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.
34 Search avoids opening and parsing message files
36 We now store more information in the database so search no longer
37 has to open every message file to get basic headers. This can
38 improve search speed by as much as 10X, but taking advantage of this
39 requires a database rebuild:
41 notmuch dump > notmuch.dump
42 # Backup, then remove notmuch database ($MAIL/.notmuch)
44 notmuch restore notmuch.dump
46 Notmuch 0.9 (2011-10-01)
47 ========================
52 Correct handling of interruptions during "notmuch new"
54 "notmuch new" now operates as a series of small, self-consistent
55 transactions, so it can correctly resume after an interruption or
56 crash. Previously, interruption could lose existing tags, fail to
57 detect messages on resume, or leave the database in a state
58 temporarily or permanently inconsistent with the mail store.
65 notmuch_database_begin_atomic and notmuch_database_end_atomic allow
66 multiple database operations to be performed atomically.
68 notmuch_database_find_message_by_filename does exactly what it says.
72 notmuch_database_find_message (and n_d_f_m_by_filename) now return
73 a status indicator and uses an output parameter for the
74 message. This change required changing the SONAME of libnotmuch to
77 Python bindings changes
78 -----------------------
80 - Re-encode python unicode objects to utf-8 before passing back to
82 - Support Database().begin_atomic()/end_atomic()
83 - Support Database().find_message_by_filename()
84 NB! This needs a db opened in READ-WRITE mode currently, or it will crash
85 the python process. The is a limitation (=bug) of the underlying libnotmuch.
86 - Fixes where we would not throw NotmuchErrors when we should (Justus Winter)
87 - Update for n_d_find_message* API changes (see above).
92 - Wrap new library functions notmuch_database_{begin,end}_atomic.
93 - Add new exception Notmuch::UnbalancedAtomicError.
94 - Rename destroy to destroy! according to Ruby naming conventions.
95 - Update for n_d_find_message* API changes (see above).
100 * Add gpg callback to crypto sigstatus buttons to retrieve/refresh
102 * Add notmuch-show-refresh-view function (and corresponding binding)
103 to refresh the view of a notmuch-show buffer.
105 Reply formatting cleanup
106 ------------------------
108 "notmuch reply" no longer includes notification that non-leafnode
109 MIME parts are being suppressed.
111 Notmuch 0.8 (2011-09-10)
112 ========================
114 Improved handling of message/rfc822 parts
116 Both in the CLI and the emacs interface. Output of rfc822 parts now
117 includes the primary headers, as well as the body and all subparts.
118 Output of the completely raw rfc822-formatted message, including all
119 headers, is unfortunately not yet supported (but hopefully will be
122 Improved Build system portability
124 Certain parts of the shell script generating notmuch.sym were
125 specific to the GNU versions of sed and nm. The new version should
126 be more portable to e.g. OpenBSD.
128 Documentation update for Ruby bindings
130 Added documentation, typo fixes, and improved support for rdoc.
132 Unicode, iterator, PEP8 changes for python bindings
134 - PEP8 (code formatting) changes for python files.
135 - Remove Tags.__len__ ; see 0.6 release notes for motivation.
136 - Decode headers as UTF8, encode (unicode) database paths as UTF8.
138 Notmuch 0.7 (2011-08-01)
139 ========================
141 Vim interface improvements
142 --------------------------
144 Jason Woofenden provided a number of bug fixes for the Vim interface
146 * fix citation/signature fold lengths
147 * fix cig/cit parsing within multipart/*
148 * fix on-screen instructions for show-signature
149 * fix from list reformatting in search view
150 * fix space key: now archives (did opposite)
152 Uwe Kleine-König contributed
154 * use full path for sendmail/doc fix
155 * fix compose temp file name
157 Python Bindings changes
158 -----------------------
160 Sebastian Spaeth contributed two changes related to unicode and UTF8:
162 * message tags are now explicitly unicode
163 * query string is encoded as a UTF8 byte string
165 Build-System improvments
166 ------------------------
168 Generate notmuch.sym after the relevant object files
170 This fixes a bug in parallel building. Thanks to Thomas Jost for the
173 Notmuch 0.6.1 (2011-07-17)
174 ==========================
179 Re-export Xapian exception typeinfo symbols.
181 It turned out our aggressive symbol hiding caused problems for
182 people running gcc 4.4.5.
184 Notmuch 0.6 (2011-07-01)
185 =======================
186 New, general features
187 ---------------------
188 Folder-based searching
190 Notmuch queries can now include a search term to match the
191 directories in which mail files are stored (within the mail
192 storage). The syntax is as follows:
196 For example, one might use things such as:
202 to match any path containing a directory "spam", "work/todo", or
203 containing a directory starting with "2011-", respectively.
205 This feature is particularly useful for users of delivery-agent
206 software (such as procmail or maildrop) that is filtering mail and
207 delivering it to particular folders, or users of systems such as
208 Gmail that use filesystem directories to indicate message tags.
210 NOTE: Only messages that are newly indexed with this version of
211 notmuch will be searchable with folder: terms. In order to enable
212 this feature for all mail, the entire notmuch index will need to be
215 notmuch dump > notmuch.dump
216 # Backup, then remove notmuch database ($MAIL/.notmuch)
218 notmuch restore notmuch.dump
222 Both the command line interface and the emacs-interface have new
223 support for PGP/MIME, detailed below. Thanks to Daniel Kahn Gillmor
224 and Jameson Graef Rollins for making this happen.
