instruct notmuch to verify the signature of
360 PGP/MIME-signed parts.
362 Add new "notmuch show --decrypt" and "notmuch reply --decrypt" options
364 This option instructs notmuch to decrypt PGP/MIME-encrypted parts.
365 Note that this feature currently requires gpg-agent and a passphrase entry
366 tool (e.g. pinentry-gtk or pinentry-curses).
368 Proper nesting of multipart parts in "notmuch show" output
370 MIME parts are now display with proper nesting to reflect original
371 MIME hierarchy of a message. This allows clients to correctly
372 analyze the MIME structure, (such as, for example, determining to
373 which parts a signature part applies).
375 Add new "notmuch show --part" option
377 This is a replacement for the older "notmuch part" command, (which
378 is now deprecated—it should still work as always, but is no longer
379 documented). Putting part output under "notmuch show" allows for all
380 of the "notmuch show" options to be applied when extracting a single
381 part, (such as --format=json for extracting a message part with JSON
384 Deprecate "notmuch search-tags", (in favor of "notmuch search --output=tags *")
386 The "notmuch search-tags" sub-command has been redundant since the
387 addition of the --output=tags option to "notmuch search". We now
388 make that more clear by deprecating "notmuch search-tags", (dropping
389 it from the documentation). We do continue to support the old syntax
390 by translating it internally to the new call.
392 Performance improvements
393 ------------------------
394 Faster searches (by doing fewer searches to construct threads)
396 Whenever a user asks for search results as threads, notmuch first
397 performs a search for messages matching the query, then performs
398 additional searches to find other messages in the resulting threads.
400 Removing inefficiencies and redundancies in these secondary searches
401 results in a measured speedups of 1.5x for a typical search.
403 Faster searches (by doing fewer passes to gather message data)
405 Optimizing Xapian data access patterns (using a single pass to get
406 all message-document data rather than a pass for each data type)
407 results in a measured speedup of 1.7x for a typical search.
409 The benefits of this optimization combine with the preceding
410 optimization. With both in place, Austin Clements measured a speedup
411 of 2.5x for a search of all messages in his inbox (was 4.5s, now
412 1.8s). Thanks, Austin!
414 Faster initial indexing
416 More efficient indexing of new messages results in a measured
417 speedup of 1.4x for the initial indexing of 3 GB of mail (1h 14m
418 rather than 1h 46m). Thanks to Austin Clements and Michal Sojka.
420 Make "notmuch new" faster for unchanged directories
422 Optimizing to not do any further examinations of sub-directories
423 when the filesystem indicates that a directory is unchanged from the
424 last "notmuch new" results in measured speedups of 8.5 for the "No
425 new mail" case, (was 0.77s, now 0.09s). Thanks to Karel Zak.
427 New emacs-interface features
428 ----------------------------
430 Support for PGP/MIME (GnuPG)
432 Automatically indicate validity of signatures for multipart/signed
433 messages. Automatically display decrypted content for
434 multipart/encrypted messages. See the emacs variable
435 notmuch-crypto-process-mime for more information. Note that this
436 needs gpg-agent and a pinentry tool just as the command line tools.
437 Also note there is no support SMIME yet.
439 Output of pipe command is now displayed if pipe command fails
441 This is extremely useful in the common use case of piping a patch to
442 "git am". If git fails to cleanly merge the patch the error messages
443 from the failed merge are now clearly displayed to the user, (where
444 previously they were silently hidden from the user).
446 User-selectable From address
448 A user can choose which configured email addresses should be used as
449 the From address whenever composing a new message. To do so, simply
450 press C-u before the command which will open a new message. Emacs
451 will prompt for the from address to use.
453 The user can customize the "Notmuch Identities" setting in the
454 notmuch customize group in order to use addresses other than those in
455 the notmuch configuration file if desired.
457 The user can also choose to always be prompted for the from address
458 when composing a new message (without having to use C-u) by setting
459 the "Notmuch Always Prompt For Sender" option in the notmuch
462 Hiding of repeated subjects in collapsed thread view
464 In notmuch-show mode, if a collapsed message has the same subject as
465 its parent, the subject is not shown.
467 Automatic detection and hiding of original message in top-posted message
469 When a message contains a line looking something like:
471 ----- Original Message -----
473 emacs hides this and all subsequent lines as an "original message",
474 (allowing the user to click or press enter on the "original message"
475 button to display it again). This makes the handling of top-posted
476 citations work much like conventional citations.
