1 Notmuch 0.12 (2012-xx-xx)
2 =========================
9 "notmuch reply" has gained the ability to create a reply template
10 for replying just to the sender of the message, in addition to reply
11 to all. The feature is available through the new command line option
12 --reply-to=(all|sender).
19 The Emacs interface has, with the new CLI support, gained the
20 ability to reply to sender in addition to reply to all. In both show
21 and search modes, 'r' has been bound to reply to sender, replacing
22 reply to all, which now has key binding 'R'.
24 Notmuch 0.11 (2012-01-13)
25 =========================
27 Command-Line Interface
28 ----------------------
32 Hooks have been introduced to notmuch. Hooks are scripts that notmuch
33 invokes before and after certain actions. Initially, "notmuch new"
34 supports "pre-new" and "post-new" hooks that are run before and after
35 importing new messages into the database.
37 notmuch reply --decrypt bugfix
39 The "notmuch reply" command with --decrypt argument had a rarely
40 occurring bug that caused an encrypted message not to be decrypted
41 sometimes. This is now fixed.
46 Automatic tag query optimization
48 "notmuch tag" now automatically optimizes the user's query to
49 exclude messages whose tags won't change. In the past, we've
50 suggested that people do this by hand; this is no longer necessary.
52 Don't sort messages when creating a dump file
54 This speeds up tag dumps considerably, without any loss of
55 information. To replicate the old behavior of sorted output (for
56 example to compare two dump files), one can use e.g. sort(1).
61 Reduction of memory leaks
63 Two memory leaks when searching and showing messages were identified
64 and fixed in this release.
71 notmuch-show-advance (bound to the spacebar in notmuch-show-mode) had
72 a bug that caused it to always jump to the next message, even if it
73 should have scrolled down to show more of the current message instead.
76 Support "notmuch new" as a notmuch-poll-script
78 It's now possible to use "notmuch new" as a notmuch-poll-script
79 directly. This is also the new default. This allows taking better
80 advantage of the "notmuch new" hooks from emacs without intermediate
83 Improvements in saved search management
85 New saved searches are now appended to the list of saved searches,
86 not inserted in front. It's also possible to define a sort function
87 for displaying saved searches; alphabetical sort is provided.
89 Hooks for notmuch-hello
91 Two new hooks have been added: "notmuch-hello-mode-hook" (called after
92 entering notmuch-hello-mode) and "notmuch-hello-refresh-hook" (called
93 after updating a notmuch-hello buffer).
95 New face for crypto parts headers
97 Crypto parts used to be displayed with a hardcoded color. A new face
98 has been introduced to fix this: notmuch-crypto-part-header. It
99 defaults to the same value as before, but can be customized to match
102 Use space as default thousands separator
104 Large numbers in notmuch-hello are now displayed using a space as
105 thousands separator (e.g. "123 456" instead of "123,456"). This can be
106 changed by customizing "notmuch-hello-thousands-separator".
108 Call notmuch-show instead of notmuch-search when clicking on
109 buttonized id: links.
111 New function notmuch-show-advance
113 This new function advances through just the current thread, and is
114 less invasive than notmuch-show-advance-and-archive. It can easily
115 be bound to SPC with:
117 (define-key notmuch-show-mode-map " " 'notmuch-show-advance)
119 Various performance improvements.
124 The tool contrib/notmuch-deliver helps with initial delivery and
125 tagging of mail (replacing running notmuch new).
128 Notmuch 0.10.2 (2011-12-04)
129 ===========================
134 Fix crash in python bindings.
136 The python bindings did not call g_type_init, which caused crashes
137 for some, but not all users.
139 Notmuch 0.10.1 (2011-11-25)
140 ===========================
147 Argument processing changes in 0.10 introduced a bug where "notmuch
148 --help" crashed while "notmuch help" worked fine. This is fixed in
151 Notmuch 0.10 (2011-11-23)
152 =========================
154 New build and testing features
155 ------------------------------
157 Emacs tests are now done in dtach. This means that dtach is now
158 needed to run the notmuch test suite, at least until the checking for
159 prerequisites is improved.
161 Full test coverage of the stashing feature in Emacs.
163 New command-line features
164 -------------------------
166 Add "notmuch restore --accumulate" option
168 The --accumulate switch causes the union of the existing and new tags to be
169 applied, instead of replacing each message's tags as they are read in from
172 Add search terms to "notmuch dump"
174 The dump command now takes an optional search term much like notmuch
175 search/show/tag. The output file argument of dump is deprecated in
176 favour of using stdout.
178 Add "notmuch search" --offset and --limit options
180 The search command now takes options --offset=[-]N and --limit=N to limit
181 the number of results shown.
183 Add "notmuch count --output" option
185 The count command is now capable of counting threads in addition to
186 messages. This is selected using the new --output=(threads|messages) option.
188 New emacs UI features
189 ---------------------
191 Add tab-completion for notmuch-search and notmuch-search-filter
193 These functions now support completion tags for query parts
194 starting with "tag:".
196 Turn "id:MSG-ID" links into buttons associated with notmuch searches
198 Text of the form "id:MSG-ID" in mails is now a clickable button that
199 opens a notmuch search for the given message id.
201 Add keybinding ('c I') for stashing Message-ID's without an id: prefix
203 Reduces manual labour when stashing them for use outside notmuch.
205 Do not query on notmuch-search exit
207 It is harmless to kill the external notmuch process, so the user
208 is no longer interrogated when they interrupt a search.
213 Emacs now constructs large search buffers more efficiently
215 Search avoids opening and parsing message files
217 We now store more information in the database so search no longer
218 has to open every message file to get basic headers. This can
219 improve search speed by as much as 10X, but taking advantage of this
220 requires a database rebuild:
222 notmuch dump > notmuch.dump
223 # Backup, then remove notmuch database ($MAIL/.notmuch)
225 notmuch restore notmuch.dump
227 New collection of add-on tools
228 ------------------------------
230 The source directory "contrib" contains tools built on notmuch. These
231 tools are not part of notmuch, and you should check their individual
232 licenses. Feel free to report problems with them to the notmuch
235 nmbug - share tags with a given prefix
237 nmbug helps maintain a git repo containing all tags with a given
238 prefix (by default "notmuch::"). Tags can be shared by commiting
239 them to git in one location and restoring in another.