226 New, automatic tags: "signed" and "encrypted"
228 These tags will automatically be applied to messages containing
229 multipart/signed and multipart/encrypted parts.
231 NOTE: Only messages that are newly indexed with this version of
232 notmuch will receive these tags.
234 New command-line features
235 -------------------------
236 Add new "notmuch show --verify" option for signature verification
238 This option instruct notmuch to verify the signature of
239 PGP/MIME-signed parts.
241 Add new "notmuch show --decrypt" and "notmuch reply --decrypt" options
243 This option instructs notmuch to decrypt PGP/MIME-encrypted parts.
244 Note that this feature currently requires gpg-agent and a passphrase entry
245 tool (e.g. pinentry-gtk or pinentry-curses).
247 Proper nesting of multipart parts in "notmuch show" output
249 MIME parts are now display with proper nesting to reflect original
250 MIME hierarchy of a message. This allows clients to correctly
251 analyze the MIME structure, (such as, for example, determining to
252 which parts a signature part applies).
254 Add new "notmuch show --part" option
256 This is a replacement for the older "notmuch part" command, (which
257 is now deprecated—it should still work as always, but is no longer
258 documented). Putting part output under "notmuch show" allows for all
259 of the "notmuch show" options to be applied when extracting a single
260 part, (such as --format=json for extracting a message part with JSON
263 Deprecate "notmuch search-tags", (in favor of "notmuch search --output=tags *")
265 The "notmuch search-tags" sub-command has been redundant since the
266 addition of the --output=tags option to "notmuch search". We now
267 make that more clear by deprecating "notmuch search-tags", (dropping
268 it from the documentation). We do continue to support the old syntax
269 by translating it internally to the new call.
271 Performance improvements
272 ------------------------
273 Faster searches (by doing fewer searches to construct threads)
275 Whenever a user asks for search results as threads, notmuch first
276 performs a search for messages matching the query, then performs
277 additional searches to find other messages in the resulting threads.
279 Removing inefficiencies and redundancies in these secondary searches
280 results in a measured speedups of 1.5x for a typical search.
282 Faster searches (by doing fewer passes to gather message data)
284 Optimizing Xapian data access patterns (using a single pass to get
285 all message-document data rather than a pass for each data type)
286 results in a measured speedup of 1.7x for a typical search.
288 The benefits of this optimization combine with the preceding
289 optimization. With both in place, Austin Clements measured a speedup
290 of 2.5x for a search of all messages in his inbox (was 4.5s, now
291 1.8s). Thanks, Austin!
293 Faster initial indexing
295 More efficient indexing of new messages results in a measured
296 speedup of 1.4x for the initial indexing of 3 GB of mail (1h 14m
297 rather than 1h 46m). Thanks to Austin Clements and Michal Sojka.
299 Make "notmuch new" faster for unchanged directories
301 Optimizing to not do any further examinations of sub-directories
302 when the filesystem indicates that a directory is unchanged from the
303 last "notmuch new" results in measured speedups of 8.5 for the "No
304 new mail" case, (was 0.77s, now 0.09s). Thanks to Karel Zak.
306 New emacs-interface features
307 ----------------------------
309 Support for PGP/MIME (GnuPG)
311 Automatically indicate validity of signatures for multipart/signed
312 messages. Automatically display decrypted content for
313 multipart/encrypted messages. See the emacs variable
314 notmuch-crypto-process-mime for more information. Note that this
315 needs gpg-agent and a pinentry tool just as the command line tools.
316 Also note there is no support SMIME yet.
318 Output of pipe command is now displayed if pipe command fails
320 This is extremely useful in the common use case of piping a patch to
321 "git am". If git fails to cleanly merge the patch the error messages
322 from the failed merge are now clearly displayed to the user, (where
323 previously they were silently hidden from the user).
325 User-selectable From address
327 A user can choose which configured email addresses should be used as
328 the From address whenever composing a new message. To do so, simply
329 press C-u before the command which will open a new message. Emacs
330 will prompt for the from address to use.
332 The user can customize the "Notmuch Identities" setting in the
333 notmuch customize group in order to use addresses other than those in
334 the notmuch configuration file if desired.
336 The user can also choose to always be prompted for the from address
337 when composing a new message (without having to use C-u) by setting
338 the "Notmuch Always Prompt For Sender" option in the notmuch
341 Hiding of repeated subjects in collapsed thread view
343 In notmuch-show mode, if a collapsed message has the same subject as
344 its parent, the subject is not shown.
346 Automatic detection and hiding of original message in top-posted message
348 When a message contains a line looking something like:
350 ----- Original Message -----
352 emacs hides this and all subsequent lines as an "original message",
353 (allowing the user to click or press enter on the "original message"
354 button to display it again). This makes the handling of top-posted
355 citations work much like conventional citations.
