1 Notmuch 0.10 (2011-11-23)
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 Full test coverage of the stashing feature in Emacs.
13 New command-line features
14 -------------------------
16 Add "notmuch restore --accumulate" option
18 The --accumulate switch causes the union of the existing and new tags to be
19 applied, instead of replacing each message's tags as they are read in from
22 Add search terms to "notmuch dump"
24 The dump command now takes an optional search term much like notmuch
25 search/show/tag. The output file argument of dump is deprecated in
26 favour of using stdout.
28 Add "notmuch search" --offset and --limit options
30 The search command now takes options --offset=[-]N and --limit=N to limit
31 the number of results shown.
33 Add "notmuch count --output" option
35 The count command is now capable of counting threads in addition to
36 messages. This is selected using the new --output=(threads|messages) option.
41 Add tab-completion for notmuch-search and notmuch-search-filter
43 These functions now support completion tags for query parts
46 Turn "id:MSG-ID" links into buttons associated with notmuch searches
48 Text of the form "id:MSG-ID" in mails is now a clickable button that
49 opens a notmuch search for the given message id.
51 Add keybinding ('c I') for stashing Message-ID's without an id: prefix
53 Reduces manual labour when stashing them for use outside notmuch.
55 Do not query on notmuch-search exit
57 It is harmless to kill the external notmuch process, so the user
58 is no longer interrogated when they interrupt a search.
63 Emacs now constructs large search buffers more efficiently
65 Search avoids opening and parsing message files
67 We now store more information in the database so search no longer
68 has to open every message file to get basic headers. This can
69 improve search speed by as much as 10X, but taking advantage of this
70 requires a database rebuild:
72 notmuch dump > notmuch.dump
73 # Backup, then remove notmuch database ($MAIL/.notmuch)
75 notmuch restore notmuch.dump
77 New collection of add-on tools
78 ------------------------------
80 The source directory "contrib" contains tools built on notmuch. These
81 tools are not part of notmuch, and you should check their individual
82 licenses. Feel free to report problems with them to the notmuch
85 nmbug - share tags with a given prefix
87 nmbug helps maintain a git repo containing all tags with a given
88 prefix (by default "notmuch::"). Tags can be shared by commiting
89 them to git in one location and restoring in another.
91 Notmuch 0.9 (2011-10-01)
92 ========================
97 Correct handling of interruptions during "notmuch new"
99 "notmuch new" now operates as a series of small, self-consistent
100 transactions, so it can correctly resume after an interruption or
101 crash. Previously, interruption could lose existing tags, fail to
102 detect messages on resume, or leave the database in a state
103 temporarily or permanently inconsistent with the mail store.
110 notmuch_database_begin_atomic and notmuch_database_end_atomic allow
111 multiple database operations to be performed atomically.
113 notmuch_database_find_message_by_filename does exactly what it says.
117 notmuch_database_find_message (and n_d_f_m_by_filename) now return
118 a status indicator and uses an output parameter for the
119 message. This change required changing the SONAME of libnotmuch to
122 Python bindings changes
123 -----------------------
125 - Re-encode python unicode objects to utf-8 before passing back to
127 - Support Database().begin_atomic()/end_atomic()
128 - Support Database().find_message_by_filename()
129 NB! This needs a db opened in READ-WRITE mode currently, or it will crash
130 the python process. The is a limitation (=bug) of the underlying libnotmuch.
131 - Fixes where we would not throw NotmuchErrors when we should (Justus Winter)
132 - Update for n_d_find_message* API changes (see above).
134 Ruby bindings changes
135 ---------------------
137 - Wrap new library functions notmuch_database_{begin,end}_atomic.
138 - Add new exception Notmuch::UnbalancedAtomicError.
139 - Rename destroy to destroy! according to Ruby naming conventions.
140 - Update for n_d_find_message* API changes (see above).
145 * Add gpg callback to crypto sigstatus buttons to retrieve/refresh
147 * Add notmuch-show-refresh-view function (and corresponding binding)
148 to refresh the view of a notmuch-show buffer.
150 Reply formatting cleanup
151 ------------------------
153 "notmuch reply" no longer includes notification that non-leafnode
154 MIME parts are being suppressed.
156 Notmuch 0.8 (2011-09-10)
157 ========================
159 Improved handling of message/rfc822 parts
161 Both in the CLI and the emacs interface. Output of rfc822 parts now
162 includes the primary headers, as well as the body and all subparts.
163 Output of the completely raw rfc822-formatted message, including all
164 headers, is unfortunately not yet supported (but hopefully will be
167 Improved Build system portability
169 Certain parts of the shell script generating notmuch.sym were
170 specific to the GNU versions of sed and nm. The new version should
171 be more portable to e.g. OpenBSD.
173 Documentation update for Ruby bindings
175 Added documentation, typo fixes, and improved support for rdoc.
177 Unicode, iterator, PEP8 changes for python bindings
179 - PEP8 (code formatting) changes for python files.
180 - Remove Tags.__len__ ; see 0.6 release notes for motivation.
181 - Decode headers as UTF8, encode (unicode) database paths as UTF8.
