1 Notmuch 0.11 (201x-xx-xx)
2 =========================
7 Automatic tag query optimization
9 "notmuch tag" now automatically optimizes the user's query to
10 exclude messages whose tags won't change. In the past, we've
11 suggested that people do this by hand; this is no longer necessary.
14 Notmuch 0.10.1 (2011-11-25)
15 ===========================
22 Argument processing changes in 0.10 introduced a bug where "notmuch
23 --help" crashed while "notmuch help" worked fine. This is fixed in
26 Notmuch 0.10 (2011-11-23)
27 =========================
29 New build and testing features
30 ------------------------------
32 Emacs tests are now done in dtach. This means that dtach is now
33 needed to run the notmuch test suite, at least until the checking for
34 prerequisites is improved.
36 Full test coverage of the stashing feature in Emacs.
38 New command-line features
39 -------------------------
41 Add "notmuch restore --accumulate" option
43 The --accumulate switch causes the union of the existing and new tags to be
44 applied, instead of replacing each message's tags as they are read in from
47 Add search terms to "notmuch dump"
49 The dump command now takes an optional search term much like notmuch
50 search/show/tag. The output file argument of dump is deprecated in
51 favour of using stdout.
53 Add "notmuch search" --offset and --limit options
55 The search command now takes options --offset=[-]N and --limit=N to limit
56 the number of results shown.
58 Add "notmuch count --output" option
60 The count command is now capable of counting threads in addition to
61 messages. This is selected using the new --output=(threads|messages) option.
66 Add tab-completion for notmuch-search and notmuch-search-filter
68 These functions now support completion tags for query parts
71 Turn "id:MSG-ID" links into buttons associated with notmuch searches
73 Text of the form "id:MSG-ID" in mails is now a clickable button that
74 opens a notmuch search for the given message id.
76 Add keybinding ('c I') for stashing Message-ID's without an id: prefix
78 Reduces manual labour when stashing them for use outside notmuch.
80 Do not query on notmuch-search exit
82 It is harmless to kill the external notmuch process, so the user
83 is no longer interrogated when they interrupt a search.
88 Emacs now constructs large search buffers more efficiently
90 Search avoids opening and parsing message files
92 We now store more information in the database so search no longer
93 has to open every message file to get basic headers. This can
94 improve search speed by as much as 10X, but taking advantage of this
95 requires a database rebuild:
97 notmuch dump > notmuch.dump
98 # Backup, then remove notmuch database ($MAIL/.notmuch)
100 notmuch restore notmuch.dump
102 New collection of add-on tools
103 ------------------------------
105 The source directory "contrib" contains tools built on notmuch. These
106 tools are not part of notmuch, and you should check their individual
107 licenses. Feel free to report problems with them to the notmuch
110 nmbug - share tags with a given prefix
112 nmbug helps maintain a git repo containing all tags with a given
113 prefix (by default "notmuch::"). Tags can be shared by commiting
114 them to git in one location and restoring in another.
116 Notmuch 0.9 (2011-10-01)
117 ========================
119 New, general features
120 ---------------------
122 Correct handling of interruptions during "notmuch new"
124 "notmuch new" now operates as a series of small, self-consistent
125 transactions, so it can correctly resume after an interruption or
126 crash. Previously, interruption could lose existing tags, fail to
127 detect messages on resume, or leave the database in a state
128 temporarily or permanently inconsistent with the mail store.
135 notmuch_database_begin_atomic and notmuch_database_end_atomic allow
136 multiple database operations to be performed atomically.
138 notmuch_database_find_message_by_filename does exactly what it says.
142 notmuch_database_find_message (and n_d_f_m_by_filename) now return
143 a status indicator and uses an output parameter for the
144 message. This change required changing the SONAME of libnotmuch to
147 Python bindings changes
148 -----------------------
150 - Re-encode python unicode objects to utf-8 before passing back to
152 - Support Database().begin_atomic()/end_atomic()
153 - Support Database().find_message_by_filename()
154 NB! This needs a db opened in READ-WRITE mode currently, or it will crash
155 the python process. The is a limitation (=bug) of the underlying libnotmuch.
156 - Fixes where we would not throw NotmuchErrors when we should (Justus Winter)
157 - Update for n_d_find_message* API changes (see above).
159 Ruby bindings changes
160 ---------------------
162 - Wrap new library functions notmuch_database_{begin,end}_atomic.
163 - Add new exception Notmuch::UnbalancedAtomicError.
164 - Rename destroy to destroy! according to Ruby naming conventions.
165 - Update for n_d_find_message* API changes (see above).
170 * Add gpg callback to crypto sigstatus buttons to retrieve/refresh
172 * Add notmuch-show-refresh-view function (and corresponding binding)
173 to refresh the view of a notmuch-show buffer.
175 Reply formatting cleanup
176 ------------------------
178 "notmuch reply" no longer includes notification that non-leafnode
179 MIME parts are being suppressed.
181 Notmuch 0.8 (2011-09-10)
182 ========================
184 Improved handling of message/rfc822 parts
186 Both in the CLI and the emacs interface. Output of rfc822 parts now
187 includes the primary headers, as well as the body and all subparts.
188 Output of the completely raw rfc822-formatted message, including all
189 headers, is unfortunately not yet supported (but hopefully will be
192 Improved Build system portability
194 Certain parts of the shell script generating notmuch.sym were
195 specific to the GNU versions of sed and nm. The new version should
196 be more portable to e.g. OpenBSD.
198 Documentation update for Ruby bindings
200 Added documentation, typo fixes, and improved support for rdoc.
202 Unicode, iterator, PEP8 changes for python bindings
204 - PEP8 (code formatting) changes for python files.