478 New hooks for running code when tags are modified
480 Some users want to perform additional actions whenever a particular
481 tag is added/removed from a message. This could be used to, for
482 example, interface with some external spam-recognition training
483 tool. To facilitate this, two new hooks are added which can be
484 modified in the following settings of the notmuch customize group:
486 Notmuch Before Tag Hook
487 Notmuch After Tag Hook
489 New optional support for hiding some multipart/alternative parts
491 Many emails are sent with redundant content within a
492 multipart/alternative group (such as a text/plain part as well as a
493 text/html part). Users can configure the setting:
495 Notmuch Show All Multipart/Alternative Parts
497 to "off" in the notmuch customize group to have the interface
498 automatically hide some part alternatives (such as text/html
499 parts). This new part hiding is not configured by default yet
500 because there's not yet a simple way to re-display such a hidden
501 part if it is not actually redundant with a displayed part.
503 Better rendering of text/x-vcalendar parts
505 These parts are now displayed in a format suitable for use with the
508 Avoid getting confused by Subject and Author fields with newline characters
510 Replacing all characters with ASCII code less than 32 with a question mark.
512 Cleaner display of From line in email messages (remove double quotes,
513 and drop "name" if it's actually just a repeat of the email address).
515 Vim interface improvements
516 --------------------------
517 Felipe Contreras provided a number of updates for the vim interface:
519 * Using sendmail directly rather than mailx,
520 * Implementing archive in show view
521 * Add support to mark as read in show and search views
522 * Add delete commands
525 Bindings improvements
526 ---------------------
527 Ruby bindings are now much more complete
529 Including QUERY.sort, QUERY.to_s, MESSAGE.maildir_flags_to_tags,
530 MESSAGE.tags_to_maildir_flags, and MESSAGE.get_filenames
532 * Python bindings have been updated and extended
533 (docs online at http://packages.python.org/notmuch/)
536 - Message().get_filenames(),
537 - Message().tags_to_maildir_flags(),Message().maildir_flags_to_tags()
538 - list(Threads()) and list(Messages) works now
540 - Message().__cmp__() and __hash__()
541 These allow, for example:
544 As well as set arithmetic on Messages():
546 s1, s2= set(msgs1), set(msgs2)
551 - len(Messages()) as it exhausted the iterator.
552 Use len(list(Messages())) or
553 Query.count_messages() to get the length.
555 Added initial Go bindings in bindings/go
557 New build-system features
558 -------------------------
559 Added support for building in a directory other than the source directory
561 This can be used with the widely-supported idiom of simply running
562 the configure script from some other directory:
569 Fix to save configure options for future, implicit runs of configure
571 When a user updates the source (such as with "git pull") calling
572 "make" may cause an automatic re-run of the configure script. When
573 this happens, the configure script will automatically be called with
574 the same options the user originally passed in the most-recent
575 manual invocation of configure.
577 New test-suite feature
578 ----------------------
579 Binary for bash for running test suite now located via PATH.
581 The notmuch test suite requires a fairly recent version of bash (>=
582 bash 4). As some systems supply an older version of bash at
583 /bin/bash, the test suite is now updated to search $PATH to locate
584 the bash binary. This allows users of systems with old /bin/bash to
585 simply install bash >= 4 somewhere on $PATH before /bin and then use
588 Support for testing output with a trailing newline.
590 Previously, some tests would fail to notice a difference in the
591 presence/absence of a trailing newline in a program output, (which
592 has led to bugs in the past). Now, carefully-written tests (using
593 test_expect_equal_file rather than test_expect_equal) will detect
594 any change in the presence/absence of a trailing newline. Many tests
595 are updated to take advantage of this.
597 Avoiding accessing user's $HOME while running test suite
599 The test suite now carefully creates its own HOME directory. This
600 allows the test suite to be run with no existing HOME directory, (as
601 some build systems apparently do), and avoids test-suite differences
602 due to configuration files in the users HOME directory.
607 Output *all* files for "notmuch search --output=files"
609 For the cases where multiple files have the same Message ID,
610 previous versions of notmuch would output only one such file. This
611 command is now fixed to correctly output all files.
613 Fixed spurious search results from "overlapped" indexing of addresses
615 This fixed a bug where a search for:
617 to:user@elsewhere.com
619 would incorrectly match a message sent:
621 To: user@example,com, someone@elsewhere.com
623 Fix --output=json when search has no results
625 A bug present since notmuch 0.4 had caused searches with no results
626 to produce an invalid json object. This is now fixed to cleanly
627 return a valid json object representing an empty array "[]" as
630 fix the automatic detection of the From address for "notmuch reply"
631 from the Received headers in some cases.
633 Fix core dump on DragonFlyBSD due to -1 return value from
634 sysconf(_SC_GETPW_R_SIZE_MAX).