183 Notmuch 0.7 (2011-08-01)
184 ========================
186 Vim interface improvements
187 --------------------------
189 Jason Woofenden provided a number of bug fixes for the Vim interface
191 * fix citation/signature fold lengths
192 * fix cig/cit parsing within multipart/*
193 * fix on-screen instructions for show-signature
194 * fix from list reformatting in search view
195 * fix space key: now archives (did opposite)
197 Uwe Kleine-König contributed
199 * use full path for sendmail/doc fix
200 * fix compose temp file name
202 Python Bindings changes
203 -----------------------
205 Sebastian Spaeth contributed two changes related to unicode and UTF8:
207 * message tags are now explicitly unicode
208 * query string is encoded as a UTF8 byte string
210 Build-System improvements
211 ------------------------
213 Generate notmuch.sym after the relevant object files
215 This fixes a bug in parallel building. Thanks to Thomas Jost for the
218 Notmuch 0.6.1 (2011-07-17)
219 ==========================
224 Re-export Xapian exception typeinfo symbols.
226 It turned out our aggressive symbol hiding caused problems for
227 people running gcc 4.4.5.
229 Notmuch 0.6 (2011-07-01)
230 =======================
231 New, general features
232 ---------------------
233 Folder-based searching
235 Notmuch queries can now include a search term to match the
236 directories in which mail files are stored (within the mail
237 storage). The syntax is as follows:
241 For example, one might use things such as:
247 to match any path containing a directory "spam", "work/todo", or
248 containing a directory starting with "2011-", respectively.
250 This feature is particularly useful for users of delivery-agent
251 software (such as procmail or maildrop) that is filtering mail and
252 delivering it to particular folders, or users of systems such as
253 Gmail that use filesystem directories to indicate message tags.
255 NOTE: Only messages that are newly indexed with this version of
256 notmuch will be searchable with folder: terms. In order to enable
257 this feature for all mail, the entire notmuch index will need to be
260 notmuch dump > notmuch.dump
261 # Backup, then remove notmuch database ($MAIL/.notmuch)
263 notmuch restore notmuch.dump
267 Both the command line interface and the emacs-interface have new
268 support for PGP/MIME, detailed below. Thanks to Daniel Kahn Gillmor
269 and Jameson Graef Rollins for making this happen.
271 New, automatic tags: "signed" and "encrypted"
273 These tags will automatically be applied to messages containing
274 multipart/signed and multipart/encrypted parts.
276 NOTE: Only messages that are newly indexed with this version of
277 notmuch will receive these tags.
279 New command-line features
280 -------------------------
281 Add new "notmuch show --verify" option for signature verification
283 This option instruct notmuch to verify the signature of
284 PGP/MIME-signed parts.
286 Add new "notmuch show --decrypt" and "notmuch reply --decrypt" options
288 This option instructs notmuch to decrypt PGP/MIME-encrypted parts.
289 Note that this feature currently requires gpg-agent and a passphrase entry
290 tool (e.g. pinentry-gtk or pinentry-curses).
292 Proper nesting of multipart parts in "notmuch show" output
294 MIME parts are now display with proper nesting to reflect original
295 MIME hierarchy of a message. This allows clients to correctly
296 analyze the MIME structure, (such as, for example, determining to
297 which parts a signature part applies).
299 Add new "notmuch show --part" option
301 This is a replacement for the older "notmuch part" command, (which
302 is now deprecated—it should still work as always, but is no longer
303 documented). Putting part output under "notmuch show" allows for all
304 of the "notmuch show" options to be applied when extracting a single
305 part, (such as --format=json for extracting a message part with JSON
308 Deprecate "notmuch search-tags", (in favor of "notmuch search --output=tags *")
310 The "notmuch search-tags" sub-command has been redundant since the
311 addition of the --output=tags option to "notmuch search". We now
312 make that more clear by deprecating "notmuch search-tags", (dropping
313 it from the documentation). We do continue to support the old syntax
314 by translating it internally to the new call.
316 Performance improvements
317 ------------------------
318 Faster searches (by doing fewer searches to construct threads)
320 Whenever a user asks for search results as threads, notmuch first
321 performs a search for messages matching the query, then performs
322 additional searches to find other messages in the resulting threads.
324 Removing inefficiencies and redundancies in these secondary searches
325 results in a measured speedups of 1.5x for a typical search.
327 Faster searches (by doing fewer passes to gather message data)
329 Optimizing Xapian data access patterns (using a single pass to get
330 all message-document data rather than a pass for each data type)
331 results in a measured speedup of 1.7x for a typical search.
333 The benefits of this optimization combine with the preceding
334 optimization. With both in place, Austin Clements measured a speedup
335 of 2.5x for a search of all messages in his inbox (was 4.5s, now
336 1.8s). Thanks, Austin!
338 Faster initial indexing
340 More efficient indexing of new messages results in a measured
341 speedup of 1.4x for the initial indexing of 3 GB of mail (1h 14m
342 rather than 1h 46m). Thanks to Austin Clements and Michal Sojka.
344 Make "notmuch new" faster for unchanged directories
346 Optimizing to not do any further examinations of sub-directories
347 when the filesystem indicates that a directory is unchanged from the
348 last "notmuch new" results in measured speedups of 8.5 for the "No
349 new mail" case, (was 0.77s, now 0.09s). Thanks to Karel Zak.
351 New emacs-interface features
352 ----------------------------
354 Support for PGP/MIME (GnuPG)
356 Automatically indicate validity of signatures for multipart/signed
357 messages. Automatically display decrypted content for
358 multipart/encrypted messages. See the emacs variable
359 notmuch-crypto-process-mime for more information. Note that this
360 needs gpg-agent and a pinentry tool just as the command line tools.
361 Also note there is no support SMIME yet.
363 Output of pipe command is now displayed if pipe command fails
365 This is extremely useful in the common use case of piping a patch to
366 "git am". If git fails to cleanly merge the patch the error messages
367 from the failed merge are now clearly displayed to the user, (where
368 previously they were silently hidden from the user).