205 - Remove Tags.__len__ ; see 0.6 release notes for motivation.
206 - Decode headers as UTF8, encode (unicode) database paths as UTF8.
208 Notmuch 0.7 (2011-08-01)
209 ========================
211 Vim interface improvements
212 --------------------------
214 Jason Woofenden provided a number of bug fixes for the Vim interface
216 * fix citation/signature fold lengths
217 * fix cig/cit parsing within multipart/*
218 * fix on-screen instructions for show-signature
219 * fix from list reformatting in search view
220 * fix space key: now archives (did opposite)
222 Uwe Kleine-König contributed
224 * use full path for sendmail/doc fix
225 * fix compose temp file name
227 Python Bindings changes
228 -----------------------
230 Sebastian Spaeth contributed two changes related to unicode and UTF8:
232 * message tags are now explicitly unicode
233 * query string is encoded as a UTF8 byte string
235 Build-System improvements
236 ------------------------
238 Generate notmuch.sym after the relevant object files
240 This fixes a bug in parallel building. Thanks to Thomas Jost for the
243 Notmuch 0.6.1 (2011-07-17)
244 ==========================
249 Re-export Xapian exception typeinfo symbols.
251 It turned out our aggressive symbol hiding caused problems for
252 people running gcc 4.4.5.
254 Notmuch 0.6 (2011-07-01)
255 =======================
256 New, general features
257 ---------------------
258 Folder-based searching
260 Notmuch queries can now include a search term to match the
261 directories in which mail files are stored (within the mail
262 storage). The syntax is as follows:
266 For example, one might use things such as:
272 to match any path containing a directory "spam", "work/todo", or
273 containing a directory starting with "2011-", respectively.
275 This feature is particularly useful for users of delivery-agent
276 software (such as procmail or maildrop) that is filtering mail and
277 delivering it to particular folders, or users of systems such as
278 Gmail that use filesystem directories to indicate message tags.
280 NOTE: Only messages that are newly indexed with this version of
281 notmuch will be searchable with folder: terms. In order to enable
282 this feature for all mail, the entire notmuch index will need to be
285 notmuch dump > notmuch.dump
286 # Backup, then remove notmuch database ($MAIL/.notmuch)
288 notmuch restore notmuch.dump
292 Both the command line interface and the emacs-interface have new
293 support for PGP/MIME, detailed below. Thanks to Daniel Kahn Gillmor
294 and Jameson Graef Rollins for making this happen.
296 New, automatic tags: "signed" and "encrypted"
298 These tags will automatically be applied to messages containing
299 multipart/signed and multipart/encrypted parts.
301 NOTE: Only messages that are newly indexed with this version of
302 notmuch will receive these tags.
304 New command-line features
305 -------------------------
306 Add new "notmuch show --verify" option for signature verification
308 This option instruct notmuch to verify the signature of
309 PGP/MIME-signed parts.
311 Add new "notmuch show --decrypt" and "notmuch reply --decrypt" options
313 This option instructs notmuch to decrypt PGP/MIME-encrypted parts.
314 Note that this feature currently requires gpg-agent and a passphrase entry
315 tool (e.g. pinentry-gtk or pinentry-curses).
317 Proper nesting of multipart parts in "notmuch show" output
319 MIME parts are now display with proper nesting to reflect original
320 MIME hierarchy of a message. This allows clients to correctly
321 analyze the MIME structure, (such as, for example, determining to
322 which parts a signature part applies).
324 Add new "notmuch show --part" option
326 This is a replacement for the older "notmuch part" command, (which
327 is now deprecated—it should still work as always, but is no longer
328 documented). Putting part output under "notmuch show" allows for all
329 of the "notmuch show" options to be applied when extracting a single
330 part, (such as --format=json for extracting a message part with JSON
333 Deprecate "notmuch search-tags", (in favor of "notmuch search --output=tags *")
335 The "notmuch search-tags" sub-command has been redundant since the
336 addition of the --output=tags option to "notmuch search". We now
337 make that more clear by deprecating "notmuch search-tags", (dropping
338 it from the documentation). We do continue to support the old syntax
339 by translating it internally to the new call.
341 Performance improvements
342 ------------------------
343 Faster searches (by doing fewer searches to construct threads)
345 Whenever a user asks for search results as threads, notmuch first
346 performs a search for messages matching the query, then performs
347 additional searches to find other messages in the resulting threads.
349 Removing inefficiencies and redundancies in these secondary searches
350 results in a measured speedups of 1.5x for a typical search.
352 Faster searches (by doing fewer passes to gather message data)
354 Optimizing Xapian data access patterns (using a single pass to get
355 all message-document data rather than a pass for each data type)
356 results in a measured speedup of 1.7x for a typical search.
358 The benefits of this optimization combine with the preceding
359 optimization. With both in place, Austin Clements measured a speedup
360 of 2.5x for a search of all messages in his inbox (was 4.5s, now
361 1.8s). Thanks, Austin!
363 Faster initial indexing
365 More efficient indexing of new messages results in a measured
366 speedup of 1.4x for the initial indexing of 3 GB of mail (1h 14m
367 rather than 1h 46m). Thanks to Austin Clements and Michal Sojka.
369 Make "notmuch new" faster for unchanged directories
371 Optimizing to not do any further examinations of sub-directories
372 when the filesystem indicates that a directory is unchanged from the
373 last "notmuch new" results in measured speedups of 8.5 for the "No
374 new mail" case, (was 0.77s, now 0.09s). Thanks to Karel Zak.