357 New hooks for running code when tags are modified
359 Some users want to perform additional actions whenever a particular
360 tag is added/removed from a message. This could be used to, for
361 example, interface with some external spam-recognition training
362 tool. To facilitate this, two new hooks are added which can be
363 modified in the following settings of the notmuch customize group:
365 Notmuch Before Tag Hook
366 Notmuch After Tag Hook
368 New optional support for hiding some multipart/alternative parts
370 Many emails are sent with redundant content within a
371 multipart/alternative group (such as a text/plain part as well as a
372 text/html part). Users can configure the setting:
374 Notmuch Show All Multipart/Alternative Parts
376 to "off" in the notmuch customize group to have the interface
377 automatically hide some part alternatives (such as text/html
378 parts). This new part hiding is not configured by default yet
379 because there's not yet a simple way to re-display such a hidden
380 part if it is not actually redundant with a displayed part.
382 Better rendering of text/x-vcalendar parts
384 These parts are now displayed in a format suitable for use with the
387 Avoid getting confused by Subject and Author fields with newline characters
389 Replacing all characters with ASCII code less than 32 with a question mark.
391 Cleaner display of From line in email messages (remove double quotes,
392 and drop "name" if it's actually just a repeat of the email address).
394 Vim interface improvements
395 --------------------------
396 Felipe Contreras provided a number of updates for the vim interface:
398 * Using sendmail directly rather than mailx,
399 * Implementing archive in show view
400 * Add support to mark as read in show and search views
401 * Add delete commands
404 Bindings improvements
405 ---------------------
406 Ruby bindings are now much more complete
408 Including QUERY.sort, QUERY.to_s, MESSAGE.maildir_flags_to_tags,
409 MESSAGE.tags_to_maildir_flags, and MESSAGE.get_filenames
411 * Python bindings have been upodated and extended
412 (docs online at http://packages.python.org/notmuch/)
415 - Message().get_filenames(),
416 - Message().tags_to_maildir_flags(),Message().maildir_flags_to_tags()
417 - list(Threads()) and list(Messages) works now
419 - Message().__cmp__() and __hash__()
420 These allow, for example:
423 As well as set arithmetic on Messages():
425 s1, s2= set(msgs1), set(msgs2)
430 - len(Messages()) as it exausted the iterator.
431 Use len(list(Messages())) or
432 Query.count_messages() to get the length.
434 Added initial Go bindings in bindings/go
436 New build-system features
437 -------------------------
438 Added support for building in a directory other than the source directory
440 This can be used with the widely-supported idiom of simply running
441 the configure script from some other directory:
448 Fix to save configure options for future, implicit runs of configure
450 When a user updates the source (such as with "git pull") calling
451 "make" may cause an automatic re-run of the configure script. When
452 this happens, the configure script will automatically be called with
453 the same options the user originally passed in the most-recent
454 manual invocation of configure.
456 New test-suite feature
457 ----------------------
458 Binary for bash for running test suite now located via PATH.
460 The notmuch test suite requires a fairly recent version of bash (>=
461 bash 4). As some systems supply an older version of bash at
462 /bin/bash, the test suite is now updated to search $PATH to locate
463 the bash binary. This allows users of systems with old /bin/bash to
464 simply install bash >= 4 somewhere on $PATH before /bin and then use
467 Support for testing output with a trailing newline.
469 Previously, some tests would fail to notice a difference in the
470 presence/absence of a trailing newline in a program output, (which
471 has led to bugs in the past). Now, carefully-written tests (using
472 test_expect_equal_file rather than test_expect_equal) will detect
473 any change in the presence/absence of a trailing newline. Many tests
474 are updated to take advantage of this.
476 Avoiding accessing user's $HOME while running test suite
478 The test suite now carefully creates its own HOME directory. This
479 allows the test suite to be run with no existing HOME directory, (as
480 some build systems apparently do), and avoids test-suite differences
481 due to configuration files in the users HOME directory.
486 Output *all* files for "notmuch search --output=files"
488 For the cases where multiple files have the same Message ID,
489 previous versions of notmuch would output only one such file. This
490 command is now fixed to correctly output all files.
492 Fixed spurious search results from "overlapped" indexing of addresses
494 This fixed a bug where a search for:
496 to:user@elsewhere.com
498 would incorrectly match a message sent:
500 To: user@example,com, someone@elsewhere.com
502 Fix --output=json when search has no results
504 A bug present since notmuch 0.4 had caused searches with no results
505 to produce an invalid json object. This is now fixed to cleanly
506 return a valid json object representing an empty array "[]" as
509 fix the automatic detection of the From address for "notmuch reply"
510 from the Received headers in some cases.
512 Fix core dump on DragonFlyBSD due to -1 return value from
513 sysconf(_SC_GETPW_R_SIZE_MAX).
515 Cleaned up several memory leaks
517 Eliminated a few, rare segmentation faults and a double-free.
519 Fix libnotmuch library to only export notmuch API functions
521 Previous release of the notmuch library also exported some Xapian
522 C++ exception type symbols. These were never part of the library
523 interface and were never intended to be exported.
525 Emacs-interface bug fixes
526 -------------------------
527 Display any unexpected output or errors from "notmuch search" invocations
529 Previously any misformatted output or trailing error messages were
530 silently ignored. This output is now clearly displayed. This fix was
531 very helpful in identifying and fixing the bug described below.
533 Fix bug where some threads would be missing from large search results
535 When a search returned a "large" number of results, the emacs
536 interface was incorrectly dropping one thread every time the output
537 of the "notmuch search" process spanned the emacs read-buffer. This
540 Avoid re-compression of .gz files (and similar) when saving attachment
542 Emacs was being too clever for its own good and trying to
543 re-compress pre-compressed .gz files when saving such attachments
544 (potentially corrupting the attachment). The emacs interface is
545 fixed to avoid this bug.