370 User-selectable From address
372 A user can choose which configured email addresses should be used as
373 the From address whenever composing a new message. To do so, simply
374 press C-u before the command which will open a new message. Emacs
375 will prompt for the from address to use.
377 The user can customize the "Notmuch Identities" setting in the
378 notmuch customize group in order to use addresses other than those in
379 the notmuch configuration file if desired.
381 The user can also choose to always be prompted for the from address
382 when composing a new message (without having to use C-u) by setting
383 the "Notmuch Always Prompt For Sender" option in the notmuch
386 Hiding of repeated subjects in collapsed thread view
388 In notmuch-show mode, if a collapsed message has the same subject as
389 its parent, the subject is not shown.
391 Automatic detection and hiding of original message in top-posted message
393 When a message contains a line looking something like:
395 ----- Original Message -----
397 emacs hides this and all subsequent lines as an "original message",
398 (allowing the user to click or press enter on the "original message"
399 button to display it again). This makes the handling of top-posted
400 citations work much like conventional citations.
402 New hooks for running code when tags are modified
404 Some users want to perform additional actions whenever a particular
405 tag is added/removed from a message. This could be used to, for
406 example, interface with some external spam-recognition training
407 tool. To facilitate this, two new hooks are added which can be
408 modified in the following settings of the notmuch customize group:
410 Notmuch Before Tag Hook
411 Notmuch After Tag Hook
413 New optional support for hiding some multipart/alternative parts
415 Many emails are sent with redundant content within a
416 multipart/alternative group (such as a text/plain part as well as a
417 text/html part). Users can configure the setting:
419 Notmuch Show All Multipart/Alternative Parts
421 to "off" in the notmuch customize group to have the interface
422 automatically hide some part alternatives (such as text/html
423 parts). This new part hiding is not configured by default yet
424 because there's not yet a simple way to re-display such a hidden
425 part if it is not actually redundant with a displayed part.
427 Better rendering of text/x-vcalendar parts
429 These parts are now displayed in a format suitable for use with the
432 Avoid getting confused by Subject and Author fields with newline characters
434 Replacing all characters with ASCII code less than 32 with a question mark.
436 Cleaner display of From line in email messages (remove double quotes,
437 and drop "name" if it's actually just a repeat of the email address).
439 Vim interface improvements
440 --------------------------
441 Felipe Contreras provided a number of updates for the vim interface:
443 * Using sendmail directly rather than mailx,
444 * Implementing archive in show view
445 * Add support to mark as read in show and search views
446 * Add delete commands
449 Bindings improvements
450 ---------------------
451 Ruby bindings are now much more complete
453 Including QUERY.sort, QUERY.to_s, MESSAGE.maildir_flags_to_tags,
454 MESSAGE.tags_to_maildir_flags, and MESSAGE.get_filenames
456 * Python bindings have been updated and extended
457 (docs online at http://packages.python.org/notmuch/)
460 - Message().get_filenames(),
461 - Message().tags_to_maildir_flags(),Message().maildir_flags_to_tags()
462 - list(Threads()) and list(Messages) works now
464 - Message().__cmp__() and __hash__()
465 These allow, for example:
468 As well as set arithmetic on Messages():
470 s1, s2= set(msgs1), set(msgs2)
475 - len(Messages()) as it exhausted the iterator.
476 Use len(list(Messages())) or
477 Query.count_messages() to get the length.
479 Added initial Go bindings in bindings/go
481 New build-system features
482 -------------------------
483 Added support for building in a directory other than the source directory
485 This can be used with the widely-supported idiom of simply running
486 the configure script from some other directory:
493 Fix to save configure options for future, implicit runs of configure
495 When a user updates the source (such as with "git pull") calling
496 "make" may cause an automatic re-run of the configure script. When
497 this happens, the configure script will automatically be called with
498 the same options the user originally passed in the most-recent
499 manual invocation of configure.
501 New test-suite feature
502 ----------------------
503 Binary for bash for running test suite now located via PATH.
505 The notmuch test suite requires a fairly recent version of bash (>=
506 bash 4). As some systems supply an older version of bash at
507 /bin/bash, the test suite is now updated to search $PATH to locate
508 the bash binary. This allows users of systems with old /bin/bash to
509 simply install bash >= 4 somewhere on $PATH before /bin and then use
512 Support for testing output with a trailing newline.
514 Previously, some tests would fail to notice a difference in the
515 presence/absence of a trailing newline in a program output, (which
516 has led to bugs in the past). Now, carefully-written tests (using
517 test_expect_equal_file rather than test_expect_equal) will detect
518 any change in the presence/absence of a trailing newline. Many tests
519 are updated to take advantage of this.
521 Avoiding accessing user's $HOME while running test suite
523 The test suite now carefully creates its own HOME directory. This
524 allows the test suite to be run with no existing HOME directory, (as
525 some build systems apparently do), and avoids test-suite differences
526 due to configuration files in the users HOME directory.
531 Output *all* files for "notmuch search --output=files"
533 For the cases where multiple files have the same Message ID,
534 previous versions of notmuch would output only one such file. This
535 command is now fixed to correctly output all files.
537 Fixed spurious search results from "overlapped" indexing of addresses
539 This fixed a bug where a search for:
541 to:user@elsewhere.com
543 would incorrectly match a message sent:
545 To: user@example,com, someone@elsewhere.com
547 Fix --output=json when search has no results
549 A bug present since notmuch 0.4 had caused searches with no results
550 to produce an invalid json object. This is now fixed to cleanly
551 return a valid json object representing an empty array "[]" as
554 fix the automatic detection of the From address for "notmuch reply"
555 from the Received headers in some cases.