636 Cleaned up several memory leaks
638 Eliminated a few, rare segmentation faults and a double-free.
640 Fix libnotmuch library to only export notmuch API functions
642 Previous release of the notmuch library also exported some Xapian
643 C++ exception type symbols. These were never part of the library
644 interface and were never intended to be exported.
646 Emacs-interface bug fixes
647 -------------------------
648 Display any unexpected output or errors from "notmuch search" invocations
650 Previously any misformatted output or trailing error messages were
651 silently ignored. This output is now clearly displayed. This fix was
652 very helpful in identifying and fixing the bug described below.
654 Fix bug where some threads would be missing from large search results
656 When a search returned a "large" number of results, the emacs
657 interface was incorrectly dropping one thread every time the output
658 of the "notmuch search" process spanned the emacs read-buffer. This
661 Avoid re-compression of .gz files (and similar) when saving attachment
663 Emacs was being too clever for its own good and trying to
664 re-compress pre-compressed .gz files when saving such attachments
665 (potentially corrupting the attachment). The emacs interface is
666 fixed to avoid this bug.
668 Fix hiding of a message when a previously-hidden citation is visible
670 Previously the citation would remain visible in this case. This is
671 fixed so that hiding a message hides all parts.
673 Notmuch 0.5 (2010-11-11)
674 ========================
675 New, general features
676 ---------------------
677 Maildir-flag synchronization
679 Notmuch now knows how to synchronize flags in maildir filenames with
680 tags in the notmuch database. The following flag/tag mappings are
689 'S' unread (added when 'S' flag is not present)
691 The synchronization occurs in both directions, (for example, adding
692 the 'S' flag to a file will cause the "unread" tag to be added, and
693 adding the "replied" tag to a message will cause the file to be
694 renamed with an 'R' flag).
696 This synchronization is enabled by default for users of the
697 command-line interface, (though only files in directories named
698 "cur" or "new" will be renamed). It can be disabled by setting the
699 new maildir.synchronize_flags option in the configuration file. For
702 notmuch config set maildir.synchronize_flags false
704 Users upgrading may also want to run "notmuch setup" once (just
705 accept the existing configuration) to get a new, nicely-commented
706 [maildir] section added to the configuration file.
708 For users of the notmuch library, the new synchronization
709 functionality is available with the following two new functions:
711 notmuch_message_maildir_flags_to_tags
712 notmuch_message_tags_to_maildir_flags
714 It is anticipated that future improvements to this support will
715 allow for safe synchronization of the 'T' flag with the "deleted"
716 tag, as well as support for custom flag/tag mappings.
720 Support for querying multiple filenames for a single message
722 It is common for the mailstore to contain multiple files with the
723 same message ID. Previously, notmuch would always hide these
724 duplicate files, (returning a single, arbitrary filename with
725 notmuch_message_get_filename).
727 With this release, library users can access all filenames for a
728 message with the new function:
730 notmuch_message_get_filenames
732 Together with notmuch_filenames_valid, notmuch_filenames_get, and
733 notmuch_filenames_move_to_next it is now possible to iterate over
734 all available filenames for a given message.
736 New command-line features
737 -------------------------
738 New "notmuch show --format=raw" for getting at original email contents
740 This new feature allows for a fully-functional email client to be
741 built on top of the notmuch command-line without needing any direct
742 access to the mail store itself.
744 For example, it's now possible to run "emacs -f notmuch" on a local
745 machine with only ssh access to the mail store/notmuch database. To
746 do this, simply set the notmuch-command variable in emacs to the
747 name of a script containing:
749 ssh user@host notmuch "$@"
751 If the ssh client has enabled connection sharing (ControlMaster
752 option in OpenSSH), the emacs interface can be quite responsive this
757 Fix "notmuch search" to print nothing when nothing matches
759 The 0.4 release had a bug in which:
761 notmuch search <expression-with-no-matches>
763 would produce a single blank line of output, (where previous
764 versions would produce no output. This fix also causes a change in
765 the --format=json output, (which would previously produce "[]" and
766 now produces nothing).
768 Emacs interface improvements
769 ----------------------------
770 Fix to allow pipe ('|') command to work when using notmuch over ssh
772 Fix count of lines in hidden signatures.
774 Omit repeated subject lines in (collapsed) thread display.
776 Display current thread subject in a header line.
778 Provide a "c i" binding to copy a thread ID from the search view.
780 Allow for notmuch-fcc-dirs to have a value of nil.
782 Also, the more complex form of notmuch-fcc-dirs now has a slightly
783 different format. It no longer has a special first-element, fallback
784 string. Instead it's now a list of cons cells where the car of each
785 cell is a regular expression to be matched against the sender
786 address, and the cdr is the name of a folder to use for an FCC. So
787 the old fallback behavior can be achieved by including a final cell
788 of (".*" . "default-fcc-folder").