547 Fix hiding of a message when a previously-hidden citation is visible
549 Previously the citation would remain visible in this case. This is
550 fixed so that hiding a message hides all parts.
552 Notmuch 0.5 (2010-11-11)
553 ========================
554 New, general features
555 ---------------------
556 Maildir-flag synchronization
558 Notmuch now knows how to synchronize flags in maildir filenames with
559 tags in the notmuch database. The following flag/tag mappings are
568 'S' unread (added when 'S' flag is not present)
570 The synchronization occurs in both directions, (for example, adding
571 the 'S' flag to a file will cause the "unread" tag to be added, and
572 adding the "replied" tag to a message will cause the file to be
573 renamed with an 'R' flag).
575 This synchronization is enabled by default for users of the
576 command-line interface, (though only files in directories named
577 "cur" or "new" will be renamed). It can be disabled by setting the
578 new maildir.synchronize_flags option in the configuration file. For
581 notmuch config set maildir.synchronize_flags false
583 Users upgrading may also want to run "notmuch setup" once (just
584 accept the existing configuration) to get a new, nicely-commented
585 [maildir] section added to the configuration file.
587 For users of the notmuch library, the new synchronization
588 functionality is available with the following two new functions:
590 notmuch_message_maildir_flags_to_tags
591 notmuch_message_tags_to_maildir_flags
593 It is anticipated that future improvements to this support will
594 allow for safe synchronization of the 'T' flag with the "deleted"
595 tag, as well as support for custom flag/tag mappings.
599 Support for querying multiple filenames for a single message
601 It is common for the mailstore to contain multiple files with the
602 same message ID. Previously, notmuch would always hide these
603 duplicate files, (returning a single, arbitrary filename with
604 notmuch_message_get_filename).
606 With this release, library users can access all filenames for a
607 message with the new function:
609 notmuch_message_get_filenames
611 Together with notmuch_filenames_valid, notmuch_filenames_get, and
612 notmuch_filenames_move_to_next it is now possible to iterate over
613 all available filenames for a given message.
615 New command-line features
616 -------------------------
617 New "notmuch show --format=raw" for getting at original email contents
619 This new feature allows for a fully-functional email client to be
620 built on top of the notmuch command-line without needing any direct
621 access to the mail store itself.
623 For example, it's now possible to run "emacs -f notmuch" on a local
624 machine with only ssh access to the mail store/notmuch database. To
625 do this, simply set the notmuch-command variable in emacs to the
626 name of a script containing:
628 ssh user@host notmuch "$@"
630 If the ssh client has enabled connection sharing (ControlMaster
631 option in OpenSSH), the emacs interface can be quite responsive this
636 Fix "notmuch search" to print nothing when nothing matches
638 The 0.4 release had a bug in which:
640 notmuch search <expression-with-no-matches>
642 would produce a single blank line of output, (where previous
643 versions would produce no output. This fix also causes a change in
644 the --format=json output, (which would previously produce "[]" and
645 now produces nothing).
647 Emacs interface improvements
648 ----------------------------
649 Fix to allow pipe ('|') command to work when using notmuch over ssh
651 Fix count of lines in hidden signatures.
653 Omit repeated subject lines in (collapsed) thread display.
655 Display current thread subject in a header line.
657 Provide a "c i" binding to copy a thread ID from the search view.
659 Allow for notmuch-fcc-dirs to have a value of nil.
661 Also, the more complex form of notmuch-fcc-dirs now has a slightly
662 different format. It no longer has a special first-element, fallback
663 string. Instead it's now a list of cons cells where the car of each
664 cell is a regular expression to be matched against the sender
665 address, and the cdr is the name of a folder to use for an FCC. So
666 the old fallback behavior can be achieved by including a final cell
667 of (".*" . "default-fcc-folder").
669 Vim interface improvements
670 --------------------------
671 Felipe Contreras provided a number of updates for the vim interface.
673 These include optimizations, support for newer versions of vim, fixed
674 support for sending mail on modern systems, new commands, and
679 Added initial ruby bindings in bindings/ruby
681 Notmuch 0.4 (2010-11-01)
682 ========================
683 New command-line features
684 -------------------------
685 notmuch search --output=(summary|threads|messages|tags|files)
687 This new option allows for particular items to be returned from
688 notmuch searches. The "summary" option is the default and behaves
689 just as "notmuch search" has historically behaved.
691 The new option values allow for thread IDs, message IDs, lists of
692 tags, and lists of filenames to be returned from searches. It is
693 expected that this new option will be very useful in shell
694 scripts. For example:
696 for file in $(notmuch search --output=files <search-terms>); do
697 <operations-on> "$file"
700 notmuch show --format=mbox <search-specification>
702 This new option allows for the messages matching a search
703 specification to be presented as an mbox. Specifically the "mboxrd"
704 format is used which allows for reversible quoting of lines
705 beginning with "From ". A reader should remove a single '>' from the
706 beginning of all lines beginning with one or more '>' characters
707 followed by the 5 characters "From ".
709 notmuch config [get|set] <section>.<item> [value ...]