557 Fix core dump on DragonFlyBSD due to -1 return value from
558 sysconf(_SC_GETPW_R_SIZE_MAX).
560 Cleaned up several memory leaks
562 Eliminated a few, rare segmentation faults and a double-free.
564 Fix libnotmuch library to only export notmuch API functions
566 Previous release of the notmuch library also exported some Xapian
567 C++ exception type symbols. These were never part of the library
568 interface and were never intended to be exported.
570 Emacs-interface bug fixes
571 -------------------------
572 Display any unexpected output or errors from "notmuch search" invocations
574 Previously any misformatted output or trailing error messages were
575 silently ignored. This output is now clearly displayed. This fix was
576 very helpful in identifying and fixing the bug described below.
578 Fix bug where some threads would be missing from large search results
580 When a search returned a "large" number of results, the emacs
581 interface was incorrectly dropping one thread every time the output
582 of the "notmuch search" process spanned the emacs read-buffer. This
585 Avoid re-compression of .gz files (and similar) when saving attachment
587 Emacs was being too clever for its own good and trying to
588 re-compress pre-compressed .gz files when saving such attachments
589 (potentially corrupting the attachment). The emacs interface is
590 fixed to avoid this bug.
592 Fix hiding of a message when a previously-hidden citation is visible
594 Previously the citation would remain visible in this case. This is
595 fixed so that hiding a message hides all parts.
597 Notmuch 0.5 (2010-11-11)
598 ========================
599 New, general features
600 ---------------------
601 Maildir-flag synchronization
603 Notmuch now knows how to synchronize flags in maildir filenames with
604 tags in the notmuch database. The following flag/tag mappings are
613 'S' unread (added when 'S' flag is not present)
615 The synchronization occurs in both directions, (for example, adding
616 the 'S' flag to a file will cause the "unread" tag to be added, and
617 adding the "replied" tag to a message will cause the file to be
618 renamed with an 'R' flag).
620 This synchronization is enabled by default for users of the
621 command-line interface, (though only files in directories named
622 "cur" or "new" will be renamed). It can be disabled by setting the
623 new maildir.synchronize_flags option in the configuration file. For
626 notmuch config set maildir.synchronize_flags false
628 Users upgrading may also want to run "notmuch setup" once (just
629 accept the existing configuration) to get a new, nicely-commented
630 [maildir] section added to the configuration file.
632 For users of the notmuch library, the new synchronization
633 functionality is available with the following two new functions:
635 notmuch_message_maildir_flags_to_tags
636 notmuch_message_tags_to_maildir_flags
638 It is anticipated that future improvements to this support will
639 allow for safe synchronization of the 'T' flag with the "deleted"
640 tag, as well as support for custom flag/tag mappings.
644 Support for querying multiple filenames for a single message
646 It is common for the mailstore to contain multiple files with the
647 same message ID. Previously, notmuch would always hide these
648 duplicate files, (returning a single, arbitrary filename with
649 notmuch_message_get_filename).
651 With this release, library users can access all filenames for a
652 message with the new function:
654 notmuch_message_get_filenames
656 Together with notmuch_filenames_valid, notmuch_filenames_get, and
657 notmuch_filenames_move_to_next it is now possible to iterate over
658 all available filenames for a given message.
660 New command-line features
661 -------------------------
662 New "notmuch show --format=raw" for getting at original email contents
664 This new feature allows for a fully-functional email client to be
665 built on top of the notmuch command-line without needing any direct
666 access to the mail store itself.
668 For example, it's now possible to run "emacs -f notmuch" on a local
669 machine with only ssh access to the mail store/notmuch database. To
670 do this, simply set the notmuch-command variable in emacs to the
671 name of a script containing:
673 ssh user@host notmuch "$@"
675 If the ssh client has enabled connection sharing (ControlMaster
676 option in OpenSSH), the emacs interface can be quite responsive this
681 Fix "notmuch search" to print nothing when nothing matches
683 The 0.4 release had a bug in which:
685 notmuch search <expression-with-no-matches>
687 would produce a single blank line of output, (where previous
688 versions would produce no output. This fix also causes a change in
689 the --format=json output, (which would previously produce "[]" and
690 now produces nothing).
692 Emacs interface improvements
693 ----------------------------
694 Fix to allow pipe ('|') command to work when using notmuch over ssh
696 Fix count of lines in hidden signatures.
698 Omit repeated subject lines in (collapsed) thread display.
700 Display current thread subject in a header line.
702 Provide a "c i" binding to copy a thread ID from the search view.
704 Allow for notmuch-fcc-dirs to have a value of nil.
706 Also, the more complex form of notmuch-fcc-dirs now has a slightly
707 different format. It no longer has a special first-element, fallback
708 string. Instead it's now a list of cons cells where the car of each
709 cell is a regular expression to be matched against the sender
710 address, and the cdr is the name of a folder to use for an FCC. So
711 the old fallback behavior can be achieved by including a final cell
712 of (".*" . "default-fcc-folder").
714 Vim interface improvements
715 --------------------------
716 Felipe Contreras provided a number of updates for the vim interface.
718 These include optimizations, support for newer versions of vim, fixed
719 support for sending mail on modern systems, new commands, and
724 Added initial ruby bindings in bindings/ruby
726 Notmuch 0.4 (2010-11-01)
727 ========================
728 New command-line features
729 -------------------------
730 notmuch search --output=(summary|threads|messages|tags|files)
732 This new option allows for particular items to be returned from
733 notmuch searches. The "summary" option is the default and behaves
734 just as "notmuch search" has historically behaved.