376 New emacs-interface features
377 ----------------------------
379 Support for PGP/MIME (GnuPG)
381 Automatically indicate validity of signatures for multipart/signed
382 messages. Automatically display decrypted content for
383 multipart/encrypted messages. See the emacs variable
384 notmuch-crypto-process-mime for more information. Note that this
385 needs gpg-agent and a pinentry tool just as the command line tools.
386 Also note there is no support SMIME yet.
388 Output of pipe command is now displayed if pipe command fails
390 This is extremely useful in the common use case of piping a patch to
391 "git am". If git fails to cleanly merge the patch the error messages
392 from the failed merge are now clearly displayed to the user, (where
393 previously they were silently hidden from the user).
395 User-selectable From address
397 A user can choose which configured email addresses should be used as
398 the From address whenever composing a new message. To do so, simply
399 press C-u before the command which will open a new message. Emacs
400 will prompt for the from address to use.
402 The user can customize the "Notmuch Identities" setting in the
403 notmuch customize group in order to use addresses other than those in
404 the notmuch configuration file if desired.
406 The user can also choose to always be prompted for the from address
407 when composing a new message (without having to use C-u) by setting
408 the "Notmuch Always Prompt For Sender" option in the notmuch
411 Hiding of repeated subjects in collapsed thread view
413 In notmuch-show mode, if a collapsed message has the same subject as
414 its parent, the subject is not shown.
416 Automatic detection and hiding of original message in top-posted message
418 When a message contains a line looking something like:
420 ----- Original Message -----
422 emacs hides this and all subsequent lines as an "original message",
423 (allowing the user to click or press enter on the "original message"
424 button to display it again). This makes the handling of top-posted
425 citations work much like conventional citations.
427 New hooks for running code when tags are modified
429 Some users want to perform additional actions whenever a particular
430 tag is added/removed from a message. This could be used to, for
431 example, interface with some external spam-recognition training
432 tool. To facilitate this, two new hooks are added which can be
433 modified in the following settings of the notmuch customize group:
435 Notmuch Before Tag Hook
436 Notmuch After Tag Hook
438 New optional support for hiding some multipart/alternative parts
440 Many emails are sent with redundant content within a
441 multipart/alternative group (such as a text/plain part as well as a
442 text/html part). Users can configure the setting:
444 Notmuch Show All Multipart/Alternative Parts
446 to "off" in the notmuch customize group to have the interface
447 automatically hide some part alternatives (such as text/html
448 parts). This new part hiding is not configured by default yet
449 because there's not yet a simple way to re-display such a hidden
450 part if it is not actually redundant with a displayed part.
452 Better rendering of text/x-vcalendar parts
454 These parts are now displayed in a format suitable for use with the
457 Avoid getting confused by Subject and Author fields with newline characters
459 Replacing all characters with ASCII code less than 32 with a question mark.
461 Cleaner display of From line in email messages (remove double quotes,
462 and drop "name" if it's actually just a repeat of the email address).
464 Vim interface improvements
465 --------------------------
466 Felipe Contreras provided a number of updates for the vim interface:
468 * Using sendmail directly rather than mailx,
469 * Implementing archive in show view
470 * Add support to mark as read in show and search views
471 * Add delete commands
474 Bindings improvements
475 ---------------------
476 Ruby bindings are now much more complete
478 Including QUERY.sort, QUERY.to_s, MESSAGE.maildir_flags_to_tags,
479 MESSAGE.tags_to_maildir_flags, and MESSAGE.get_filenames
481 * Python bindings have been updated and extended
482 (docs online at http://packages.python.org/notmuch/)
485 - Message().get_filenames(),
486 - Message().tags_to_maildir_flags(),Message().maildir_flags_to_tags()
487 - list(Threads()) and list(Messages) works now
489 - Message().__cmp__() and __hash__()
490 These allow, for example:
493 As well as set arithmetic on Messages():
495 s1, s2= set(msgs1), set(msgs2)
500 - len(Messages()) as it exhausted the iterator.
501 Use len(list(Messages())) or
502 Query.count_messages() to get the length.
504 Added initial Go bindings in bindings/go
506 New build-system features
507 -------------------------
508 Added support for building in a directory other than the source directory
510 This can be used with the widely-supported idiom of simply running
511 the configure script from some other directory:
518 Fix to save configure options for future, implicit runs of configure
520 When a user updates the source (such as with "git pull") calling
521 "make" may cause an automatic re-run of the configure script. When
522 this happens, the configure script will automatically be called with
523 the same options the user originally passed in the most-recent
524 manual invocation of configure.
526 New test-suite feature
527 ----------------------
528 Binary for bash for running test suite now located via PATH.
530 The notmuch test suite requires a fairly recent version of bash (>=
531 bash 4). As some systems supply an older version of bash at
532 /bin/bash, the test suite is now updated to search $PATH to locate
533 the bash binary. This allows users of systems with old /bin/bash to
534 simply install bash >= 4 somewhere on $PATH before /bin and then use
537 Support for testing output with a trailing newline.
539 Previously, some tests would fail to notice a difference in the
540 presence/absence of a trailing newline in a program output, (which
541 has led to bugs in the past). Now, carefully-written tests (using
542 test_expect_equal_file rather than test_expect_equal) will detect
543 any change in the presence/absence of a trailing newline. Many tests
544 are updated to take advantage of this.
546 Avoiding accessing user's $HOME while running test suite
548 The test suite now carefully creates its own HOME directory. This
549 allows the test suite to be run with no existing HOME directory, (as
550 some build systems apparently do), and avoids test-suite differences
551 due to configuration files in the users HOME directory.
556 Output *all* files for "notmuch search --output=files"
558 For the cases where multiple files have the same Message ID,
559 previous versions of notmuch would output only one such file. This
560 command is now fixed to correctly output all files.