241 Notmuch 0.9 (2011-10-01)
242 ========================
244 New, general features
245 ---------------------
247 Correct handling of interruptions during "notmuch new"
249 "notmuch new" now operates as a series of small, self-consistent
250 transactions, so it can correctly resume after an interruption or
251 crash. Previously, interruption could lose existing tags, fail to
252 detect messages on resume, or leave the database in a state
253 temporarily or permanently inconsistent with the mail store.
260 notmuch_database_begin_atomic and notmuch_database_end_atomic allow
261 multiple database operations to be performed atomically.
263 notmuch_database_find_message_by_filename does exactly what it says.
267 notmuch_database_find_message (and n_d_f_m_by_filename) now return
268 a status indicator and uses an output parameter for the
269 message. This change required changing the SONAME of libnotmuch to
272 Python bindings changes
273 -----------------------
275 - Re-encode python unicode objects to utf-8 before passing back to
277 - Support Database().begin_atomic()/end_atomic()
278 - Support Database().find_message_by_filename()
279 NB! This needs a db opened in READ-WRITE mode currently, or it will crash
280 the python process. The is a limitation (=bug) of the underlying libnotmuch.
281 - Fixes where we would not throw NotmuchErrors when we should (Justus Winter)
282 - Update for n_d_find_message* API changes (see above).
284 Ruby bindings changes
285 ---------------------
287 - Wrap new library functions notmuch_database_{begin,end}_atomic.
288 - Add new exception Notmuch::UnbalancedAtomicError.
289 - Rename destroy to destroy! according to Ruby naming conventions.
290 - Update for n_d_find_message* API changes (see above).
295 * Add gpg callback to crypto sigstatus buttons to retrieve/refresh
297 * Add notmuch-show-refresh-view function (and corresponding binding)
298 to refresh the view of a notmuch-show buffer.
300 Reply formatting cleanup
301 ------------------------
303 "notmuch reply" no longer includes notification that non-leafnode
304 MIME parts are being suppressed.
306 Notmuch 0.8 (2011-09-10)
307 ========================
309 Improved handling of message/rfc822 parts
311 Both in the CLI and the emacs interface. Output of rfc822 parts now
312 includes the primary headers, as well as the body and all subparts.
313 Output of the completely raw rfc822-formatted message, including all
314 headers, is unfortunately not yet supported (but hopefully will be
317 Improved Build system portability
319 Certain parts of the shell script generating notmuch.sym were
320 specific to the GNU versions of sed and nm. The new version should
321 be more portable to e.g. OpenBSD.
323 Documentation update for Ruby bindings
325 Added documentation, typo fixes, and improved support for rdoc.
327 Unicode, iterator, PEP8 changes for python bindings
329 - PEP8 (code formatting) changes for python files.
330 - Remove Tags.__len__ ; see 0.6 release notes for motivation.
331 - Decode headers as UTF8, encode (unicode) database paths as UTF8.
333 Notmuch 0.7 (2011-08-01)
334 ========================
336 Vim interface improvements
337 --------------------------
339 Jason Woofenden provided a number of bug fixes for the Vim interface
341 * fix citation/signature fold lengths
342 * fix cig/cit parsing within multipart/*
343 * fix on-screen instructions for show-signature
344 * fix from list reformatting in search view
345 * fix space key: now archives (did opposite)
347 Uwe Kleine-König contributed
349 * use full path for sendmail/doc fix
350 * fix compose temp file name
352 Python Bindings changes
353 -----------------------
355 Sebastian Spaeth contributed two changes related to unicode and UTF8:
357 * message tags are now explicitly unicode
358 * query string is encoded as a UTF8 byte string
360 Build-System improvements
361 ------------------------
363 Generate notmuch.sym after the relevant object files
365 This fixes a bug in parallel building. Thanks to Thomas Jost for the
368 Notmuch 0.6.1 (2011-07-17)
369 ==========================
374 Re-export Xapian exception typeinfo symbols.
376 It turned out our aggressive symbol hiding caused problems for
377 people running gcc 4.4.5.
379 Notmuch 0.6 (2011-07-01)
380 =======================
381 New, general features
382 ---------------------
383 Folder-based searching
385 Notmuch queries can now include a search term to match the
386 directories in which mail files are stored (within the mail
387 storage). The syntax is as follows:
391 For example, one might use things such as:
397 to match any path containing a directory "spam", "work/todo", or
398 containing a directory starting with "2011-", respectively.
400 This feature is particularly useful for users of delivery-agent
401 software (such as procmail or maildrop) that is filtering mail and
402 delivering it to particular folders, or users of systems such as
403 Gmail that use filesystem directories to indicate message tags.
405 NOTE: Only messages that are newly indexed with this version of
406 notmuch will be searchable with folder: terms. In order to enable
407 this feature for all mail, the entire notmuch index will need to be
410 notmuch dump > notmuch.dump
411 # Backup, then remove notmuch database ($MAIL/.notmuch)
413 notmuch restore notmuch.dump
417 Both the command line interface and the emacs-interface have new
418 support for PGP/MIME, detailed below. Thanks to Daniel Kahn Gillmor
419 and Jameson Graef Rollins for making this happen.
421 New, automatic tags: "signed" and "encrypted"
423 These tags will automatically be applied to messages containing
424 multipart/signed and multipart/encrypted parts.
426 NOTE: Only messages that are newly indexed with this version of
427 notmuch will receive these tags.
429 New command-line features
430 -------------------------
431 Add new "notmuch show --verify" option for signature verification
433 This option instruct notmuch to verify the signature of
434 PGP/MIME-signed parts.
436 Add new "notmuch show --decrypt" and "notmuch reply --decrypt" options
438 This option instructs notmuch to decrypt PGP/MIME-encrypted parts.
439 Note that this feature currently requires gpg-agent and a passphrase entry
440 tool (e.g. pinentry-gtk or pinentry-curses).