736 The new option values allow for thread IDs, message IDs, lists of
737 tags, and lists of filenames to be returned from searches. It is
738 expected that this new option will be very useful in shell
739 scripts. For example:
741 for file in $(notmuch search --output=files <search-terms>); do
742 <operations-on> "$file"
745 notmuch show --format=mbox <search-specification>
747 This new option allows for the messages matching a search
748 specification to be presented as an mbox. Specifically the "mboxrd"
749 format is used which allows for reversible quoting of lines
750 beginning with "From ". A reader should remove a single '>' from the
751 beginning of all lines beginning with one or more '>' characters
752 followed by the 5 characters "From ".
754 notmuch config [get|set] <section>.<item> [value ...]
756 The new top-level "config" command allows for any value in the
757 notmuch configuration file to be queried or set to a new value. Both
758 single-valued and multi-valued items are supported, as our any
759 custom items stored in the configuration file.
761 Avoid setting Bcc header in "notmuch reply"
763 We decided that this was a bit heavy-handed as the actual mail
764 user-agent should be responsible for setting any Bcc option. Also,
765 see below for the notmuch/emacs user-agent now setting an Fcc by
766 default rather than Bcc.
770 Add notmuch_query_get_query_string and notmuch_query_get_sort
772 These are simply functions for querying properties of a
773 notmuch_query_t object.
777 Enable Fcc of all sent messages by default (to "sent" directory)
779 All messages sent from the emacs interface will now be saved to the
780 notmuch mail store where they will be incorporated to the database
781 by the next "notmuch new". By default, messages are saved to the
782 "sent" directory at the top-level of the mail store. This directory
783 can be customized by means of the "Notmuch Fcc Dirs" option in the
784 notmuch customize interface.
786 Ability to all open messages in a thread to a pipe
788 Historically, the '|' keybinding allows for piping a single message
789 to an external command. Now, by prefixing this key with a prefix
790 argument, (for example, by pressing "Control-U |"), all open
791 messages in the current thread will be sent to the external command.
793 Optional support for detecting inline patches
795 This hook is disabled by default but can be enabled with a checkbox
796 under "Notmuch Show Insert Text/Plain Hook" in the notmuch customize
797 interface. It allows for inline patches to be detected and treated
798 as if they were attachments, (with context-sensitive highlighting).
800 Automatically tag messages as "replied" when sending a reply
802 Messages replied to within the emacs interface will now be tagged as
803 "replied". This feature can easily be customized to add or remove
804 other tags as well. For example, a user might use a tag of
805 "needs-reply" and can configure this feature to automatically remove
806 that tag when replying. See "Notmuch Message Mark Replied" in the
807 notmuch customize interface.
809 Allow search-result color specifications to overlay each other
811 For example, one tag can specify the background color of matching
812 lines, while another can specify the foreground. With this change,
813 both settings will now be visible simultaneously, (which was not the
814 case in previous releases). See "Notmuch Search Line Faces" in the
815 notmuch customize interface.
817 Make hidden author names still available for incremental search.
819 When there is insufficient space to display all authors of a thread
820 in search results, the names of hidden authors are now still made
821 available to emacs' incremental search commands. As the user
822 searches, matching lines will temporarily expand to show the hidden
825 New binding of Control-TAB (works like TAB in reverse)
827 Many notmuch nodes already use TAB to navigate forward through
828 various items allowing actions, (message headers, email attachments,
829 etc.). The new Control-TAB binding operates similarly but in the
832 New build-system features
833 -------------------------
834 Various portability fixes have been applied
836 These include fixes for build failures on at least Solaris, FreeBSD,
837 and Fedora systems. We're hopeful that the notmuch code base is now
838 more portable than ever before.
840 Arrange for libnotmuch to be found automatically after make install
842 The notmuch build system is now careful to help the user avoid
843 errors of the form "libnotmuch.so could not be found" immediately
844 after installing. This support takes two forms:
846 1. If the library is installed to a system directory,
847 (configured in /etc/ld.so.conf), then "make install" will
848 automatically run ldconfig.
850 2. If the library is installed to a non-system directory, the
851 build system adds a DR_RUNPATH entry to the final binary
852 pointing to the directory to which the library is installed.
854 When this support works, the user should be able to run notmuch
855 immediately after "make install", without any errors trying to find
856 the notmuch library, and without having to manually set environment
857 variables such as LD_LIBRARY_PATH.
859 Check compiler/linker options before using them
861 The configure script now carefully checks that any desired
862 compilation options, (whether for enabling compiler warnings, or for
863 embedding rpath, etc.), are supported. Only supported options are
864 used in the resulting Makefile.
866 New test-suite features
867 -----------------------
868 New modularization of test suite.
870 Thanks to a gracious relicensing of the test-suite infrastructure
871 from the git project, notmuch now has a modular test suite. This
872 provides the ability to run individual sections of the test suite
873 rather than the whole things. It also provides better summary of
874 test results, with support for tests that are expected to fail
875 (BROKEN and FIXED) in addition to PASS and FAIL. Finally, it makes
876 it easy to run the test suite within valgrind (pass --valgrind to
877 notmuch-test or to any sub-script) which has been very useful.
879 New testing of emacs interface.
881 The test suite has been augmented to allow automated testing of the
882 emacs interfaces. So far, this includes basic searches, display of
883 threads, and tag manipulation. This also includes a test that a new
884 message can successfully be sent out through a (dummy) SMTP server
885 and that said message is successfully integrated into the notmuch
886 database via the FCC setting.