790 Vim interface improvements
791 --------------------------
792 Felipe Contreras provided a number of updates for the vim interface.
794 These include optimizations, support for newer versions of vim, fixed
795 support for sending mail on modern systems, new commands, and
800 Added initial ruby bindings in bindings/ruby
802 Notmuch 0.4 (2010-11-01)
803 ========================
804 New command-line features
805 -------------------------
806 notmuch search --output=(summary|threads|messages|tags|files)
808 This new option allows for particular items to be returned from
809 notmuch searches. The "summary" option is the default and behaves
810 just as "notmuch search" has historically behaved.
812 The new option values allow for thread IDs, message IDs, lists of
813 tags, and lists of filenames to be returned from searches. It is
814 expected that this new option will be very useful in shell
815 scripts. For example:
817 for file in $(notmuch search --output=files <search-terms>); do
818 <operations-on> "$file"
821 notmuch show --format=mbox <search-specification>
823 This new option allows for the messages matching a search
824 specification to be presented as an mbox. Specifically the "mboxrd"
825 format is used which allows for reversible quoting of lines
826 beginning with "From ". A reader should remove a single '>' from the
827 beginning of all lines beginning with one or more '>' characters
828 followed by the 5 characters "From ".
830 notmuch config [get|set] <section>.<item> [value ...]
832 The new top-level "config" command allows for any value in the
833 notmuch configuration file to be queried or set to a new value. Both
834 single-valued and multi-valued items are supported, as our any
835 custom items stored in the configuration file.
837 Avoid setting Bcc header in "notmuch reply"
839 We decided that this was a bit heavy-handed as the actual mail
840 user-agent should be responsible for setting any Bcc option. Also,
841 see below for the notmuch/emacs user-agent now setting an Fcc by
842 default rather than Bcc.
846 Add notmuch_query_get_query_string and notmuch_query_get_sort
848 These are simply functions for querying properties of a
849 notmuch_query_t object.
853 Enable Fcc of all sent messages by default (to "sent" directory)
855 All messages sent from the emacs interface will now be saved to the
856 notmuch mail store where they will be incorporated to the database
857 by the next "notmuch new". By default, messages are saved to the
858 "sent" directory at the top-level of the mail store. This directory
859 can be customized by means of the "Notmuch Fcc Dirs" option in the
860 notmuch customize interface.
862 Ability to all open messages in a thread to a pipe
864 Historically, the '|' keybinding allows for piping a single message
865 to an external command. Now, by prefixing this key with a prefix
866 argument, (for example, by pressing "Control-U |"), all open
867 messages in the current thread will be sent to the external command.
869 Optional support for detecting inline patches
871 This hook is disabled by default but can be enabled with a checkbox
872 under "Notmuch Show Insert Text/Plain Hook" in the notmuch customize
873 interface. It allows for inline patches to be detected and treated
874 as if they were attachments, (with context-sensitive highlighting).
876 Automatically tag messages as "replied" when sending a reply
878 Messages replied to within the emacs interface will now be tagged as
879 "replied". This feature can easily be customized to add or remove
880 other tags as well. For example, a user might use a tag of
881 "needs-reply" and can configure this feature to automatically remove
882 that tag when replying. See "Notmuch Message Mark Replied" in the
883 notmuch customize interface.
885 Allow search-result color specifications to overlay each other
887 For example, one tag can specify the background color of matching
888 lines, while another can specify the foreground. With this change,
889 both settings will now be visible simultaneously, (which was not the
890 case in previous releases). See "Notmuch Search Line Faces" in the
891 notmuch customize interface.
893 Make hidden author names still available for incremental search.
895 When there is insufficient space to display all authors of a thread
896 in search results, the names of hidden authors are now still made
897 available to emacs' incremental search commands. As the user
898 searches, matching lines will temporarily expand to show the hidden
901 New binding of Control-TAB (works like TAB in reverse)
903 Many notmuch nodes already use TAB to navigate forward through
904 various items allowing actions, (message headers, email attachments,
905 etc.). The new Control-TAB binding operates similarly but in the
908 New build-system features
909 -------------------------
910 Various portability fixes have been applied
912 These include fixes for build failures on at least Solaris, FreeBSD,
913 and Fedora systems. We're hopeful that the notmuch code base is now
914 more portable than ever before.