711 The new top-level "config" command allows for any value in the
712 notmuch configuration file to be queried or set to a new value. Both
713 single-valued and multi-valued items are supported, as our any
714 custom items stored in the configuration file.
716 Avoid setting Bcc header in "notmuch reply"
718 We decided that this was a bit heavy-handed as the actual mail
719 user-agent should be responsible for setting any Bcc option. Also,
720 see below for the notmuch/emacs user-agent now setting an Fcc by
721 default rather than Bcc.
725 Add notmuch_query_get_query_string and notmuch_query_get_sort
727 These are simply functions for querying properties of a
728 notmuch_query_t object.
732 Enable Fcc of all sent messages by default (to "sent" directory)
734 All messages sent from the emacs interface will now be saved to the
735 notmuch mail store where they will be incorporated to the database
736 by the next "notmuch new". By default, messages are saved to the
737 "sent" directory at the top-level of the mail store. This directory
738 can be customized by means of the "Notmuch Fcc Dirs" option in the
739 notmuch customize interface.
741 Ability to all open messages in a thread to a pipe
743 Historically, the '|' keybinding allows for piping a single message
744 to an external command. Now, by prefixing this key with a prefix
745 argument, (for example, by pressing "Control-U |"), all open
746 messages in the current thread will be sent to the external command.
748 Optional support for detecting inline patches
750 This hook is disabled by default but can be enabled with a checkbox
751 under "Notmuch Show Insert Text/Plain Hook" in the notmuch customize
752 interface. It allows for inline patches to be detected and treated
753 as if they were attachments, (with context-sensitive highlighting).
755 Automatically tag messages as "replied" when sending a reply
757 Messages replied to within the emacs interface will now be tagged as
758 "replied". This feature can easily be customized to add or remove
759 other tags as well. For example, a user might use a tag of
760 "needs-reply" and can configure this feature to automatically remove
761 that tag when replying. See "Notmuch Message Mark Replied" in the
762 notmuch customize interface.
764 Allow search-result color specifications to overlay each other
766 For example, one tag can specify the background color of matching
767 lines, while another can specify the foreground. With this change,
768 both settings will now be visible simultaneously, (which was not the
769 case in previous releases). See "Notmuch Search Line Faces" in the
770 notmuch customize interface.
772 Make hidden author names still available for incremental search.
774 When there is insufficient space to display all authors of a thread
775 in search results, the names of hidden authors are now still made
776 available to emacs' incremental search commands. As the user
777 searches, matching lines will temporarily expand to show the hidden
780 New binding of Control-TAB (works like TAB in reverse)
782 Many notmuch nodes already use TAB to navigate forward through
783 various items allowing actions, (message headers, email attachments,
784 etc.). The new Control-TAB binding operates similarly but in the
787 New build-system features
788 -------------------------
789 Various portability fixes have been applied
791 These include fixes for build failures on at least Solaris, FreeBSD,
792 and Fedora systems. We're hopeful that the notmuch code base is now
793 more portable than ever before.
795 Arrange for libnotmuch to be found automatically after make install
797 The notmuch build system is now careful to help the user avoid
798 errors of the form "libnotmuch.so could not be found" immediately
799 after installing. This support takes two forms:
801 1. If the library is installed to a system directory,
802 (configured in /etc/ld.so.conf), then "make install" will
803 automatically run ldconfig.
805 2. If the library is installed to a non-system directory, the
806 build system adds a DR_RUNPATH entry to the final binary
807 pointing to the directory to which the library is installed.
809 When this support works, the user should be able to run notmuch
810 immediately after "make install", without any errors trying to find
811 the notmuch library, and without having to manually set environment
812 variables such as LD_LIBRARY_PATH.
814 Check compiler/linker options before using them
816 The configure script now carefully checks that any desired
817 compilation options, (whether for enabling compiler warnings, or for
818 embedding rpath, etc.), are supported. Only supported options are
819 used in the resulting Makefile.
821 New test-suite features
822 -----------------------
823 New modularization of test suite.
825 Thanks to a gracious relicensing of the test-suite infrastructure
826 from the git project, notmuch now has a modular test suite. This
827 provides the ability to run individual sections of the test suite
828 rather than the whole things. It also provides better summary of
829 test results, with support for tests that are expected to fail
830 (BROKEN and FIXED) in addition to PASS and FAIL. Finally, it makes
831 it easy to run the test suite within valgrind (pass --valgrind to
832 notmuch-test or to any sub-script) which has been very useful.
834 New testing of emacs interface.
836 The test suite has been augmented to allow automated testing of the
837 emacs interfaces. So far, this includes basic searches, display of
838 threads, and tag manipulation. This also includes a test that a new
839 message can successfully be sent out through a (dummy) SMTP server
840 and that said message is successfully integrated into the notmuch
841 database via the FCC setting.
845 Fix potential corruption of database when "notmuch new " is interrupted.
847 Previously, an interruption of "notmuch new" would (rarely) result
848 in a corrupt database. The corruption would manifest itself by a
849 persistent error of the form:
851 document ID of 1234 has no thread ID
853 The message-adding code has been carefully audited and reworked to
854 avoid this sort of corruption regardless of when it is interrupted.