890 Fix potential corruption of database when "notmuch new " is interrupted.
892 Previously, an interruption of "notmuch new" would (rarely) result
893 in a corrupt database. The corruption would manifest itself by a
894 persistent error of the form:
896 document ID of 1234 has no thread ID
898 The message-adding code has been carefully audited and reworked to
899 avoid this sort of corruption regardless of when it is interrupted.
901 Fix failure with extremely long message ID headers.
903 Previously, a message with an extremely long message ID, (say, more
904 than 300 characters), would fail to be added to notmuch, (triggering
905 Xapian exceptions). This has now been fixed.
907 Fix for messages with "charset=unknown-8bit"
909 Previously, messages with this charset would cause notmuch to emit a
910 GMime warning, (which would then trip up emacs or other interfaces
911 parsing the notmuch results).
913 Fix notmuch_query_search_threads function to return NULL on any exception
915 Fix "notmuch search" to return non-zero if notmuch_query_search_threads fails
917 Previously, this command could confusingly report a Xapian
918 exception, yet still return an error code of 0. It now correctly
919 returns a failing error code of 1 in this case.
923 Fix to handle a message with a subject containing, for example "[1234]"
925 Previously, a message subject containing a sequence of digits within
926 square brackets would cause the emacs interface to mis-parse the
927 output of "notmuch search". This would result in the message being
928 mis-displayed and prevent the user from manipulating the message in
931 Fix to correctly handle message IDs containing ".."
933 The emacs interface now properly quotes message IDs to avoid a
934 Xapian bug in which the ".." within a message ID would be
935 misinterpreted as a numeric range specification.
939 The python bindings for notmuch have been updated to work with python3.
941 Debian-specific fixes
942 ---------------------
943 Fix emacs initialization so "M-x notmuch" works for users by default.
945 Now, a new Debian user can immediately run "emacs -f notmuch" after
946 "apt-get install notmuch". Previously, the user would have had to
947 edit the ~/.emacs file to add "(require 'notmuch)" before this would
950 Notmuch 0.3.1 (2010-04-27)
951 ==========================
954 Fix an infinite loop in "notmuch reply"
956 This bug could be triggered by replying to a message where the
957 user's primary email address did not appear in the To: header and
958 the user had not configured any secondary email addresses. The bug
959 was a simple re-use of the same iterator variable in nested loops.
961 Fix a potential SEGV in "notmuch search"
963 This bug could be triggered by an author name ending in a ','.
964 Admittedly - that's almost certainly a spam email, but we never
965 want notmuch to crash.
969 Fix calculations for line wrapping in the primary "notmuch" view.
971 Fix Fcc support to prompt to create a directory if the specified Fcc
972 directory does not exist.
976 Fix build on OpenSolaris (at least) due to missing 'extern "C"' block.
978 Without this, the C++ sources could not find strcasestr and the
979 final linking of notmuch would fail.
981 Notmuch 0.3 (2010-04-27)
982 ========================
983 New command-line features
984 -------------------------
985 User-configurable tags for new messages
987 A new "new.tags" option is available in the configuration file to
988 determine which tags are applied to new messages. Run "notmuch
989 setup" to generate new documentation within ~/.notmuch-config on how
990 to specify this value.
992 Threads search results named based on subjects that match search
994 This means that when new mails arrived to a thread you've previously
995 read, and the new mails have a new subject, you will see that
996 subject in the search results rather than the old subject.
998 Faster operation of "notmuch tag" (avoid unneeded sorting)
1000 Since the user just wants to tag all matching messages, we can make
1001 things perform a bit faster by avoiding the sort.
1003 Even Better guessing of From: header for "notmuch reply"
1005 Notmuch now looks at a number of headers when trying to figure out
1006 the best From: header to use in a reply. This is helpful if you have
1007 several configured email addresses, and you also subscribe to various
1008 mailing lists with different addresses, (so that mails you are
1009 replying to won't always include your subscribed address in the To:
1012 Indication of author names that match a search
1014 When notmuch displays threads as the result of a search, it now
1015 lists the authors that match the search before listing the other
1016 authors in the thread. It inserts a pipe '|' symbol between the last
1017 matching and first non-matching author. This is especially useful in
1018 a search that includes tag:unread. Now the authors of the unread
1019 messages in the thread are listed first.
1021 New: Python bindings
1022 --------------------
1023 Sebastian Spaeth has contributed his python bindings for the notmuch
1024 library to the central repository. These bindings were previously
1025 known as "cnotmuch" within python but have now been renamed to be
1026 accessible with a simple, and more official-looking "import notmuch".
1028 The bindings have already proven very useful as people proficient in
1029 python have been able to easily develop programs to do notmuch-based
1030 searches for email-address completion, maildir-flag synchronization,
1033 These bindings are available within the bindings/python directory, but
1034 are not yet integrated into the top-level Makefiles, nor the top-level
1035 package-building scripts. Improvements are welcome.
1037 Emacs interface improvements
1038 ----------------------------
1039 An entirely new initial view for notmuch, (friendly yet powerful)
1041 Some of us call the new view "notmuch hello" but you can get at it
1042 by simply calling "emacs -f notmuch". The new view provides a search
1043 bar where new searches can be performed. It also displays a list of
1044 recent searches, along with a button to save any of these, giving it
1045 a new name as a "saved search". Many people find these "saved
1046 searches" one of the most convenient ways of organizing their mail,
1047 (providing all of the features of "folders" in other mail clients,
1048 but without any of the disadvantages).