916 Arrange for libnotmuch to be found automatically after make install
918 The notmuch build system is now careful to help the user avoid
919 errors of the form "libnotmuch.so could not be found" immediately
920 after installing. This support takes two forms:
922 1. If the library is installed to a system directory,
923 (configured in /etc/ld.so.conf), then "make install" will
924 automatically run ldconfig.
926 2. If the library is installed to a non-system directory, the
927 build system adds a DR_RUNPATH entry to the final binary
928 pointing to the directory to which the library is installed.
930 When this support works, the user should be able to run notmuch
931 immediately after "make install", without any errors trying to find
932 the notmuch library, and without having to manually set environment
933 variables such as LD_LIBRARY_PATH.
935 Check compiler/linker options before using them
937 The configure script now carefully checks that any desired
938 compilation options, (whether for enabling compiler warnings, or for
939 embedding rpath, etc.), are supported. Only supported options are
940 used in the resulting Makefile.
942 New test-suite features
943 -----------------------
944 New modularization of test suite.
946 Thanks to a gracious relicensing of the test-suite infrastructure
947 from the git project, notmuch now has a modular test suite. This
948 provides the ability to run individual sections of the test suite
949 rather than the whole things. It also provides better summary of
950 test results, with support for tests that are expected to fail
951 (BROKEN and FIXED) in addition to PASS and FAIL. Finally, it makes
952 it easy to run the test suite within valgrind (pass --valgrind to
953 notmuch-test or to any sub-script) which has been very useful.
955 New testing of emacs interface.
957 The test suite has been augmented to allow automated testing of the
958 emacs interfaces. So far, this includes basic searches, display of
959 threads, and tag manipulation. This also includes a test that a new
960 message can successfully be sent out through a (dummy) SMTP server
961 and that said message is successfully integrated into the notmuch
962 database via the FCC setting.
966 Fix potential corruption of database when "notmuch new " is interrupted.
968 Previously, an interruption of "notmuch new" would (rarely) result
969 in a corrupt database. The corruption would manifest itself by a
970 persistent error of the form:
972 document ID of 1234 has no thread ID
974 The message-adding code has been carefully audited and reworked to
975 avoid this sort of corruption regardless of when it is interrupted.
977 Fix failure with extremely long message ID headers.
979 Previously, a message with an extremely long message ID, (say, more
980 than 300 characters), would fail to be added to notmuch, (triggering
981 Xapian exceptions). This has now been fixed.
983 Fix for messages with "charset=unknown-8bit"
985 Previously, messages with this charset would cause notmuch to emit a
986 GMime warning, (which would then trip up emacs or other interfaces
987 parsing the notmuch results).
989 Fix notmuch_query_search_threads function to return NULL on any exception
991 Fix "notmuch search" to return non-zero if notmuch_query_search_threads fails
993 Previously, this command could confusingly report a Xapian
994 exception, yet still return an error code of 0. It now correctly
995 returns a failing error code of 1 in this case.
999 Fix to handle a message with a subject containing, for example "[1234]"
1001 Previously, a message subject containing a sequence of digits within
1002 square brackets would cause the emacs interface to mis-parse the
1003 output of "notmuch search". This would result in the message being
1004 mis-displayed and prevent the user from manipulating the message in
1005 the emacs interface.
1007 Fix to correctly handle message IDs containing ".."
1009 The emacs interface now properly quotes message IDs to avoid a
1010 Xapian bug in which the ".." within a message ID would be
1011 misinterpreted as a numeric range specification.
1013 Python-binding fixes
1014 --------------------
1015 The python bindings for notmuch have been updated to work with python3.
1017 Debian-specific fixes
1018 ---------------------
1019 Fix emacs initialization so "M-x notmuch" works for users by default.
1021 Now, a new Debian user can immediately run "emacs -f notmuch" after
1022 "apt-get install notmuch". Previously, the user would have had to
1023 edit the ~/.emacs file to add "(require 'notmuch)" before this would
1026 Notmuch 0.3.1 (2010-04-27)
1027 ==========================
1030 Fix an infinite loop in "notmuch reply"
1032 This bug could be triggered by replying to a message where the
1033 user's primary email address did not appear in the To: header and
1034 the user had not configured any secondary email addresses. The bug
1035 was a simple re-use of the same iterator variable in nested loops.
1037 Fix a potential SEGV in "notmuch search"
1039 This bug could be triggered by an author name ending in a ','.
1040 Admittedly - that's almost certainly a spam email, but we never
1041 want notmuch to crash.
1045 Fix calculations for line wrapping in the primary "notmuch" view.
1047 Fix Fcc support to prompt to create a directory if the specified Fcc
1048 directory does not exist.