442 Proper nesting of multipart parts in "notmuch show" output
444 MIME parts are now display with proper nesting to reflect original
445 MIME hierarchy of a message. This allows clients to correctly
446 analyze the MIME structure, (such as, for example, determining to
447 which parts a signature part applies).
449 Add new "notmuch show --part" option
451 This is a replacement for the older "notmuch part" command, (which
452 is now deprecated—it should still work as always, but is no longer
453 documented). Putting part output under "notmuch show" allows for all
454 of the "notmuch show" options to be applied when extracting a single
455 part, (such as --format=json for extracting a message part with JSON
458 Deprecate "notmuch search-tags", (in favor of "notmuch search --output=tags *")
460 The "notmuch search-tags" sub-command has been redundant since the
461 addition of the --output=tags option to "notmuch search". We now
462 make that more clear by deprecating "notmuch search-tags", (dropping
463 it from the documentation). We do continue to support the old syntax
464 by translating it internally to the new call.
466 Performance improvements
467 ------------------------
468 Faster searches (by doing fewer searches to construct threads)
470 Whenever a user asks for search results as threads, notmuch first
471 performs a search for messages matching the query, then performs
472 additional searches to find other messages in the resulting threads.
474 Removing inefficiencies and redundancies in these secondary searches
475 results in a measured speedups of 1.5x for a typical search.
477 Faster searches (by doing fewer passes to gather message data)
479 Optimizing Xapian data access patterns (using a single pass to get
480 all message-document data rather than a pass for each data type)
481 results in a measured speedup of 1.7x for a typical search.
483 The benefits of this optimization combine with the preceding
484 optimization. With both in place, Austin Clements measured a speedup
485 of 2.5x for a search of all messages in his inbox (was 4.5s, now
486 1.8s). Thanks, Austin!
488 Faster initial indexing
490 More efficient indexing of new messages results in a measured
491 speedup of 1.4x for the initial indexing of 3 GB of mail (1h 14m
492 rather than 1h 46m). Thanks to Austin Clements and Michal Sojka.
494 Make "notmuch new" faster for unchanged directories
496 Optimizing to not do any further examinations of sub-directories
497 when the filesystem indicates that a directory is unchanged from the
498 last "notmuch new" results in measured speedups of 8.5 for the "No
499 new mail" case, (was 0.77s, now 0.09s). Thanks to Karel Zak.
501 New emacs-interface features
502 ----------------------------
504 Support for PGP/MIME (GnuPG)
506 Automatically indicate validity of signatures for multipart/signed
507 messages. Automatically display decrypted content for
508 multipart/encrypted messages. See the emacs variable
509 notmuch-crypto-process-mime for more information. Note that this
510 needs gpg-agent and a pinentry tool just as the command line tools.
511 Also note there is no support SMIME yet.
513 Output of pipe command is now displayed if pipe command fails
515 This is extremely useful in the common use case of piping a patch to
516 "git am". If git fails to cleanly merge the patch the error messages
517 from the failed merge are now clearly displayed to the user, (where
518 previously they were silently hidden from the user).
520 User-selectable From address
522 A user can choose which configured email addresses should be used as
523 the From address whenever composing a new message. To do so, simply
524 press C-u before the command which will open a new message. Emacs
525 will prompt for the from address to use.
527 The user can customize the "Notmuch Identities" setting in the
528 notmuch customize group in order to use addresses other than those in
529 the notmuch configuration file if desired.
531 The user can also choose to always be prompted for the from address
532 when composing a new message (without having to use C-u) by setting
533 the "Notmuch Always Prompt For Sender" option in the notmuch
536 Hiding of repeated subjects in collapsed thread view
538 In notmuch-show mode, if a collapsed message has the same subject as
539 its parent, the subject is not shown.
541 Automatic detection and hiding of original message in top-posted message
543 When a message contains a line looking something like:
545 ----- Original Message -----
547 emacs hides this and all subsequent lines as an "original message",
548 (allowing the user to click or press enter on the "original message"
549 button to display it again). This makes the handling of top-posted
550 citations work much like conventional citations.
552 New hooks for running code when tags are modified
554 Some users want to perform additional actions whenever a particular
555 tag is added/removed from a message. This could be used to, for
556 example, interface with some external spam-recognition training
557 tool. To facilitate this, two new hooks are added which can be
558 modified in the following settings of the notmuch customize group:
560 Notmuch Before Tag Hook
561 Notmuch After Tag Hook
563 New optional support for hiding some multipart/alternative parts
565 Many emails are sent with redundant content within a
566 multipart/alternative group (such as a text/plain part as well as a
567 text/html part). Users can configure the setting:
569 Notmuch Show All Multipart/Alternative Parts
571 to "off" in the notmuch customize group to have the interface
572 automatically hide some part alternatives (such as text/html
573 parts). This new part hiding is not configured by default yet
574 because there's not yet a simple way to re-display such a hidden
575 part if it is not actually redundant with a displayed part.
577 Better rendering of text/x-vcalendar parts
579 These parts are now displayed in a format suitable for use with the
582 Avoid getting confused by Subject and Author fields with newline characters
584 Replacing all characters with ASCII code less than 32 with a question mark.
586 Cleaner display of From line in email messages (remove double quotes,
587 and drop "name" if it's actually just a repeat of the email address).
589 Vim interface improvements
590 --------------------------
591 Felipe Contreras provided a number of updates for the vim interface:
593 * Using sendmail directly rather than mailx,
594 * Implementing archive in show view
595 * Add support to mark as read in show and search views
596 * Add delete commands
599 Bindings improvements
600 ---------------------
601 Ruby bindings are now much more complete
603 Including QUERY.sort, QUERY.to_s, MESSAGE.maildir_flags_to_tags,
604 MESSAGE.tags_to_maildir_flags, and MESSAGE.get_filenames
606 * Python bindings have been updated and extended
607 (docs online at http://packages.python.org/notmuch/)
610 - Message().get_filenames(),
611 - Message().tags_to_maildir_flags(),Message().maildir_flags_to_tags()
612 - list(Threads()) and list(Messages) works now
614 - Message().__cmp__() and __hash__()
615 These allow, for example:
618 As well as set arithmetic on Messages():
620 s1, s2= set(msgs1), set(msgs2)
625 - len(Messages()) as it exhausted the iterator.