1050 Finally, this view can also optionally display all of the tags that
1051 exist in the database, along with a count for each tag, and a custom
1052 search of messages with that tag that's simply a click (or keypress)
1055 Note: For users that liked the original mode of "emacs -f notmuch"
1056 immediately displaying a particular search result, we
1057 recommend instead running something like:
1059 emacs --eval '(notmuch search "tag:inbox" t)'
1061 The "t" means to sort the messages in an "oldest first" order,
1062 (as notmuch would do previously by default). You can also
1063 leave that off to have your search results in "newest first"
1066 Full-featured "customize" support for configuring notmuch
1068 Notmuch now plugs in well to the emacs "customize" mode to make it
1069 much simpler to find things about the notmuch interface that can be
1070 tweaked by the user.
1072 You can get to this mode by starting at the main "Customize" menu in
1073 emacs, then browsing through "Applications", "Mail", and
1074 "Notmuch". Or you can go straight to "M-x customize-group"
1077 Once you're at the customize screen, you'll see a list of documented
1078 options that can be manipulated along with checkboxes, drop-down
1079 selectors, and text-entry boxes for configuring the various
1082 Support for doing tab-completion of email addresses
1084 This support currently relies on an external program,
1085 (notmuch-addresses), that is not yet shipped with notmuch
1086 itself. But multiple, suitable implementations of this program have
1087 already been written that generate address completions by doing
1088 notmuch searches of your email collection. For example, providing
1089 first those addresses that you have composed messages to in the
1092 One such program (implemented in python with the python bindings to
1093 notmuch) is available via:
1095 git clone http://jkr.acm.jhu.edu/git/notmuch_addresses.git
1097 Install that program as notmuch-addresses on your PATH, and then
1098 hitting TAB on a partial email address or name within the To: or Cc:
1099 line of an email message will provide matching completions.
1101 Support for file-based (Fcc) delivery of sent messages to mail store
1103 This isn't yet enabled by default. To enable this, one will have to
1104 set the "Notmuch Fcc Dirs" setting within the notmuch customize
1105 screen, (see its documentation there for details). We anticipate
1106 making this automatic in a future release.
1108 New 'G' key binding to trigger mail refresh (G == "Get new mail")
1110 The 'G' key works wherever '=' works. Before refreshing the screen
1111 it calls an external program that can be used to poll email servers,
1112 run notmuch new and setup specific tags for the new emails. The
1113 script to be called should be configured with the "Notmuch Poll
1114 Script" setting in the customize interface. This script will
1115 typically invoke "notmuch new" and then perhaps several "notmuch
1118 Implement emacs message display with the JSON output from notmuch.
1120 This is much more robust than the previous implementation, (where
1121 some HTML mails and mail quoting the notmuch code with the delimiter
1122 characters in it would cause the parser to fall over).
1124 Better handling of HTML messages and MIME attachments (inline images!)
1126 Allow for any MIME parts that emacs can display to be displayed
1127 inline. This includes inline viewing of image attachments, (provided
1128 the window is large enough to fit the image at its natural size).
1130 Much more robust handling of HTML messages. Currently both text/plain
1131 and text/html alternates will be rendered next to each other. In a
1132 future release, users will be able to decide to see only one or the
1133 other representation.
1135 Each attachment now has its own button so that attachments can be
1136 saved individually (the 'w' key is still available to save all
1139 Customizable support for tidying of text/plain message content
1141 Many new functions are available for tidying up message
1142 content. These include options such as wrapping long lines,
1143 compressing duplicate blank lines, etc.
1145 Most of these are disabled by default, but can easily be enabled by
1146 clicking the available check boxes under the "Notmuch Show Insert
1147 Text/Plain Hook" within the notmuch customize screen.
1149 New support for searchable citations (even when hidden)
1151 When portions of overly-long citations are hidden, the contents of
1152 these citations will still be available for emacs' standard
1153 "incremental search" functions. When the search matches any portion
1154 of a hidden citation, the citation will become visible temporarily
1155 to display the search result.
1157 More flexible handling of header visibility
1159 As an answer to complaints from many users, the To, Cc, and Date
1160 headers of messages are no longer hidden by default. For those users
1161 that liked that these were hidden, a new "Notmuch Messages Headers
1162 Visible" option in the customize interface can be set to nil. The
1163 visibility of headers can still be toggled on a per-message basis
1164 with the 'h' keybinding.
1166 For users that don't want to see some subset of those headers, the
1167 new "Notmuch Message Headers" variable can be customized to list
1168 only those headers that should be present in the display of a message.
1170 The Return key now toggles message visibility anywhere
1172 Previously this worked only on the first summary-line of a message.
1174 Customizable formatting of search results
1176 The user can easily customize the order, width, and formatting of
1177 the various fields in a "notmuch search" buffer. See the "Notmuch
1178 Search Result Format" section of the customize interface.
1180 Generate nicer names for search buffers when using a saved search.
1182 Add a notmuch User-Agent header when sending mail from notmuch/emacs.
1184 New keybinding (M-Ret) to open all collapsed messages in a thread.
1188 Provide a new NOTMUCH_SORT_UNSORTED value for queries
1190 This can be somewhat faster when sorting simply isn't desired. For
1191 example when collecting a set of messages that will all be
1192 manipulated identically, (adding a tag, removing a tag, deleting the
1193 messages), then there's no advantage to sorting the messages by
1198 Fix to compile against GMime 2.6
1200 Previously notmuch insisted on being able to find GMime 2.4, (even
1201 though GMime 2.6 would have worked all along).