856 Fix failure with extremely long message ID headers.
858 Previously, a message with an extremely long message ID, (say, more
859 than 300 characters), would fail to be added to notmuch, (triggering
860 Xapian exceptions). This has now been fixed.
862 Fix for messages with "charset=unknown-8bit"
864 Previously, messages with this charset would cause notmuch to emit a
865 GMime warning, (which would then trip up emacs or other interfaces
866 parsing the notmuch results).
868 Fix notmuch_query_search_threads function to return NULL on any exception
870 Fix "notmuch search" to return non-zero if notmuch_query_search_threads fails
872 Previously, this command could confusingly report a Xapian
873 exception, yet still return an error code of 0. It now correctly
874 returns a failing error code of 1 in this case.
878 Fix to handle a message with a subject containing, for example "[1234]"
880 Previously, a message subject containing a sequence of digits within
881 square brackets would cause the emacs interface to mis-parse the
882 output of "notmuch search". This would result in the message being
883 mis-displayed and prevent the user from manipulating the message in
886 Fix to correctly handle message IDs containing ".."
888 The emacs interface now properly quotes message IDs to avoid a
889 Xapian bug in which the ".." within a message ID would be
890 misinterpreted as a numeric range specification.
894 The python bindings for notmuch have been updated to work with python3.
896 Debian-specific fixes
897 ---------------------
898 Fix emacs initialization so "M-x notmuch" works for users by default.
900 Now, a new Debian user can immediately run "emacs -f notmuch" after
901 "apt-get install notmuch". Previously, the user would have had to
902 edit the ~/.emacs file to add "(require 'notmuch)" before this would
905 Notmuch 0.3.1 (2010-04-27)
906 ==========================
909 Fix an infinite loop in "notmuch reply"
911 This bug could be triggered by replying to a message where the
912 user's primary email address did not appear in the To: header and
913 the user had not configured any secondary email addresses. The bug
914 was a simple re-use of the same iterator variable in nested loops.
916 Fix a potential SEGV in "notmuch search"
918 This bug could be triggered by an author name ending in a ','.
919 Admittedly - that's almost certainly a spam email, but we never
920 want notmuch to crash.
924 Fix calculations for line wrapping in the primary "notmuch" view.
926 Fix Fcc support to prompt to create a directory if the specified Fcc
927 directory does not exist.
931 Fix build on OpenSolaris (at least) due to missing 'extern "C"' block.
933 Without this, the C++ sources could not find strcasestr and the
934 final linking of notmuch would fail.
936 Notmuch 0.3 (2010-04-27)
937 ========================
938 New command-line features
939 -------------------------
940 User-configurable tags for new messages
942 A new "new.tags" option is available in the configuration file to
943 determine which tags are applied to new messages. Run "notmuch
944 setup" to generate new documentation within ~/.notmuch-config on how
945 to specify this value.
947 Threads search results named based on subjects that match search
949 This means that when new mails arrived to a thread you've previously
950 read, and the new mails have a new subject, you will see that
951 subject in the search results rather than the old subject.
953 Faster operation of "notmuch tag" (avoid unneeded sorting)
955 Since the user just wants to tag all matching messages, we can make
956 things perform a bit faster by avoiding the sort.
958 Even Better guessing of From: header for "notmuch reply"
960 Notmuch now looks at a number of headers when trying to figure out
961 the best From: header to use in a reply. This is helpful if you have
962 several configured email addresses, and you also subscribe to various
963 mailing lists with different addresses, (so that mails you are
964 replying to won't always include your subscribed address in the To:
967 Indication of author names that match a search
969 When notmuch displays threads as the result of a search, it now
970 lists the authors that match the search before listing the other
971 authors in the thread. It inserts a pipe '|' symbol between the last
972 matching and first non-matching author. This is especially useful in
973 a search that includes tag:unread. Now the authors of the unread
974 messages in the thread are listed first.
978 Sebastian Spaeth has contributed his python bindings for the notmuch
979 library to the central repository. These bindings were previously
980 known as "cnotmuch" within python but have now been renamed to be
981 accessible with a simple, and more official-looking "import notmuch".
983 The bindings have already proven very useful as people proficient in
984 python have been able to easily develop programs to do notmuch-based
985 searches for email-address completion, maildir-flag synchronization,
988 These bindings are available within the bindings/python directory, but
989 are not yet integrated into the top-level Makefiles, nor the top-level
990 package-building scripts. Improvements are welcome.
992 Emacs interface improvements
993 ----------------------------
994 An entirely new initial view for notmuch, (friendly yet powerful)
996 Some of us call the new view "notmuch hello" but you can get at it
997 by simply calling "emacs -f notmuch". The new view provides a search
998 bar where new searches can be performed. It also displays a list of
999 recent searches, along with a button to save any of these, giving it
1000 a new name as a "saved search". Many people find these "saved
1001 searches" one of the most convenient ways of organizing their mail,
1002 (providing all of the features of "folders" in other mail clients,
1003 but without any of the disadvantages).
1005 Finally, this view can also optionally display all of the tags that
1006 exist in the database, along with a count for each tag, and a custom
1007 search of messages with that tag that's simply a click (or keypress)
1010 Note: For users that liked the original mode of "emacs -f notmuch"
1011 immediately displaying a particular search result, we
1012 recommend instead running something like:
1014 emacs --eval '(notmuch search "tag:inbox" t)'
1016 The "t" means to sort the messages in an "oldest first" order,
1017 (as notmuch would do previously by default). You can also
1018 leave that off to have your search results in "newest first"
1021 Full-featured "customize" support for configuring notmuch
1023 Notmuch now plugs in well to the emacs "customize" mode to make it
1024 much simpler to find things about the notmuch interface that can be
1025 tweaked by the user.