626 Use len(list(Messages())) or
627 Query.count_messages() to get the length.
629 Added initial Go bindings in bindings/go
631 New build-system features
632 -------------------------
633 Added support for building in a directory other than the source directory
635 This can be used with the widely-supported idiom of simply running
636 the configure script from some other directory:
643 Fix to save configure options for future, implicit runs of configure
645 When a user updates the source (such as with "git pull") calling
646 "make" may cause an automatic re-run of the configure script. When
647 this happens, the configure script will automatically be called with
648 the same options the user originally passed in the most-recent
649 manual invocation of configure.
651 New test-suite feature
652 ----------------------
653 Binary for bash for running test suite now located via PATH.
655 The notmuch test suite requires a fairly recent version of bash (>=
656 bash 4). As some systems supply an older version of bash at
657 /bin/bash, the test suite is now updated to search $PATH to locate
658 the bash binary. This allows users of systems with old /bin/bash to
659 simply install bash >= 4 somewhere on $PATH before /bin and then use
662 Support for testing output with a trailing newline.
664 Previously, some tests would fail to notice a difference in the
665 presence/absence of a trailing newline in a program output, (which
666 has led to bugs in the past). Now, carefully-written tests (using
667 test_expect_equal_file rather than test_expect_equal) will detect
668 any change in the presence/absence of a trailing newline. Many tests
669 are updated to take advantage of this.
671 Avoiding accessing user's $HOME while running test suite
673 The test suite now carefully creates its own HOME directory. This
674 allows the test suite to be run with no existing HOME directory, (as
675 some build systems apparently do), and avoids test-suite differences
676 due to configuration files in the users HOME directory.
681 Output *all* files for "notmuch search --output=files"
683 For the cases where multiple files have the same Message ID,
684 previous versions of notmuch would output only one such file. This
685 command is now fixed to correctly output all files.
687 Fixed spurious search results from "overlapped" indexing of addresses
689 This fixed a bug where a search for:
691 to:user@elsewhere.com
693 would incorrectly match a message sent:
695 To: user@example,com, someone@elsewhere.com
697 Fix --output=json when search has no results
699 A bug present since notmuch 0.4 had caused searches with no results
700 to produce an invalid json object. This is now fixed to cleanly
701 return a valid json object representing an empty array "[]" as
704 fix the automatic detection of the From address for "notmuch reply"
705 from the Received headers in some cases.
707 Fix core dump on DragonFlyBSD due to -1 return value from
708 sysconf(_SC_GETPW_R_SIZE_MAX).
710 Cleaned up several memory leaks
712 Eliminated a few, rare segmentation faults and a double-free.
714 Fix libnotmuch library to only export notmuch API functions
716 Previous release of the notmuch library also exported some Xapian
717 C++ exception type symbols. These were never part of the library
718 interface and were never intended to be exported.
720 Emacs-interface bug fixes
721 -------------------------
722 Display any unexpected output or errors from "notmuch search" invocations
724 Previously any misformatted output or trailing error messages were
725 silently ignored. This output is now clearly displayed. This fix was
726 very helpful in identifying and fixing the bug described below.
728 Fix bug where some threads would be missing from large search results
730 When a search returned a "large" number of results, the emacs
731 interface was incorrectly dropping one thread every time the output
732 of the "notmuch search" process spanned the emacs read-buffer. This
735 Avoid re-compression of .gz files (and similar) when saving attachment
737 Emacs was being too clever for its own good and trying to
738 re-compress pre-compressed .gz files when saving such attachments
739 (potentially corrupting the attachment). The emacs interface is
740 fixed to avoid this bug.
742 Fix hiding of a message when a previously-hidden citation is visible
744 Previously the citation would remain visible in this case. This is
745 fixed so that hiding a message hides all parts.
747 Notmuch 0.5 (2010-11-11)
748 ========================
749 New, general features
750 ---------------------
751 Maildir-flag synchronization
753 Notmuch now knows how to synchronize flags in maildir filenames with
754 tags in the notmuch database. The following flag/tag mappings are
763 'S' unread (added when 'S' flag is not present)
765 The synchronization occurs in both directions, (for example, adding
766 the 'S' flag to a file will cause the "unread" tag to be added, and
767 adding the "replied" tag to a message will cause the file to be
768 renamed with an 'R' flag).
770 This synchronization is enabled by default for users of the
771 command-line interface, (though only files in directories named
772 "cur" or "new" will be renamed). It can be disabled by setting the
773 new maildir.synchronize_flags option in the configuration file. For
776 notmuch config set maildir.synchronize_flags false
778 Users upgrading may also want to run "notmuch setup" once (just
779 accept the existing configuration) to get a new, nicely-commented
780 [maildir] section added to the configuration file.
782 For users of the notmuch library, the new synchronization
783 functionality is available with the following two new functions:
785 notmuch_message_maildir_flags_to_tags
786 notmuch_message_tags_to_maildir_flags
788 It is anticipated that future improvements to this support will
789 allow for safe synchronization of the 'T' flag with the "deleted"
790 tag, as well as support for custom flag/tag mappings.
794 Support for querying multiple filenames for a single message
796 It is common for the mailstore to contain multiple files with the
797 same message ID. Previously, notmuch would always hide these
798 duplicate files, (returning a single, arbitrary filename with
799 notmuch_message_get_filename).
801 With this release, library users can access all filenames for a
802 message with the new function:
804 notmuch_message_get_filenames
806 Together with notmuch_filenames_valid, notmuch_filenames_get, and
807 notmuch_filenames_move_to_next it is now possible to iterate over
808 all available filenames for a given message.
810 New command-line features
811 -------------------------
812 New "notmuch show --format=raw" for getting at original email contents
814 This new feature allows for a fully-functional email client to be
815 built on top of the notmuch command-line without needing any direct
816 access to the mail store itself.