562 Fixed spurious search results from "overlapped" indexing of addresses
564 This fixed a bug where a search for:
566 to:user@elsewhere.com
568 would incorrectly match a message sent:
570 To: user@example,com, someone@elsewhere.com
572 Fix --output=json when search has no results
574 A bug present since notmuch 0.4 had caused searches with no results
575 to produce an invalid json object. This is now fixed to cleanly
576 return a valid json object representing an empty array "[]" as
579 fix the automatic detection of the From address for "notmuch reply"
580 from the Received headers in some cases.
582 Fix core dump on DragonFlyBSD due to -1 return value from
583 sysconf(_SC_GETPW_R_SIZE_MAX).
585 Cleaned up several memory leaks
587 Eliminated a few, rare segmentation faults and a double-free.
589 Fix libnotmuch library to only export notmuch API functions
591 Previous release of the notmuch library also exported some Xapian
592 C++ exception type symbols. These were never part of the library
593 interface and were never intended to be exported.
595 Emacs-interface bug fixes
596 -------------------------
597 Display any unexpected output or errors from "notmuch search" invocations
599 Previously any misformatted output or trailing error messages were
600 silently ignored. This output is now clearly displayed. This fix was
601 very helpful in identifying and fixing the bug described below.
603 Fix bug where some threads would be missing from large search results
605 When a search returned a "large" number of results, the emacs
606 interface was incorrectly dropping one thread every time the output
607 of the "notmuch search" process spanned the emacs read-buffer. This
610 Avoid re-compression of .gz files (and similar) when saving attachment
612 Emacs was being too clever for its own good and trying to
613 re-compress pre-compressed .gz files when saving such attachments
614 (potentially corrupting the attachment). The emacs interface is
615 fixed to avoid this bug.
617 Fix hiding of a message when a previously-hidden citation is visible
619 Previously the citation would remain visible in this case. This is
620 fixed so that hiding a message hides all parts.
622 Notmuch 0.5 (2010-11-11)
623 ========================
624 New, general features
625 ---------------------
626 Maildir-flag synchronization
628 Notmuch now knows how to synchronize flags in maildir filenames with
629 tags in the notmuch database. The following flag/tag mappings are
638 'S' unread (added when 'S' flag is not present)
640 The synchronization occurs in both directions, (for example, adding
641 the 'S' flag to a file will cause the "unread" tag to be added, and
642 adding the "replied" tag to a message will cause the file to be
643 renamed with an 'R' flag).
645 This synchronization is enabled by default for users of the
646 command-line interface, (though only files in directories named
647 "cur" or "new" will be renamed). It can be disabled by setting the
648 new maildir.synchronize_flags option in the configuration file. For
651 notmuch config set maildir.synchronize_flags false
653 Users upgrading may also want to run "notmuch setup" once (just
654 accept the existing configuration) to get a new, nicely-commented
655 [maildir] section added to the configuration file.
657 For users of the notmuch library, the new synchronization
658 functionality is available with the following two new functions:
660 notmuch_message_maildir_flags_to_tags
661 notmuch_message_tags_to_maildir_flags
663 It is anticipated that future improvements to this support will
664 allow for safe synchronization of the 'T' flag with the "deleted"
665 tag, as well as support for custom flag/tag mappings.
669 Support for querying multiple filenames for a single message
671 It is common for the mailstore to contain multiple files with the
672 same message ID. Previously, notmuch would always hide these
673 duplicate files, (returning a single, arbitrary filename with
674 notmuch_message_get_filename).
676 With this release, library users can access all filenames for a
677 message with the new function:
679 notmuch_message_get_filenames
681 Together with notmuch_filenames_valid, notmuch_filenames_get, and
682 notmuch_filenames_move_to_next it is now possible to iterate over
683 all available filenames for a given message.
685 New command-line features
686 -------------------------
687 New "notmuch show --format=raw" for getting at original email contents
689 This new feature allows for a fully-functional email client to be
690 built on top of the notmuch command-line without needing any direct
691 access to the mail store itself.
693 For example, it's now possible to run "emacs -f notmuch" on a local
694 machine with only ssh access to the mail store/notmuch database. To
695 do this, simply set the notmuch-command variable in emacs to the
696 name of a script containing:
698 ssh user@host notmuch "$@"
700 If the ssh client has enabled connection sharing (ControlMaster
701 option in OpenSSH), the emacs interface can be quite responsive this
706 Fix "notmuch search" to print nothing when nothing matches
708 The 0.4 release had a bug in which:
710 notmuch search <expression-with-no-matches>
712 would produce a single blank line of output, (where previous
713 versions would produce no output. This fix also causes a change in
714 the --format=json output, (which would previously produce "[]" and
715 now produces nothing).
717 Emacs interface improvements
718 ----------------------------
719 Fix to allow pipe ('|') command to work when using notmuch over ssh
721 Fix count of lines in hidden signatures.
723 Omit repeated subject lines in (collapsed) thread display.
725 Display current thread subject in a header line.
727 Provide a "c i" binding to copy a thread ID from the search view.
729 Allow for notmuch-fcc-dirs to have a value of nil.
731 Also, the more complex form of notmuch-fcc-dirs now has a slightly
732 different format. It no longer has a special first-element, fallback
733 string. Instead it's now a list of cons cells where the car of each
734 cell is a regular expression to be matched against the sender
735 address, and the cdr is the name of a folder to use for an FCC. So
736 the old fallback behavior can be achieved by including a final cell
737 of (".*" . "default-fcc-folder").