1027 You can get to this mode by starting at the main "Customize" menu in
1028 emacs, then browsing through "Applications", "Mail", and
1029 "Notmuch". Or you can go straight to "M-x customize-group"
1032 Once you're at the customize screen, you'll see a list of documented
1033 options that can be manipulated along with checkboxes, drop-down
1034 selectors, and text-entry boxes for configuring the various
1037 Support for doing tab-completion of email addresses
1039 This support currently relies on an external program,
1040 (notmuch-addresses), that is not yet shipped with notmuch
1041 itself. But multiple, suitable implementations of this program have
1042 already been written that generate address completions by doing
1043 notmuch searches of your email collection. For example, providing
1044 first those addresses that you have composed messages to in the
1047 One such program (implemented in python with the python bindings to
1048 notmuch) is available via:
1050 git clone http://jkr.acm.jhu.edu/git/notmuch_addresses.git
1052 Install that program as notmuch-addresses on your PATH, and then
1053 hitting TAB on a partial email address or name within the To: or Cc:
1054 line of an email message will provide matching completions.
1056 Support for file-based (Fcc) delivery of sent messages to mail store
1058 This isn't yet enabled by default. To enable this, one will have to
1059 set the "Notmuch Fcc Dirs" setting within the notmuch customize
1060 screen, (see its documentation there for details). We anticipate
1061 making this automatic in a future release.
1063 New 'G' key binding to trigger mail refresh (G == "Get new mail")
1065 The 'G' key works wherever '=' works. Before refreshing the screen
1066 it calls an external program that can be used to poll email servers,
1067 run notmuch new and setup specific tags for the new emails. The
1068 script to be called should be configured with the "Notmuch Poll
1069 Script" setting in the customize interface. This script will
1070 typically invoke "notmuch new" and then perhaps several "notmuch
1073 Implement emacs message display with the JSON output from notmuch.
1075 This is much more robust than the previous implementation, (where
1076 some HTML mails and mail quoting the notmuch code with the delimiter
1077 characters in it would cause the parser to fall over).
1079 Better handling of HTML messages and MIME attachments (inline images!)
1081 Allow for any MIME parts that emacs can display to be displayed
1082 inline. This includes inline viewing of image attachments, (provided
1083 the window is large enough to fit the image at its natural size).
1085 Much more robust handling of HTML messages. Currently both text/plain
1086 and text/html alternates will be rendered next to each other. In a
1087 future release, users will be able to decide to see only one or the
1088 other representation.
1090 Each attachment now has its own button so that attachments can be
1091 saved individually (the 'w' key is still available to save all
1094 Customizable support for tidying of text/plain message content
1096 Many new functions are available for tidying up message
1097 content. These include options such as wrapping long lines,
1098 compressing duplicate blank lines, etc.
1100 Most of these are disabled by default, but can easily be enabled by
1101 clicking the available check boxes under the "Notmuch Show Insert
1102 Text/Plain Hook" within the notmuch customize screen.
1104 New support for searchable citations (even when hidden)
1106 When portions of overly-long citations are hidden, the contents of
1107 these citations will still be available for emacs' standard
1108 "incremental search" functions. When the search matches any portion
1109 of a hidden citation, the citation will become visible temporarily
1110 to display the search result.
1112 More flexible handling of header visibility
1114 As an answer to complaints from many users, the To, Cc, and Date
1115 headers of messages are no longer hidden by default. For those users
1116 that liked that these were hidden, a new "Notmuch Messages Headers
1117 Visible" option in the customize interface can be set to nil. The
1118 visibility of headers can still be toggled on a per-message basis
1119 with the 'h' keybinding.
1121 For users that don't want to see some subset of those headers, the
1122 new "Notmuch Message Headers" variable can be customized to list
1123 only those headers that should be present in the display of a message.
1125 The Return key now toggles message visibility anywhere
1127 Previously this worked only on the first summary-line of a message.
1129 Customizable formatting of search results
1131 The user can easily customize the order, width, and formatting of
1132 the various fields in a "notmuch search" buffer. See the "Notmuch
1133 Search Result Format" section of the customize interface.
1135 Generate nicer names for search buffers when using a saved search.
1137 Add a notmuch User-Agent header when sending mail from notmuch/emacs.
1139 New keybinding (M-Ret) to open all collapsed messages in a thread.
1143 Provide a new NOTMUCH_SORT_UNSORTED value for queries
1145 This can be somewhat faster when sorting simply isn't desired. For
1146 example when collecting a set of messages that will all be
1147 manipulated identically, (adding a tag, removing a tag, deleting the
1148 messages), then there's no advantage to sorting the messages by
1153 Fix to compile against GMime 2.6
1155 Previously notmuch insisted on being able to find GMime 2.4, (even
1156 though GMime 2.6 would have worked all along).
1158 Fix configure script to accept (and ignore) various standard options.
1160 For example, those that the Gentoo build scripts expect configure to
1161 accept are now all accepted.