818 For example, it's now possible to run "emacs -f notmuch" on a local
819 machine with only ssh access to the mail store/notmuch database. To
820 do this, simply set the notmuch-command variable in emacs to the
821 name of a script containing:
823 ssh user@host notmuch "$@"
825 If the ssh client has enabled connection sharing (ControlMaster
826 option in OpenSSH), the emacs interface can be quite responsive this
831 Fix "notmuch search" to print nothing when nothing matches
833 The 0.4 release had a bug in which:
835 notmuch search <expression-with-no-matches>
837 would produce a single blank line of output, (where previous
838 versions would produce no output. This fix also causes a change in
839 the --format=json output, (which would previously produce "[]" and
840 now produces nothing).
842 Emacs interface improvements
843 ----------------------------
844 Fix to allow pipe ('|') command to work when using notmuch over ssh
846 Fix count of lines in hidden signatures.
848 Omit repeated subject lines in (collapsed) thread display.
850 Display current thread subject in a header line.
852 Provide a "c i" binding to copy a thread ID from the search view.
854 Allow for notmuch-fcc-dirs to have a value of nil.
856 Also, the more complex form of notmuch-fcc-dirs now has a slightly
857 different format. It no longer has a special first-element, fallback
858 string. Instead it's now a list of cons cells where the car of each
859 cell is a regular expression to be matched against the sender
860 address, and the cdr is the name of a folder to use for an FCC. So
861 the old fallback behavior can be achieved by including a final cell
862 of (".*" . "default-fcc-folder").
864 Vim interface improvements
865 --------------------------
866 Felipe Contreras provided a number of updates for the vim interface.
868 These include optimizations, support for newer versions of vim, fixed
869 support for sending mail on modern systems, new commands, and
874 Added initial ruby bindings in bindings/ruby
876 Notmuch 0.4 (2010-11-01)
877 ========================
878 New command-line features
879 -------------------------
880 notmuch search --output=(summary|threads|messages|tags|files)
882 This new option allows for particular items to be returned from
883 notmuch searches. The "summary" option is the default and behaves
884 just as "notmuch search" has historically behaved.
886 The new option values allow for thread IDs, message IDs, lists of
887 tags, and lists of filenames to be returned from searches. It is
888 expected that this new option will be very useful in shell
889 scripts. For example:
891 for file in $(notmuch search --output=files <search-terms>); do
892 <operations-on> "$file"
895 notmuch show --format=mbox <search-specification>
897 This new option allows for the messages matching a search
898 specification to be presented as an mbox. Specifically the "mboxrd"
899 format is used which allows for reversible quoting of lines
900 beginning with "From ". A reader should remove a single '>' from the
901 beginning of all lines beginning with one or more '>' characters
902 followed by the 5 characters "From ".
904 notmuch config [get|set] <section>.<item> [value ...]
906 The new top-level "config" command allows for any value in the
907 notmuch configuration file to be queried or set to a new value. Both
908 single-valued and multi-valued items are supported, as our any
909 custom items stored in the configuration file.
911 Avoid setting Bcc header in "notmuch reply"
913 We decided that this was a bit heavy-handed as the actual mail
914 user-agent should be responsible for setting any Bcc option. Also,
915 see below for the notmuch/emacs user-agent now setting an Fcc by
916 default rather than Bcc.
920 Add notmuch_query_get_query_string and notmuch_query_get_sort
922 These are simply functions for querying properties of a
923 notmuch_query_t object.
927 Enable Fcc of all sent messages by default (to "sent" directory)
929 All messages sent from the emacs interface will now be saved to the
930 notmuch mail store where they will be incorporated to the database
931 by the next "notmuch new". By default, messages are saved to the
932 "sent" directory at the top-level of the mail store. This directory
933 can be customized by means of the "Notmuch Fcc Dirs" option in the
934 notmuch customize interface.
936 Ability to all open messages in a thread to a pipe
938 Historically, the '|' keybinding allows for piping a single message
939 to an external command. Now, by prefixing this key with a prefix
940 argument, (for example, by pressing "Control-U |"), all open
941 messages in the current thread will be sent to the external command.
943 Optional support for detecting inline patches
945 This hook is disabled by default but can be enabled with a checkbox
946 under "Notmuch Show Insert Text/Plain Hook" in the notmuch customize
947 interface. It allows for inline patches to be detected and treated
948 as if they were attachments, (with context-sensitive highlighting).
950 Automatically tag messages as "replied" when sending a reply
952 Messages replied to within the emacs interface will now be tagged as
953 "replied". This feature can easily be customized to add or remove
954 other tags as well. For example, a user might use a tag of
955 "needs-reply" and can configure this feature to automatically remove
956 that tag when replying. See "Notmuch Message Mark Replied" in the
957 notmuch customize interface.
959 Allow search-result color specifications to overlay each other
961 For example, one tag can specify the background color of matching
962 lines, while another can specify the foreground. With this change,
963 both settings will now be visible simultaneously, (which was not the
964 case in previous releases). See "Notmuch Search Line Faces" in the
965 notmuch customize interface.
967 Make hidden author names still available for incremental search.
969 When there is insufficient space to display all authors of a thread
970 in search results, the names of hidden authors are now still made
971 available to emacs' incremental search commands. As the user
972 searches, matching lines will temporarily expand to show the hidden
975 New binding of Control-TAB (works like TAB in reverse)
977 Many notmuch nodes already use TAB to navigate forward through
978 various items allowing actions, (message headers, email attachments,
979 etc.). The new Control-TAB binding operates similarly but in the
982 New build-system features
983 -------------------------
984 Various portability fixes have been applied
986 These include fixes for build failures on at least Solaris, FreeBSD,
987 and Fedora systems. We're hopeful that the notmuch code base is now
988 more portable than ever before.
990 Arrange for libnotmuch to be found automatically after make install
992 The notmuch build system is now careful to help the user avoid
993 errors of the form "libnotmuch.so could not be found" immediately
994 after installing. This support takes two forms:
996 1. If the library is installed to a system directory,
997 (configured in /etc/ld.so.conf), then "make install" will
998 automatically run ldconfig.