739 Vim interface improvements
740 --------------------------
741 Felipe Contreras provided a number of updates for the vim interface.
743 These include optimizations, support for newer versions of vim, fixed
744 support for sending mail on modern systems, new commands, and
749 Added initial ruby bindings in bindings/ruby
751 Notmuch 0.4 (2010-11-01)
752 ========================
753 New command-line features
754 -------------------------
755 notmuch search --output=(summary|threads|messages|tags|files)
757 This new option allows for particular items to be returned from
758 notmuch searches. The "summary" option is the default and behaves
759 just as "notmuch search" has historically behaved.
761 The new option values allow for thread IDs, message IDs, lists of
762 tags, and lists of filenames to be returned from searches. It is
763 expected that this new option will be very useful in shell
764 scripts. For example:
766 for file in $(notmuch search --output=files <search-terms>); do
767 <operations-on> "$file"
770 notmuch show --format=mbox <search-specification>
772 This new option allows for the messages matching a search
773 specification to be presented as an mbox. Specifically the "mboxrd"
774 format is used which allows for reversible quoting of lines
775 beginning with "From ". A reader should remove a single '>' from the
776 beginning of all lines beginning with one or more '>' characters
777 followed by the 5 characters "From ".
779 notmuch config [get|set] <section>.<item> [value ...]
781 The new top-level "config" command allows for any value in the
782 notmuch configuration file to be queried or set to a new value. Both
783 single-valued and multi-valued items are supported, as our any
784 custom items stored in the configuration file.
786 Avoid setting Bcc header in "notmuch reply"
788 We decided that this was a bit heavy-handed as the actual mail
789 user-agent should be responsible for setting any Bcc option. Also,
790 see below for the notmuch/emacs user-agent now setting an Fcc by
791 default rather than Bcc.
795 Add notmuch_query_get_query_string and notmuch_query_get_sort
797 These are simply functions for querying properties of a
798 notmuch_query_t object.
802 Enable Fcc of all sent messages by default (to "sent" directory)
804 All messages sent from the emacs interface will now be saved to the
805 notmuch mail store where they will be incorporated to the database
806 by the next "notmuch new". By default, messages are saved to the
807 "sent" directory at the top-level of the mail store. This directory
808 can be customized by means of the "Notmuch Fcc Dirs" option in the
809 notmuch customize interface.
811 Ability to all open messages in a thread to a pipe
813 Historically, the '|' keybinding allows for piping a single message
814 to an external command. Now, by prefixing this key with a prefix
815 argument, (for example, by pressing "Control-U |"), all open
816 messages in the current thread will be sent to the external command.
818 Optional support for detecting inline patches
820 This hook is disabled by default but can be enabled with a checkbox
821 under "Notmuch Show Insert Text/Plain Hook" in the notmuch customize
822 interface. It allows for inline patches to be detected and treated
823 as if they were attachments, (with context-sensitive highlighting).
825 Automatically tag messages as "replied" when sending a reply
827 Messages replied to within the emacs interface will now be tagged as
828 "replied". This feature can easily be customized to add or remove
829 other tags as well. For example, a user might use a tag of
830 "needs-reply" and can configure this feature to automatically remove
831 that tag when replying. See "Notmuch Message Mark Replied" in the
832 notmuch customize interface.
834 Allow search-result color specifications to overlay each other
836 For example, one tag can specify the background color of matching
837 lines, while another can specify the foreground. With this change,
838 both settings will now be visible simultaneously, (which was not the
839 case in previous releases). See "Notmuch Search Line Faces" in the
840 notmuch customize interface.
842 Make hidden author names still available for incremental search.
844 When there is insufficient space to display all authors of a thread
845 in search results, the names of hidden authors are now still made
846 available to emacs' incremental search commands. As the user
847 searches, matching lines will temporarily expand to show the hidden
850 New binding of Control-TAB (works like TAB in reverse)
852 Many notmuch nodes already use TAB to navigate forward through
853 various items allowing actions, (message headers, email attachments,
854 etc.). The new Control-TAB binding operates similarly but in the
857 New build-system features
858 -------------------------
859 Various portability fixes have been applied
861 These include fixes for build failures on at least Solaris, FreeBSD,
862 and Fedora systems. We're hopeful that the notmuch code base is now
863 more portable than ever before.
865 Arrange for libnotmuch to be found automatically after make install
867 The notmuch build system is now careful to help the user avoid
868 errors of the form "libnotmuch.so could not be found" immediately
869 after installing. This support takes two forms:
871 1. If the library is installed to a system directory,
872 (configured in /etc/ld.so.conf), then "make install" will
873 automatically run ldconfig.
875 2. If the library is installed to a non-system directory, the
876 build system adds a DR_RUNPATH entry to the final binary
877 pointing to the directory to which the library is installed.
879 When this support works, the user should be able to run notmuch
880 immediately after "make install", without any errors trying to find
881 the notmuch library, and without having to manually set environment
882 variables such as LD_LIBRARY_PATH.
884 Check compiler/linker options before using them
886 The configure script now carefully checks that any desired
887 compilation options, (whether for enabling compiler warnings, or for
888 embedding rpath, etc.), are supported. Only supported options are
889 used in the resulting Makefile.
891 New test-suite features
892 -----------------------
893 New modularization of test suite.
895 Thanks to a gracious relicensing of the test-suite infrastructure
896 from the git project, notmuch now has a modular test suite. This
897 provides the ability to run individual sections of the test suite
898 rather than the whole things. It also provides better summary of
899 test results, with support for tests that are expected to fail
900 (BROKEN and FIXED) in addition to PASS and FAIL. Finally, it makes
901 it easy to run the test suite within valgrind (pass --valgrind to
902 notmuch-test or to any sub-script) which has been very useful.