1052 Fix build on OpenSolaris (at least) due to missing 'extern "C"' block.
1054 Without this, the C++ sources could not find strcasestr and the
1055 final linking of notmuch would fail.
1057 Notmuch 0.3 (2010-04-27)
1058 ========================
1059 New command-line features
1060 -------------------------
1061 User-configurable tags for new messages
1063 A new "new.tags" option is available in the configuration file to
1064 determine which tags are applied to new messages. Run "notmuch
1065 setup" to generate new documentation within ~/.notmuch-config on how
1066 to specify this value.
1068 Threads search results named based on subjects that match search
1070 This means that when new mails arrived to a thread you've previously
1071 read, and the new mails have a new subject, you will see that
1072 subject in the search results rather than the old subject.
1074 Faster operation of "notmuch tag" (avoid unneeded sorting)
1076 Since the user just wants to tag all matching messages, we can make
1077 things perform a bit faster by avoiding the sort.
1079 Even Better guessing of From: header for "notmuch reply"
1081 Notmuch now looks at a number of headers when trying to figure out
1082 the best From: header to use in a reply. This is helpful if you have
1083 several configured email addresses, and you also subscribe to various
1084 mailing lists with different addresses, (so that mails you are
1085 replying to won't always include your subscribed address in the To:
1088 Indication of author names that match a search
1090 When notmuch displays threads as the result of a search, it now
1091 lists the authors that match the search before listing the other
1092 authors in the thread. It inserts a pipe '|' symbol between the last
1093 matching and first non-matching author. This is especially useful in
1094 a search that includes tag:unread. Now the authors of the unread
1095 messages in the thread are listed first.
1097 New: Python bindings
1098 --------------------
1099 Sebastian Spaeth has contributed his python bindings for the notmuch
1100 library to the central repository. These bindings were previously
1101 known as "cnotmuch" within python but have now been renamed to be
1102 accessible with a simple, and more official-looking "import notmuch".
1104 The bindings have already proven very useful as people proficient in
1105 python have been able to easily develop programs to do notmuch-based
1106 searches for email-address completion, maildir-flag synchronization,
1109 These bindings are available within the bindings/python directory, but
1110 are not yet integrated into the top-level Makefiles, nor the top-level
1111 package-building scripts. Improvements are welcome.
1113 Emacs interface improvements
1114 ----------------------------
1115 An entirely new initial view for notmuch, (friendly yet powerful)
1117 Some of us call the new view "notmuch hello" but you can get at it
1118 by simply calling "emacs -f notmuch". The new view provides a search
1119 bar where new searches can be performed. It also displays a list of
1120 recent searches, along with a button to save any of these, giving it
1121 a new name as a "saved search". Many people find these "saved
1122 searches" one of the most convenient ways of organizing their mail,
1123 (providing all of the features of "folders" in other mail clients,
1124 but without any of the disadvantages).
1126 Finally, this view can also optionally display all of the tags that
1127 exist in the database, along with a count for each tag, and a custom
1128 search of messages with that tag that's simply a click (or keypress)
1131 Note: For users that liked the original mode of "emacs -f notmuch"
1132 immediately displaying a particular search result, we
1133 recommend instead running something like:
1135 emacs --eval '(notmuch search "tag:inbox" t)'
1137 The "t" means to sort the messages in an "oldest first" order,
1138 (as notmuch would do previously by default). You can also
1139 leave that off to have your search results in "newest first"
1142 Full-featured "customize" support for configuring notmuch
1144 Notmuch now plugs in well to the emacs "customize" mode to make it
1145 much simpler to find things about the notmuch interface that can be
1146 tweaked by the user.
1148 You can get to this mode by starting at the main "Customize" menu in
1149 emacs, then browsing through "Applications", "Mail", and
1150 "Notmuch". Or you can go straight to "M-x customize-group"
1153 Once you're at the customize screen, you'll see a list of documented
1154 options that can be manipulated along with checkboxes, drop-down
1155 selectors, and text-entry boxes for configuring the various
1158 Support for doing tab-completion of email addresses
1160 This support currently relies on an external program,
1161 (notmuch-addresses), that is not yet shipped with notmuch
1162 itself. But multiple, suitable implementations of this program have
1163 already been written that generate address completions by doing
1164 notmuch searches of your email collection. For example, providing
1165 first those addresses that you have composed messages to in the
1168 One such program (implemented in python with the python bindings to
1169 notmuch) is available via:
1171 git clone http://jkr.acm.jhu.edu/git/notmuch_addresses.git
1173 Install that program as notmuch-addresses on your PATH, and then
1174 hitting TAB on a partial email address or name within the To: or Cc:
1175 line of an email message will provide matching completions.