1000 2. If the library is installed to a non-system directory, the
1001 build system adds a DR_RUNPATH entry to the final binary
1002 pointing to the directory to which the library is installed.
1004 When this support works, the user should be able to run notmuch
1005 immediately after "make install", without any errors trying to find
1006 the notmuch library, and without having to manually set environment
1007 variables such as LD_LIBRARY_PATH.
1009 Check compiler/linker options before using them
1011 The configure script now carefully checks that any desired
1012 compilation options, (whether for enabling compiler warnings, or for
1013 embedding rpath, etc.), are supported. Only supported options are
1014 used in the resulting Makefile.
1016 New test-suite features
1017 -----------------------
1018 New modularization of test suite.
1020 Thanks to a gracious relicensing of the test-suite infrastructure
1021 from the git project, notmuch now has a modular test suite. This
1022 provides the ability to run individual sections of the test suite
1023 rather than the whole things. It also provides better summary of
1024 test results, with support for tests that are expected to fail
1025 (BROKEN and FIXED) in addition to PASS and FAIL. Finally, it makes
1026 it easy to run the test suite within valgrind (pass --valgrind to
1027 notmuch-test or to any sub-script) which has been very useful.
1029 New testing of emacs interface.
1031 The test suite has been augmented to allow automated testing of the
1032 emacs interfaces. So far, this includes basic searches, display of
1033 threads, and tag manipulation. This also includes a test that a new
1034 message can successfully be sent out through a (dummy) SMTP server
1035 and that said message is successfully integrated into the notmuch
1036 database via the FCC setting.
1040 Fix potential corruption of database when "notmuch new " is interrupted.
1042 Previously, an interruption of "notmuch new" would (rarely) result
1043 in a corrupt database. The corruption would manifest itself by a
1044 persistent error of the form:
1046 document ID of 1234 has no thread ID
1048 The message-adding code has been carefully audited and reworked to
1049 avoid this sort of corruption regardless of when it is interrupted.
1051 Fix failure with extremely long message ID headers.
1053 Previously, a message with an extremely long message ID, (say, more
1054 than 300 characters), would fail to be added to notmuch, (triggering
1055 Xapian exceptions). This has now been fixed.
1057 Fix for messages with "charset=unknown-8bit"
1059 Previously, messages with this charset would cause notmuch to emit a
1060 GMime warning, (which would then trip up emacs or other interfaces
1061 parsing the notmuch results).
1063 Fix notmuch_query_search_threads function to return NULL on any exception
1065 Fix "notmuch search" to return non-zero if notmuch_query_search_threads fails
1067 Previously, this command could confusingly report a Xapian
1068 exception, yet still return an error code of 0. It now correctly
1069 returns a failing error code of 1 in this case.
1073 Fix to handle a message with a subject containing, for example "[1234]"
1075 Previously, a message subject containing a sequence of digits within
1076 square brackets would cause the emacs interface to mis-parse the
1077 output of "notmuch search". This would result in the message being
1078 mis-displayed and prevent the user from manipulating the message in
1079 the emacs interface.
1081 Fix to correctly handle message IDs containing ".."
1083 The emacs interface now properly quotes message IDs to avoid a
1084 Xapian bug in which the ".." within a message ID would be
1085 misinterpreted as a numeric range specification.
1087 Python-binding fixes
1088 --------------------
1089 The python bindings for notmuch have been updated to work with python3.
1091 Debian-specific fixes
1092 ---------------------
1093 Fix emacs initialization so "M-x notmuch" works for users by default.
1095 Now, a new Debian user can immediately run "emacs -f notmuch" after
1096 "apt-get install notmuch". Previously, the user would have had to
1097 edit the ~/.emacs file to add "(require 'notmuch)" before this would
1100 Notmuch 0.3.1 (2010-04-27)
1101 ==========================
1104 Fix an infinite loop in "notmuch reply"
1106 This bug could be triggered by replying to a message where the
1107 user's primary email address did not appear in the To: header and
1108 the user had not configured any secondary email addresses. The bug
1109 was a simple re-use of the same iterator variable in nested loops.
1111 Fix a potential SEGV in "notmuch search"
1113 This bug could be triggered by an author name ending in a ','.
1114 Admittedly - that's almost certainly a spam email, but we never
1115 want notmuch to crash.
1119 Fix calculations for line wrapping in the primary "notmuch" view.
1121 Fix Fcc support to prompt to create a directory if the specified Fcc
1122 directory does not exist.
1126 Fix build on OpenSolaris (at least) due to missing 'extern "C"' block.
1128 Without this, the C++ sources could not find strcasestr and the
1129 final linking of notmuch would fail.
1131 Notmuch 0.3 (2010-04-27)
1132 ========================
1133 New command-line features
1134 -------------------------
1135 User-configurable tags for new messages
1137 A new "new.tags" option is available in the configuration file to
1138 determine which tags are applied to new messages. Run "notmuch
1139 setup" to generate new documentation within ~/.notmuch-config on how
1140 to specify this value.
1142 Threads search results named based on subjects that match search
1144 This means that when new mails arrived to a thread you've previously
1145 read, and the new mails have a new subject, you will see that
1146 subject in the search results rather than the old subject.
1148 Faster operation of "notmuch tag" (avoid unneeded sorting)
1150 Since the user just wants to tag all matching messages, we can make
1151 things perform a bit faster by avoiding the sort.
1153 Even Better guessing of From: header for "notmuch reply"
1155 Notmuch now looks at a number of headers when trying to figure out
1156 the best From: header to use in a reply. This is helpful if you have
1157 several configured email addresses, and you also subscribe to various
1158 mailing lists with different addresses, (so that mails you are
1159 replying to won't always include your subscribed address in the To:
1162 Indication of author names that match a search
1164 When notmuch displays threads as the result of a search, it now
1165 lists the authors that match the search before listing the other
1166 authors in the thread. It inserts a pipe '|' symbol between the last
1167 matching and first non-matching author. This is especially useful in
1168 a search that includes tag:unread. Now the authors of the unread
1169 messages in the thread are listed first.