1165 A large number of new tests for the many new features.
1167 Better display of output from failed tests.
1169 Now shows failures with diff rather than forcing the user to gaze at
1170 complete actual and expected output looking for deviation.
1172 Notmuch 0.2 (2010-04-16)
1173 ========================
1174 This is the second release of the notmuch mail system, with actual
1175 detailed release notes this time!
1177 This release consists of a number of minor new features that make
1178 notmuch more pleasant to use, and a few fairly major bug fixes.
1180 We didn't quite hit our release target of "about a week" from the 0.1
1181 release, (0.2 is happening 11 days after 0.1), but we hope to do
1182 better for next week. Look forward to some major features coming to
1183 notmuch in subsequent releases.
1189 Better guessing of From: header.
1191 Notmuch now tries harder to guess which configured address should be
1192 used as the From: line in a "notmuch reply". It will examine the
1193 Received: headers if it fails to find any configured address in To:
1194 or Cc:. This allows it to often choose the correct address even when
1195 replying to a message sent to a mailing list, and not directly to a
1198 Make "notmuch count" with no arguments count all messages
1200 Previously, it was hard to construct a search term that was
1201 guaranteed to match all messages.
1203 Provide a new special-case search term of "*" to match all messages.
1205 This can be used in any command accepting a search term, such as
1206 "notmuch search '*'". Note that you'll want to take care that the
1207 shell doesn't expand * against the current files. And note that the
1208 support for "*" is a special case. It's only meaningful as a single
1209 search term and loses its special meaning when combined with any
1212 Automatically detect thread connections even when a parent message is
1215 Previously, if two or more message were received with a common
1216 parent, but that parent was not received, then these messages would
1217 not be recognized as belonging to the same thread. This is now fixed
1218 so that such messages are properly connected in a thread.
1222 Fix potential data loss in "notmuch new" with SIGINT
1224 One code path in "notmuch new" was not properly handling
1225 SIGINT. Previously, this could lead to messages being removed from
1226 the database (and their tags being lost) if the user pressed
1227 Control-C while "notmuch new" was working.
1229 Fix segfault when a message includes a MIME part that is empty.
1231 Fix handling of non-ASCII characters with --format=json
1233 Previously, characters outside the range of 7-bit ASCII were
1234 silently dropped from the JSON output. This led to corrupted display
1235 of utf-8 content in the upcoming notmuch web-based frontends.
1237 Fix headers to be properly decoded in "notmuch reply"
1239 Previously, the user might see:
1241 Subject: Re: =?iso-8859-2?q?Rozlu=E8ka?=
1245 Subject: Re: Rozlučka
1247 The former text is properly encoded to be RFC-compliant SMTP, will
1248 be sent correctly, and will be properly decoded by the
1249 recipient. But the user trying to edit the reply would likely be
1250 unable to read or edit that field in its encoded form.
1252 Emacs client features
1253 ---------------------
1254 Show the last few lines of citations as well as the first few lines.
1256 It's often the case that the last sentence of a citation is what is
1257 being replied to directly, so the last few lines are often much more
1258 important. The number of lines shown at the beginning and end of any
1259 citation can be configured, (notmuch-show-citation-lines-prefix and
1260 notmuch-show-citation-lines-suffix).
1262 The '+' and '-' commands in the search view can now add and remove
1265 Selective bulk tagging is now possible by selecting a region of
1266 threads and then using either the '+' or '-' keybindings. Bulk
1267 tagging is still available for all threads matching the current
1268 search with the '*' binding.
1270 More meaningful buffer names for thread-view buffers.
1272 Notmuch now uses the Subject of the thread as the buffer
1273 name. Previously it was using the thread ID, which is a meaningless
1276 Provide for customized colors of threads in search view based on tags.
1278 See the documentation of notmuch-search-line-faces, (or us "M-x
1279 customize" and browse to the "notmuch" group within "Applications"
1280 and "Mail"), for details on how to configure this colorization.
1282 Build-system features
1283 ---------------------
1284 Add support to properly build libnotmuch on Darwin systems (OS X).
1286 Add support to configure for many standard options.
1288 We include actual support for:
1290 --includedir --mandir --sysconfdir
1292 And accept and silently ignore several more:
1294 --build --infodir --libexecdir --localstatedir
1295 --disable-maintainer-mode --disable-dependency-tracking
1297 Install emacs client in "make install" rather than requiring a
1298 separate "make install-emacs".
1300 Automatically compute versions numbers between releases.
1302 This support uses the git-describe notation, so a version such as
1303 0.1-144-g43cbbfc indicates a version that is 144 commits since the
1304 0.1 release and is available as git commit "43cbbfc".
1306 Add a new "make test" target to run the test suite and actually verify
1309 Notmuch 0.1 (2010-04-05)
1310 ========================
1311 This is the first release of the notmuch mail system.
1313 It includes the libnotmuch library, the notmuch command-line
1314 interface, and an emacs-based interface to notmuch.
1316 Note: Notmuch will work best with Xapian 1.0.18 (or later) or Xapian
1317 1.1.4 (or later). Previous versions of Xapian (whether 1.0 or 1.1) had
1318 a performance bug that made notmuch very slow when modifying
1319 tags. This would cause distracting pauses when reading mail while
1320 notmuch would wait for Xapian when removing the "inbox" and "unread"
1321 tags from messages in a thread.