1177 Support for file-based (Fcc) delivery of sent messages to mail store
1179 This isn't yet enabled by default. To enable this, one will have to
1180 set the "Notmuch Fcc Dirs" setting within the notmuch customize
1181 screen, (see its documentation there for details). We anticipate
1182 making this automatic in a future release.
1184 New 'G' key binding to trigger mail refresh (G == "Get new mail")
1186 The 'G' key works wherever '=' works. Before refreshing the screen
1187 it calls an external program that can be used to poll email servers,
1188 run notmuch new and setup specific tags for the new emails. The
1189 script to be called should be configured with the "Notmuch Poll
1190 Script" setting in the customize interface. This script will
1191 typically invoke "notmuch new" and then perhaps several "notmuch
1194 Implement emacs message display with the JSON output from notmuch.
1196 This is much more robust than the previous implementation, (where
1197 some HTML mails and mail quoting the notmuch code with the delimiter
1198 characters in it would cause the parser to fall over).
1200 Better handling of HTML messages and MIME attachments (inline images!)
1202 Allow for any MIME parts that emacs can display to be displayed
1203 inline. This includes inline viewing of image attachments, (provided
1204 the window is large enough to fit the image at its natural size).
1206 Much more robust handling of HTML messages. Currently both text/plain
1207 and text/html alternates will be rendered next to each other. In a
1208 future release, users will be able to decide to see only one or the
1209 other representation.
1211 Each attachment now has its own button so that attachments can be
1212 saved individually (the 'w' key is still available to save all
1215 Customizable support for tidying of text/plain message content
1217 Many new functions are available for tidying up message
1218 content. These include options such as wrapping long lines,
1219 compressing duplicate blank lines, etc.
1221 Most of these are disabled by default, but can easily be enabled by
1222 clicking the available check boxes under the "Notmuch Show Insert
1223 Text/Plain Hook" within the notmuch customize screen.
1225 New support for searchable citations (even when hidden)
1227 When portions of overly-long citations are hidden, the contents of
1228 these citations will still be available for emacs' standard
1229 "incremental search" functions. When the search matches any portion
1230 of a hidden citation, the citation will become visible temporarily
1231 to display the search result.
1233 More flexible handling of header visibility
1235 As an answer to complaints from many users, the To, Cc, and Date
1236 headers of messages are no longer hidden by default. For those users
1237 that liked that these were hidden, a new "Notmuch Messages Headers
1238 Visible" option in the customize interface can be set to nil. The
1239 visibility of headers can still be toggled on a per-message basis
1240 with the 'h' keybinding.
1242 For users that don't want to see some subset of those headers, the
1243 new "Notmuch Message Headers" variable can be customized to list
1244 only those headers that should be present in the display of a message.
1246 The Return key now toggles message visibility anywhere
1248 Previously this worked only on the first summary-line of a message.
1250 Customizable formatting of search results
1252 The user can easily customize the order, width, and formatting of
1253 the various fields in a "notmuch search" buffer. See the "Notmuch
1254 Search Result Format" section of the customize interface.
1256 Generate nicer names for search buffers when using a saved search.
1258 Add a notmuch User-Agent header when sending mail from notmuch/emacs.
1260 New keybinding (M-Ret) to open all collapsed messages in a thread.
1264 Provide a new NOTMUCH_SORT_UNSORTED value for queries
1266 This can be somewhat faster when sorting simply isn't desired. For
1267 example when collecting a set of messages that will all be
1268 manipulated identically, (adding a tag, removing a tag, deleting the
1269 messages), then there's no advantage to sorting the messages by
1274 Fix to compile against GMime 2.6
1276 Previously notmuch insisted on being able to find GMime 2.4, (even
1277 though GMime 2.6 would have worked all along).
1279 Fix configure script to accept (and ignore) various standard options.
1281 For example, those that the Gentoo build scripts expect configure to
1282 accept are now all accepted.
1286 A large number of new tests for the many new features.
1288 Better display of output from failed tests.
1290 Now shows failures with diff rather than forcing the user to gaze at
1291 complete actual and expected output looking for deviation.
1293 Notmuch 0.2 (2010-04-16)
1294 ========================
1295 This is the second release of the notmuch mail system, with actual
1296 detailed release notes this time!
1298 This release consists of a number of minor new features that make
1299 notmuch more pleasant to use, and a few fairly major bug fixes.
1301 We didn't quite hit our release target of "about a week" from the 0.1
1302 release, (0.2 is happening 11 days after 0.1), but we hope to do
1303 better for next week. Look forward to some major features coming to
1304 notmuch in subsequent releases.