1171 New: Python bindings
1172 --------------------
1173 Sebastian Spaeth has contributed his python bindings for the notmuch
1174 library to the central repository. These bindings were previously
1175 known as "cnotmuch" within python but have now been renamed to be
1176 accessible with a simple, and more official-looking "import notmuch".
1178 The bindings have already proven very useful as people proficient in
1179 python have been able to easily develop programs to do notmuch-based
1180 searches for email-address completion, maildir-flag synchronization,
1183 These bindings are available within the bindings/python directory, but
1184 are not yet integrated into the top-level Makefiles, nor the top-level
1185 package-building scripts. Improvements are welcome.
1187 Emacs interface improvements
1188 ----------------------------
1189 An entirely new initial view for notmuch, (friendly yet powerful)
1191 Some of us call the new view "notmuch hello" but you can get at it
1192 by simply calling "emacs -f notmuch". The new view provides a search
1193 bar where new searches can be performed. It also displays a list of
1194 recent searches, along with a button to save any of these, giving it
1195 a new name as a "saved search". Many people find these "saved
1196 searches" one of the most convenient ways of organizing their mail,
1197 (providing all of the features of "folders" in other mail clients,
1198 but without any of the disadvantages).
1200 Finally, this view can also optionally display all of the tags that
1201 exist in the database, along with a count for each tag, and a custom
1202 search of messages with that tag that's simply a click (or keypress)
1205 Note: For users that liked the original mode of "emacs -f notmuch"
1206 immediately displaying a particular search result, we
1207 recommend instead running something like:
1209 emacs --eval '(notmuch search "tag:inbox" t)'
1211 The "t" means to sort the messages in an "oldest first" order,
1212 (as notmuch would do previously by default). You can also
1213 leave that off to have your search results in "newest first"
1216 Full-featured "customize" support for configuring notmuch
1218 Notmuch now plugs in well to the emacs "customize" mode to make it
1219 much simpler to find things about the notmuch interface that can be
1220 tweaked by the user.
1222 You can get to this mode by starting at the main "Customize" menu in
1223 emacs, then browsing through "Applications", "Mail", and
1224 "Notmuch". Or you can go straight to "M-x customize-group"
1227 Once you're at the customize screen, you'll see a list of documented
1228 options that can be manipulated along with checkboxes, drop-down
1229 selectors, and text-entry boxes for configuring the various
1232 Support for doing tab-completion of email addresses
1234 This support currently relies on an external program,
1235 (notmuch-addresses), that is not yet shipped with notmuch
1236 itself. But multiple, suitable implementations of this program have
1237 already been written that generate address completions by doing
1238 notmuch searches of your email collection. For example, providing
1239 first those addresses that you have composed messages to in the
1242 One such program (implemented in python with the python bindings to
1243 notmuch) is available via:
1245 git clone http://jkr.acm.jhu.edu/git/notmuch_addresses.git
1247 Install that program as notmuch-addresses on your PATH, and then
1248 hitting TAB on a partial email address or name within the To: or Cc:
1249 line of an email message will provide matching completions.
1251 Support for file-based (Fcc) delivery of sent messages to mail store
1253 This isn't yet enabled by default. To enable this, one will have to
1254 set the "Notmuch Fcc Dirs" setting within the notmuch customize
1255 screen, (see its documentation there for details). We anticipate
1256 making this automatic in a future release.
1258 New 'G' key binding to trigger mail refresh (G == "Get new mail")
1260 The 'G' key works wherever '=' works. Before refreshing the screen
1261 it calls an external program that can be used to poll email servers,
1262 run notmuch new and setup specific tags for the new emails. The
1263 script to be called should be configured with the "Notmuch Poll
1264 Script" setting in the customize interface. This script will
1265 typically invoke "notmuch new" and then perhaps several "notmuch
1268 Implement emacs message display with the JSON output from notmuch.
1270 This is much more robust than the previous implementation, (where
1271 some HTML mails and mail quoting the notmuch code with the delimiter
1272 characters in it would cause the parser to fall over).
1274 Better handling of HTML messages and MIME attachments (inline images!)
1276 Allow for any MIME parts that emacs can display to be displayed
1277 inline. This includes inline viewing of image attachments, (provided
1278 the window is large enough to fit the image at its natural size).
1280 Much more robust handling of HTML messages. Currently both text/plain
1281 and text/html alternates will be rendered next to each other. In a
1282 future release, users will be able to decide to see only one or the
1283 other representation.
1285 Each attachment now has its own button so that attachments can be
1286 saved individually (the 'w' key is still available to save all
1289 Customizable support for tidying of text/plain message content
1291 Many new functions are available for tidying up message
1292 content. These include options such as wrapping long lines,
1293 compressing duplicate blank lines, etc.
1295 Most of these are disabled by default, but can easily be enabled by
1296 clicking the available check boxes under the "Notmuch Show Insert
1297 Text/Plain Hook" within the notmuch customize screen.
1299 New support for searchable citations (even when hidden)
1301 When portions of overly-long citations are hidden, the contents of
1302 these citations will still be available for emacs' standard
1303 "incremental search" functions. When the search matches any portion
1304 of a hidden citation, the citation will become visible temporarily
1305 to display the search result.
1307 More flexible handling of header visibility
1309 As an answer to complaints from many users, the To, Cc, and Date
1310 headers of messages are no longer hidden by default. For those users
1311 that liked that these were hidden, a new "Notmuch Messages Headers
1312 Visible" option in the customize interface can be set to nil. The
1313 visibility of headers can still be toggled on a per-message basis
1314 with the 'h' keybinding.
1316 For users that don't want to see some subset of those headers, the
1317 new "Notmuch Message Headers" variable can be customized to list
1318 only those headers that should be present in the display of a message.