904 New testing of emacs interface.
906 The test suite has been augmented to allow automated testing of the
907 emacs interfaces. So far, this includes basic searches, display of
908 threads, and tag manipulation. This also includes a test that a new
909 message can successfully be sent out through a (dummy) SMTP server
910 and that said message is successfully integrated into the notmuch
911 database via the FCC setting.
915 Fix potential corruption of database when "notmuch new " is interrupted.
917 Previously, an interruption of "notmuch new" would (rarely) result
918 in a corrupt database. The corruption would manifest itself by a
919 persistent error of the form:
921 document ID of 1234 has no thread ID
923 The message-adding code has been carefully audited and reworked to
924 avoid this sort of corruption regardless of when it is interrupted.
926 Fix failure with extremely long message ID headers.
928 Previously, a message with an extremely long message ID, (say, more
929 than 300 characters), would fail to be added to notmuch, (triggering
930 Xapian exceptions). This has now been fixed.
932 Fix for messages with "charset=unknown-8bit"
934 Previously, messages with this charset would cause notmuch to emit a
935 GMime warning, (which would then trip up emacs or other interfaces
936 parsing the notmuch results).
938 Fix notmuch_query_search_threads function to return NULL on any exception
940 Fix "notmuch search" to return non-zero if notmuch_query_search_threads fails
942 Previously, this command could confusingly report a Xapian
943 exception, yet still return an error code of 0. It now correctly
944 returns a failing error code of 1 in this case.
948 Fix to handle a message with a subject containing, for example "[1234]"
950 Previously, a message subject containing a sequence of digits within
951 square brackets would cause the emacs interface to mis-parse the
952 output of "notmuch search". This would result in the message being
953 mis-displayed and prevent the user from manipulating the message in
956 Fix to correctly handle message IDs containing ".."
958 The emacs interface now properly quotes message IDs to avoid a
959 Xapian bug in which the ".." within a message ID would be
960 misinterpreted as a numeric range specification.
964 The python bindings for notmuch have been updated to work with python3.
966 Debian-specific fixes
967 ---------------------
968 Fix emacs initialization so "M-x notmuch" works for users by default.
970 Now, a new Debian user can immediately run "emacs -f notmuch" after
971 "apt-get install notmuch". Previously, the user would have had to
972 edit the ~/.emacs file to add "(require 'notmuch)" before this would
975 Notmuch 0.3.1 (2010-04-27)
976 ==========================
979 Fix an infinite loop in "notmuch reply"
981 This bug could be triggered by replying to a message where the
982 user's primary email address did not appear in the To: header and
983 the user had not configured any secondary email addresses. The bug
984 was a simple re-use of the same iterator variable in nested loops.
986 Fix a potential SEGV in "notmuch search"
988 This bug could be triggered by an author name ending in a ','.
989 Admittedly - that's almost certainly a spam email, but we never
990 want notmuch to crash.
994 Fix calculations for line wrapping in the primary "notmuch" view.
996 Fix Fcc support to prompt to create a directory if the specified Fcc
997 directory does not exist.
1001 Fix build on OpenSolaris (at least) due to missing 'extern "C"' block.
1003 Without this, the C++ sources could not find strcasestr and the
1004 final linking of notmuch would fail.
1006 Notmuch 0.3 (2010-04-27)
1007 ========================
1008 New command-line features
1009 -------------------------
1010 User-configurable tags for new messages
1012 A new "new.tags" option is available in the configuration file to
1013 determine which tags are applied to new messages. Run "notmuch
1014 setup" to generate new documentation within ~/.notmuch-config on how
1015 to specify this value.
1017 Threads search results named based on subjects that match search
1019 This means that when new mails arrived to a thread you've previously
1020 read, and the new mails have a new subject, you will see that
1021 subject in the search results rather than the old subject.
1023 Faster operation of "notmuch tag" (avoid unneeded sorting)
1025 Since the user just wants to tag all matching messages, we can make
1026 things perform a bit faster by avoiding the sort.
1028 Even Better guessing of From: header for "notmuch reply"
1030 Notmuch now looks at a number of headers when trying to figure out
1031 the best From: header to use in a reply. This is helpful if you have
1032 several configured email addresses, and you also subscribe to various
1033 mailing lists with different addresses, (so that mails you are
1034 replying to won't always include your subscribed address in the To:
1037 Indication of author names that match a search
1039 When notmuch displays threads as the result of a search, it now
1040 lists the authors that match the search before listing the other
1041 authors in the thread. It inserts a pipe '|' symbol between the last
1042 matching and first non-matching author. This is especially useful in
1043 a search that includes tag:unread. Now the authors of the unread
1044 messages in the thread are listed first.
1046 New: Python bindings
1047 --------------------
1048 Sebastian Spaeth has contributed his python bindings for the notmuch
1049 library to the central repository. These bindings were previously
1050 known as "cnotmuch" within python but have now been renamed to be
1051 accessible with a simple, and more official-looking "import notmuch".
1053 The bindings have already proven very useful as people proficient in
1054 python have been able to easily develop programs to do notmuch-based
1055 searches for email-address completion, maildir-flag synchronization,
1058 These bindings are available within the bindings/python directory, but
1059 are not yet integrated into the top-level Makefiles, nor the top-level
1060 package-building scripts. Improvements are welcome.
1062 Emacs interface improvements
1063 ----------------------------
1064 An entirely new initial view for notmuch, (friendly yet powerful)
1066 Some of us call the new view "notmuch hello" but you can get at it
1067 by simply calling "emacs -f notmuch". The new view provides a search
1068 bar where new searches can be performed. It also displays a list of
1069 recent searches, along with a button to save any of these, giving it
1070 a new name as a "saved search". Many people find these "saved
1071 searches" one of the most convenient ways of organizing their mail,
1072 (providing all of the features of "folders" in other mail clients,
1073 but without any of the disadvantages).