1310 Better guessing of From: header.
1312 Notmuch now tries harder to guess which configured address should be
1313 used as the From: line in a "notmuch reply". It will examine the
1314 Received: headers if it fails to find any configured address in To:
1315 or Cc:. This allows it to often choose the correct address even when
1316 replying to a message sent to a mailing list, and not directly to a
1319 Make "notmuch count" with no arguments count all messages
1321 Previously, it was hard to construct a search term that was
1322 guaranteed to match all messages.
1324 Provide a new special-case search term of "*" to match all messages.
1326 This can be used in any command accepting a search term, such as
1327 "notmuch search '*'". Note that you'll want to take care that the
1328 shell doesn't expand * against the current files. And note that the
1329 support for "*" is a special case. It's only meaningful as a single
1330 search term and loses its special meaning when combined with any
1333 Automatically detect thread connections even when a parent message is
1336 Previously, if two or more message were received with a common
1337 parent, but that parent was not received, then these messages would
1338 not be recognized as belonging to the same thread. This is now fixed
1339 so that such messages are properly connected in a thread.
1343 Fix potential data loss in "notmuch new" with SIGINT
1345 One code path in "notmuch new" was not properly handling
1346 SIGINT. Previously, this could lead to messages being removed from
1347 the database (and their tags being lost) if the user pressed
1348 Control-C while "notmuch new" was working.
1350 Fix segfault when a message includes a MIME part that is empty.
1352 Fix handling of non-ASCII characters with --format=json
1354 Previously, characters outside the range of 7-bit ASCII were
1355 silently dropped from the JSON output. This led to corrupted display
1356 of utf-8 content in the upcoming notmuch web-based frontends.
1358 Fix headers to be properly decoded in "notmuch reply"
1360 Previously, the user might see:
1362 Subject: Re: =?iso-8859-2?q?Rozlu=E8ka?=
1366 Subject: Re: Rozlučka
1368 The former text is properly encoded to be RFC-compliant SMTP, will
1369 be sent correctly, and will be properly decoded by the
1370 recipient. But the user trying to edit the reply would likely be
1371 unable to read or edit that field in its encoded form.
1373 Emacs client features
1374 ---------------------
1375 Show the last few lines of citations as well as the first few lines.
1377 It's often the case that the last sentence of a citation is what is
1378 being replied to directly, so the last few lines are often much more
1379 important. The number of lines shown at the beginning and end of any
1380 citation can be configured, (notmuch-show-citation-lines-prefix and
1381 notmuch-show-citation-lines-suffix).
1383 The '+' and '-' commands in the search view can now add and remove
1386 Selective bulk tagging is now possible by selecting a region of
1387 threads and then using either the '+' or '-' keybindings. Bulk
1388 tagging is still available for all threads matching the current
1389 search with the '*' binding.
1391 More meaningful buffer names for thread-view buffers.
1393 Notmuch now uses the Subject of the thread as the buffer
1394 name. Previously it was using the thread ID, which is a meaningless
1397 Provide for customized colors of threads in search view based on tags.
1399 See the documentation of notmuch-search-line-faces, (or us "M-x
1400 customize" and browse to the "notmuch" group within "Applications"
1401 and "Mail"), for details on how to configure this colorization.
1403 Build-system features
1404 ---------------------
1405 Add support to properly build libnotmuch on Darwin systems (OS X).
1407 Add support to configure for many standard options.
1409 We include actual support for:
1411 --includedir --mandir --sysconfdir
1413 And accept and silently ignore several more:
1415 --build --infodir --libexecdir --localstatedir
1416 --disable-maintainer-mode --disable-dependency-tracking
1418 Install emacs client in "make install" rather than requiring a
1419 separate "make install-emacs".
1421 Automatically compute versions numbers between releases.
1423 This support uses the git-describe notation, so a version such as
1424 0.1-144-g43cbbfc indicates a version that is 144 commits since the
1425 0.1 release and is available as git commit "43cbbfc".
1427 Add a new "make test" target to run the test suite and actually verify
1430 Notmuch 0.1 (2010-04-05)
1431 ========================
1432 This is the first release of the notmuch mail system.
1434 It includes the libnotmuch library, the notmuch command-line
1435 interface, and an emacs-based interface to notmuch.
1437 Note: Notmuch will work best with Xapian 1.0.18 (or later) or Xapian
1438 1.1.4 (or later). Previous versions of Xapian (whether 1.0 or 1.1) had
1439 a performance bug that made notmuch very slow when modifying
1440 tags. This would cause distracting pauses when reading mail while
1441 notmuch would wait for Xapian when removing the "inbox" and "unread"
1442 tags from messages in a thread.
projects / notmuch / blob