1320 The Return key now toggles message visibility anywhere
1322 Previously this worked only on the first summary-line of a message.
1324 Customizable formatting of search results
1326 The user can easily customize the order, width, and formatting of
1327 the various fields in a "notmuch search" buffer. See the "Notmuch
1328 Search Result Format" section of the customize interface.
1330 Generate nicer names for search buffers when using a saved search.
1332 Add a notmuch User-Agent header when sending mail from notmuch/emacs.
1334 New keybinding (M-Ret) to open all collapsed messages in a thread.
1338 Provide a new NOTMUCH_SORT_UNSORTED value for queries
1340 This can be somewhat faster when sorting simply isn't desired. For
1341 example when collecting a set of messages that will all be
1342 manipulated identically, (adding a tag, removing a tag, deleting the
1343 messages), then there's no advantage to sorting the messages by
1348 Fix to compile against GMime 2.6
1350 Previously notmuch insisted on being able to find GMime 2.4, (even
1351 though GMime 2.6 would have worked all along).
1353 Fix configure script to accept (and ignore) various standard options.
1355 For example, those that the Gentoo build scripts expect configure to
1356 accept are now all accepted.
1360 A large number of new tests for the many new features.
1362 Better display of output from failed tests.
1364 Now shows failures with diff rather than forcing the user to gaze at
1365 complete actual and expected output looking for deviation.
1367 Notmuch 0.2 (2010-04-16)
1368 ========================
1369 This is the second release of the notmuch mail system, with actual
1370 detailed release notes this time!
1372 This release consists of a number of minor new features that make
1373 notmuch more pleasant to use, and a few fairly major bug fixes.
1375 We didn't quite hit our release target of "about a week" from the 0.1
1376 release, (0.2 is happening 11 days after 0.1), but we hope to do
1377 better for next week. Look forward to some major features coming to
1378 notmuch in subsequent releases.
1384 Better guessing of From: header.
1386 Notmuch now tries harder to guess which configured address should be
1387 used as the From: line in a "notmuch reply". It will examine the
1388 Received: headers if it fails to find any configured address in To:
1389 or Cc:. This allows it to often choose the correct address even when
1390 replying to a message sent to a mailing list, and not directly to a
1393 Make "notmuch count" with no arguments count all messages
1395 Previously, it was hard to construct a search term that was
1396 guaranteed to match all messages.
1398 Provide a new special-case search term of "*" to match all messages.
1400 This can be used in any command accepting a search term, such as
1401 "notmuch search '*'". Note that you'll want to take care that the
1402 shell doesn't expand * against the current files. And note that the
1403 support for "*" is a special case. It's only meaningful as a single
1404 search term and loses its special meaning when combined with any
1407 Automatically detect thread connections even when a parent message is
1410 Previously, if two or more message were received with a common
1411 parent, but that parent was not received, then these messages would
1412 not be recognized as belonging to the same thread. This is now fixed
1413 so that such messages are properly connected in a thread.
1417 Fix potential data loss in "notmuch new" with SIGINT
1419 One code path in "notmuch new" was not properly handling
1420 SIGINT. Previously, this could lead to messages being removed from
1421 the database (and their tags being lost) if the user pressed
1422 Control-C while "notmuch new" was working.
1424 Fix segfault when a message includes a MIME part that is empty.
1426 Fix handling of non-ASCII characters with --format=json
1428 Previously, characters outside the range of 7-bit ASCII were
1429 silently dropped from the JSON output. This led to corrupted display
1430 of utf-8 content in the upcoming notmuch web-based frontends.
1432 Fix headers to be properly decoded in "notmuch reply"
1434 Previously, the user might see:
1436 Subject: Re: =?iso-8859-2?q?Rozlu=E8ka?=
1440 Subject: Re: Rozlučka
1442 The former text is properly encoded to be RFC-compliant SMTP, will
1443 be sent correctly, and will be properly decoded by the
1444 recipient. But the user trying to edit the reply would likely be
1445 unable to read or edit that field in its encoded form.
1447 Emacs client features
1448 ---------------------
1449 Show the last few lines of citations as well as the first few lines.
1451 It's often the case that the last sentence of a citation is what is
1452 being replied to directly, so the last few lines are often much more
1453 important. The number of lines shown at the beginning and end of any
1454 citation can be configured, (notmuch-show-citation-lines-prefix and
1455 notmuch-show-citation-lines-suffix).
1457 The '+' and '-' commands in the search view can now add and remove
1460 Selective bulk tagging is now possible by selecting a region of
1461 threads and then using either the '+' or '-' keybindings. Bulk
1462 tagging is still available for all threads matching the current
1463 search with the '*' binding.
1465 More meaningful buffer names for thread-view buffers.
1467 Notmuch now uses the Subject of the thread as the buffer
1468 name. Previously it was using the thread ID, which is a meaningless
1471 Provide for customized colors of threads in search view based on tags.
1473 See the documentation of notmuch-search-line-faces, (or us "M-x
1474 customize" and browse to the "notmuch" group within "Applications"
1475 and "Mail"), for details on how to configure this colorization.
1477 Build-system features
1478 ---------------------
1479 Add support to properly build libnotmuch on Darwin systems (OS X).
1481 Add support to configure for many standard options.
1483 We include actual support for:
1485 --includedir --mandir --sysconfdir
1487 And accept and silently ignore several more:
1489 --build --infodir --libexecdir --localstatedir
1490 --disable-maintainer-mode --disable-dependency-tracking
1492 Install emacs client in "make install" rather than requiring a
1493 separate "make install-emacs".
1495 Automatically compute versions numbers between releases.
1497 This support uses the git-describe notation, so a version such as
1498 0.1-144-g43cbbfc indicates a version that is 144 commits since the
1499 0.1 release and is available as git commit "43cbbfc".
1501 Add a new "make test" target to run the test suite and actually verify
1504 Notmuch 0.1 (2010-04-05)
1505 ========================
1506 This is the first release of the notmuch mail system.
1508 It includes the libnotmuch library, the notmuch command-line
1509 interface, and an emacs-based interface to notmuch.
1511 Note: Notmuch will work best with Xapian 1.0.18 (or later) or Xapian
1512 1.1.4 (or later). Previous versions of Xapian (whether 1.0 or 1.1) had
1513 a performance bug that made notmuch very slow when modifying
1514 tags. This would cause distracting pauses when reading mail while
1515 notmuch would wait for Xapian when removing the "inbox" and "unread"
1516 tags from messages in a thread.