1203 Fix configure script to accept (and ignore) various standard options.
1205 For example, those that the Gentoo build scripts expect configure to
1206 accept are now all accepted.
1210 A large number of new tests for the many new features.
1212 Better display of output from failed tests.
1214 Now shows failures with diff rather than forcing the user to gaze at
1215 complete actual and expected output looking for deviation.
1217 Notmuch 0.2 (2010-04-16)
1218 ========================
1219 This is the second release of the notmuch mail system, with actual
1220 detailed release notes this time!
1222 This release consists of a number of minor new features that make
1223 notmuch more pleasant to use, and a few fairly major bug fixes.
1225 We didn't quite hit our release target of "about a week" from the 0.1
1226 release, (0.2 is happening 11 days after 0.1), but we hope to do
1227 better for next week. Look forward to some major features coming to
1228 notmuch in subsequent releases.
1234 Better guessing of From: header.
1236 Notmuch now tries harder to guess which configured address should be
1237 used as the From: line in a "notmuch reply". It will examine the
1238 Received: headers if it fails to find any configured address in To:
1239 or Cc:. This allows it to often choose the correct address even when
1240 replying to a message sent to a mailing list, and not directly to a
1243 Make "notmuch count" with no arguments count all messages
1245 Previously, it was hard to construct a search term that was
1246 guaranteed to match all messages.
1248 Provide a new special-case search term of "*" to match all messages.
1250 This can be used in any command accepting a search term, such as
1251 "notmuch search '*'". Note that you'll want to take care that the
1252 shell doesn't expand * against the current files. And note that the
1253 support for "*" is a special case. It's only meaningful as a single
1254 search term and loses its special meaning when combined with any
1257 Automatically detect thread connections even when a parent message is
1260 Previously, if two or more message were received with a common
1261 parent, but that parent was not received, then these messages would
1262 not be recognized as belonging to the same thread. This is now fixed
1263 so that such messages are properly connected in a thread.
1267 Fix potential data loss in "notmuch new" with SIGINT
1269 One code path in "notmuch new" was not properly handling
1270 SIGINT. Previously, this could lead to messages being removed from
1271 the database (and their tags being lost) if the user pressed
1272 Control-C while "notmuch new" was working.
1274 Fix segfault when a message includes a MIME part that is empty.
1276 Fix handling of non-ASCII characters with --format=json
1278 Previously, characters outside the range of 7-bit ASCII were
1279 silently dropped from the JSON output. This led to corrupted display
1280 of utf-8 content in the upcoming notmuch web-based frontends.
1282 Fix headers to be properly decoded in "notmuch reply"
1284 Previously, the user might see:
1286 Subject: Re: =?iso-8859-2?q?Rozlu=E8ka?=
1290 Subject: Re: Rozlučka
1292 The former text is properly encoded to be RFC-compliant SMTP, will
1293 be sent correctly, and will be properly decoded by the
1294 recipient. But the user trying to edit the reply would likely be
1295 unable to read or edit that field in its encoded form.
1297 Emacs client features
1298 ---------------------
1299 Show the last few lines of citations as well as the first few lines.
1301 It's often the case that the last sentence of a citation is what is
1302 being replied to directly, so the last few lines are often much more
1303 important. The number of lines shown at the beginning and end of any
1304 citation can be configured, (notmuch-show-citation-lines-prefix and
1305 notmuch-show-citation-lines-suffix).
1307 The '+' and '-' commands in the search view can now add and remove
1310 Selective bulk tagging is now possible by selecting a region of
1311 threads and then using either the '+' or '-' keybindings. Bulk
1312 tagging is still available for all threads matching the current
1313 search with the '*' binding.
1315 More meaningful buffer names for thread-view buffers.
1317 Notmuch now uses the Subject of the thread as the buffer
1318 name. Previously it was using the thread ID, which is a meaningless
1321 Provide for customized colors of threads in search view based on tags.
1323 See the documentation of notmuch-search-line-faces, (or us "M-x
1324 customize" and browse to the "notmuch" group within "Applications"
1325 and "Mail"), for details on how to configure this colorization.
1327 Build-system features
1328 ---------------------
1329 Add support to properly build libnotmuch on Darwin systems (OS X).
1331 Add support to configure for many standard options.
1333 We include actual support for:
1335 --includedir --mandir --sysconfdir
1337 And accept and silently ignore several more:
1339 --build --infodir --libexecdir --localstatedir
1340 --disable-maintainer-mode --disable-dependency-tracking
1342 Install emacs client in "make install" rather than requiring a
1343 separate "make install-emacs".
1345 Automatically compute versions numbers between releases.
1347 This support uses the git-describe notation, so a version such as
1348 0.1-144-g43cbbfc indicates a version that is 144 commits since the
1349 0.1 release and is available as git commit "43cbbfc".
1351 Add a new "make test" target to run the test suite and actually verify
1354 Notmuch 0.1 (2010-04-05)
1355 ========================
1356 This is the first release of the notmuch mail system.
1358 It includes the libnotmuch library, the notmuch command-line
1359 interface, and an emacs-based interface to notmuch.
1361 Note: Notmuch will work best with Xapian 1.0.18 (or later) or Xapian
1362 1.1.4 (or later). Previous versions of Xapian (whether 1.0 or 1.1) had
1363 a performance bug that made notmuch very slow when modifying
1364 tags. This would cause distracting pauses when reading mail while
1365 notmuch would wait for Xapian when removing the "inbox" and "unread"
1366 tags from messages in a thread.