1075 Finally, this view can also optionally display all of the tags that
1076 exist in the database, along with a count for each tag, and a custom
1077 search of messages with that tag that's simply a click (or keypress)
1080 Note: For users that liked the original mode of "emacs -f notmuch"
1081 immediately displaying a particular search result, we
1082 recommend instead running something like:
1084 emacs --eval '(notmuch search "tag:inbox" t)'
1086 The "t" means to sort the messages in an "oldest first" order,
1087 (as notmuch would do previously by default). You can also
1088 leave that off to have your search results in "newest first"
1091 Full-featured "customize" support for configuring notmuch
1093 Notmuch now plugs in well to the emacs "customize" mode to make it
1094 much simpler to find things about the notmuch interface that can be
1095 tweaked by the user.
1097 You can get to this mode by starting at the main "Customize" menu in
1098 emacs, then browsing through "Applications", "Mail", and
1099 "Notmuch". Or you can go straight to "M-x customize-group"
1102 Once you're at the customize screen, you'll see a list of documented
1103 options that can be manipulated along with checkboxes, drop-down
1104 selectors, and text-entry boxes for configuring the various
1107 Support for doing tab-completion of email addresses
1109 This support currently relies on an external program,
1110 (notmuch-addresses), that is not yet shipped with notmuch
1111 itself. But multiple, suitable implementations of this program have
1112 already been written that generate address completions by doing
1113 notmuch searches of your email collection. For example, providing
1114 first those addresses that you have composed messages to in the
1117 One such program (implemented in python with the python bindings to
1118 notmuch) is available via:
1120 git clone http://jkr.acm.jhu.edu/git/notmuch_addresses.git
1122 Install that program as notmuch-addresses on your PATH, and then
1123 hitting TAB on a partial email address or name within the To: or Cc:
1124 line of an email message will provide matching completions.
1126 Support for file-based (Fcc) delivery of sent messages to mail store
1128 This isn't yet enabled by default. To enable this, one will have to
1129 set the "Notmuch Fcc Dirs" setting within the notmuch customize
1130 screen, (see its documentation there for details). We anticipate
1131 making this automatic in a future release.
1133 New 'G' key binding to trigger mail refresh (G == "Get new mail")
1135 The 'G' key works wherever '=' works. Before refreshing the screen
1136 it calls an external program that can be used to poll email servers,
1137 run notmuch new and setup specific tags for the new emails. The
1138 script to be called should be configured with the "Notmuch Poll
1139 Script" setting in the customize interface. This script will
1140 typically invoke "notmuch new" and then perhaps several "notmuch
1143 Implement emacs message display with the JSON output from notmuch.
1145 This is much more robust than the previous implementation, (where
1146 some HTML mails and mail quoting the notmuch code with the delimiter
1147 characters in it would cause the parser to fall over).
1149 Better handling of HTML messages and MIME attachments (inline images!)
1151 Allow for any MIME parts that emacs can display to be displayed
1152 inline. This includes inline viewing of image attachments, (provided
1153 the window is large enough to fit the image at its natural size).
1155 Much more robust handling of HTML messages. Currently both text/plain
1156 and text/html alternates will be rendered next to each other. In a
1157 future release, users will be able to decide to see only one or the
1158 other representation.
1160 Each attachment now has its own button so that attachments can be
1161 saved individually (the 'w' key is still available to save all
1164 Customizable support for tidying of text/plain message content
1166 Many new functions are available for tidying up message
1167 content. These include options such as wrapping long lines,
1168 compressing duplicate blank lines, etc.
1170 Most of these are disabled by default, but can easily be enabled by
1171 clicking the available check boxes under the "Notmuch Show Insert
1172 Text/Plain Hook" within the notmuch customize screen.
1174 New support for searchable citations (even when hidden)
1176 When portions of overly-long citations are hidden, the contents of
1177 these citations will still be available for emacs' standard
1178 "incremental search" functions. When the search matches any portion
1179 of a hidden citation, the citation will become visible temporarily
1180 to display the search result.
1182 More flexible handling of header visibility
1184 As an answer to complaints from many users, the To, Cc, and Date
1185 headers of messages are no longer hidden by default. For those users
1186 that liked that these were hidden, a new "Notmuch Messages Headers
1187 Visible" option in the customize interface can be set to nil. The
1188 visibility of headers can still be toggled on a per-message basis
1189 with the 'h' keybinding.
1191 For users that don't want to see some subset of those headers, the
1192 new "Notmuch Message Headers" variable can be customized to list
1193 only those headers that should be present in the display of a message.
1195 The Return key now toggles message visibility anywhere
1197 Previously this worked only on the first summary-line of a message.
1199 Customizable formatting of search results
1201 The user can easily customize the order, width, and formatting of
1202 the various fields in a "notmuch search" buffer. See the "Notmuch
1203 Search Result Format" section of the customize interface.
1205 Generate nicer names for search buffers when using a saved search.
1207 Add a notmuch User-Agent header when sending mail from notmuch/emacs.
1209 New keybinding (M-Ret) to open all collapsed messages in a thread.
1213 Provide a new NOTMUCH_SORT_UNSORTED value for queries
1215 This can be somewhat faster when sorting simply isn't desired. For
1216 example when collecting a set of messages that will all be
1217 manipulated identically, (adding a tag, removing a tag, deleting the
1218 messages), then there's no advantage to sorting the messages by
1223 Fix to compile against GMime 2.6
1225 Previously notmuch insisted on being able to find GMime 2.4, (even
1226 though GMime 2.6 would have worked all along).
1228 Fix configure script to accept (and ignore) various standard options.
1230 For example, those that the Gentoo build scripts expect configure to
1231 accept are now all accepted.
1235 A large number of new tests for the many new features.
1237 Better display of output from failed tests.
1239 Now shows failures with diff rather than forcing the user to gaze at
1240 complete actual and expected output looking for deviation.
1242 Notmuch 0.2 (2010-04-16)
1243 ========================
1244 This is the second release of the notmuch mail system, with actual
1245 detailed release notes this time!
1247 This release consists of a number of minor new features that make
1248 notmuch more pleasant to use, and a few fairly major bug fixes.
1250 We didn't quite hit our release target of "about a week" from the 0.1
1251 release, (0.2 is happening 11 days after 0.1), but we hope to do
1252 better for next week. Look forward to some major features coming to
1253 notmuch in subsequent releases.
1259 Better guessing of From: header.
1261 Notmuch now tries harder to guess which configured address should be
1262 used as the From: line in a "notmuch reply". It will examine the
1263 Received: headers if it fails to find any configured address in To:
1264 or Cc:. This allows it to often choose the correct address even when
1265 replying to a message sent to a mailing list, and not directly to a
1268 Make "notmuch count" with no arguments count all messages
1270 Previously, it was hard to construct a search term that was
1271 guaranteed to match all messages.
1273 Provide a new special-case search term of "*" to match all messages.
1275 This can be used in any command accepting a search term, such as
1276 "notmuch search '*'". Note that you'll want to take care that the
1277 shell doesn't expand * against the current files. And note that the
1278 support for "*" is a special case. It's only meaningful as a single
1279 search term and loses its special meaning when combined with any
1282 Automatically detect thread connections even when a parent message is
1285 Previously, if two or more message were received with a common
1286 parent, but that parent was not received, then these messages would
1287 not be recognized as belonging to the same thread. This is now fixed
1288 so that such messages are properly connected in a thread.
1292 Fix potential data loss in "notmuch new" with SIGINT
1294 One code path in "notmuch new" was not properly handling
1295 SIGINT. Previously, this could lead to messages being removed from
1296 the database (and their tags being lost) if the user pressed
1297 Control-C while "notmuch new" was working.
1299 Fix segfault when a message includes a MIME part that is empty.
1301 Fix handling of non-ASCII characters with --format=json
1303 Previously, characters outside the range of 7-bit ASCII were
1304 silently dropped from the JSON output. This led to corrupted display
1305 of utf-8 content in the upcoming notmuch web-based frontends.
1307 Fix headers to be properly decoded in "notmuch reply"
1309 Previously, the user might see:
1311 Subject: Re: =?iso-8859-2?q?Rozlu=E8ka?=
1315 Subject: Re: Rozlučka
1317 The former text is properly encoded to be RFC-compliant SMTP, will
1318 be sent correctly, and will be properly decoded by the
1319 recipient. But the user trying to edit the reply would likely be
1320 unable to read or edit that field in its encoded form.
1322 Emacs client features
1323 ---------------------
1324 Show the last few lines of citations as well as the first few lines.
1326 It's often the case that the last sentence of a citation is what is
1327 being replied to directly, so the last few lines are often much more
1328 important. The number of lines shown at the beginning and end of any
1329 citation can be configured, (notmuch-show-citation-lines-prefix and
1330 notmuch-show-citation-lines-suffix).
1332 The '+' and '-' commands in the search view can now add and remove
1335 Selective bulk tagging is now possible by selecting a region of
1336 threads and then using either the '+' or '-' keybindings. Bulk
1337 tagging is still available for all threads matching the current
1338 search with the '*' binding.
1340 More meaningful buffer names for thread-view buffers.
1342 Notmuch now uses the Subject of the thread as the buffer
1343 name. Previously it was using the thread ID, which is a meaningless
1346 Provide for customized colors of threads in search view based on tags.
1348 See the documentation of notmuch-search-line-faces, (or us "M-x
1349 customize" and browse to the "notmuch" group within "Applications"
1350 and "Mail"), for details on how to configure this colorization.
1352 Build-system features
1353 ---------------------
1354 Add support to properly build libnotmuch on Darwin systems (OS X).
1356 Add support to configure for many standard options.
1358 We include actual support for:
1360 --includedir --mandir --sysconfdir
1362 And accept and silently ignore several more:
1364 --build --infodir --libexecdir --localstatedir
1365 --disable-maintainer-mode --disable-dependency-tracking
1367 Install emacs client in "make install" rather than requiring a
1368 separate "make install-emacs".
1370 Automatically compute versions numbers between releases.
1372 This support uses the git-describe notation, so a version such as
1373 0.1-144-g43cbbfc indicates a version that is 144 commits since the
1374 0.1 release and is available as git commit "43cbbfc".
1376 Add a new "make test" target to run the test suite and actually verify
1379 Notmuch 0.1 (2010-04-05)
1380 ========================
1381 This is the first release of the notmuch mail system.
1383 It includes the libnotmuch library, the notmuch command-line
1384 interface, and an emacs-based interface to notmuch.
1386 Note: Notmuch will work best with Xapian 1.0.18 (or later) or Xapian
1387 1.1.4 (or later). Previous versions of Xapian (whether 1.0 or 1.1) had
1388 a performance bug that made notmuch very slow when modifying
1389 tags. This would cause distracting pauses when reading mail while
1390 notmuch would wait for Xapian when removing the "inbox" and "unread"
1391 tags from messages in a thread.