1 Notmuch 0.10 (2011-xx-xx)
2 =========================
4 New build and testing features
5 ------------------------------
7 Emacs tests are now done in dtach. This means that dtach is now
8 needed to run the notmuch test suite, at least until the checking for
9 prerequisites is improved.
11 New command-line features
12 -------------------------
14 Add "notmuch restore --accumulate" option
16 The --accumulate switch causes the union of the existing and new tags to be
17 applied, instead of replacing each message's tags as they are read in from
20 Add search terms to "notmuch dump"
22 The dump command now takes an optional search term much like notmuch
23 search/show/tag. The output file argument of dump is deprecated in
24 favour of using stdout.
26 Add "notmuch search" --offset and --limit options
28 The search command now takes options --offset=[-]N and --limit=N to limit
29 the number of results shown.
31 Add "notmuch count --output" option
33 The count command is now capable of counting threads in addition to
34 messages. This is selected using the new --output=(threads|messages) option.
39 Search avoids opening and parsing message files
41 We now store more information in the database so search no longer
42 has to open every message file to get basic headers. This can
43 improve search speed by as much as 10X, but taking advantage of this
44 requires a database rebuild:
46 notmuch dump > notmuch.dump
47 # Backup, then remove notmuch database ($MAIL/.notmuch)
49 notmuch restore notmuch.dump
51 New collection of add-on tools
52 ------------------------------
54 The source directory "contrib" contains tools built on notmuch. These
55 tools are not part of notmuch, and you should check their individual
56 licenses. Feel free to report problems with them to the notmuch
59 nmbug - share tags with a given prefix
61 nmbug helps maintain a git repo containing all tags with a given
62 prefix (by default "notmuch::"). Tags can be shared by commiting
63 them to git in one location and restoring in another.
65 Notmuch 0.9 (2011-10-01)
66 ========================
71 Correct handling of interruptions during "notmuch new"
73 "notmuch new" now operates as a series of small, self-consistent
74 transactions, so it can correctly resume after an interruption or
75 crash. Previously, interruption could lose existing tags, fail to
76 detect messages on resume, or leave the database in a state
77 temporarily or permanently inconsistent with the mail store.
84 notmuch_database_begin_atomic and notmuch_database_end_atomic allow
85 multiple database operations to be performed atomically.
87 notmuch_database_find_message_by_filename does exactly what it says.
91 notmuch_database_find_message (and n_d_f_m_by_filename) now return
92 a status indicator and uses an output parameter for the
93 message. This change required changing the SONAME of libnotmuch to
96 Python bindings changes
97 -----------------------
99 - Re-encode python unicode objects to utf-8 before passing back to
101 - Support Database().begin_atomic()/end_atomic()
102 - Support Database().find_message_by_filename()
103 NB! This needs a db opened in READ-WRITE mode currently, or it will crash
104 the python process. The is a limitation (=bug) of the underlying libnotmuch.
105 - Fixes where we would not throw NotmuchErrors when we should (Justus Winter)
106 - Update for n_d_find_message* API changes (see above).
108 Ruby bindings changes
109 ---------------------
111 - Wrap new library functions notmuch_database_{begin,end}_atomic.
112 - Add new exception Notmuch::UnbalancedAtomicError.
113 - Rename destroy to destroy! according to Ruby naming conventions.
114 - Update for n_d_find_message* API changes (see above).
119 * Add gpg callback to crypto sigstatus buttons to retrieve/refresh
121 * Add notmuch-show-refresh-view function (and corresponding binding)
122 to refresh the view of a notmuch-show buffer.
124 Reply formatting cleanup
125 ------------------------
127 "notmuch reply" no longer includes notification that non-leafnode
128 MIME parts are being suppressed.
130 Notmuch 0.8 (2011-09-10)
131 ========================
133 Improved handling of message/rfc822 parts
135 Both in the CLI and the emacs interface. Output of rfc822 parts now
136 includes the primary headers, as well as the body and all subparts.
137 Output of the completely raw rfc822-formatted message, including all
138 headers, is unfortunately not yet supported (but hopefully will be
141 Improved Build system portability
143 Certain parts of the shell script generating notmuch.sym were
144 specific to the GNU versions of sed and nm. The new version should
145 be more portable to e.g. OpenBSD.
147 Documentation update for Ruby bindings
149 Added documentation, typo fixes, and improved support for rdoc.
151 Unicode, iterator, PEP8 changes for python bindings
153 - PEP8 (code formatting) changes for python files.
154 - Remove Tags.__len__ ; see 0.6 release notes for motivation.
155 - Decode headers as UTF8, encode (unicode) database paths as UTF8.
157 Notmuch 0.7 (2011-08-01)
158 ========================
160 Vim interface improvements
161 --------------------------
163 Jason Woofenden provided a number of bug fixes for the Vim interface
165 * fix citation/signature fold lengths
166 * fix cig/cit parsing within multipart/*
167 * fix on-screen instructions for show-signature
168 * fix from list reformatting in search view
169 * fix space key: now archives (did opposite)
171 Uwe Kleine-König contributed
173 * use full path for sendmail/doc fix
174 * fix compose temp file name
176 Python Bindings changes
177 -----------------------
179 Sebastian Spaeth contributed two changes related to unicode and UTF8:
181 * message tags are now explicitly unicode
182 * query string is encoded as a UTF8 byte string
184 Build-System improvments
185 ------------------------
187 Generate notmuch.sym after the relevant object files
189 This fixes a bug in parallel building. Thanks to Thomas Jost for the
192 Notmuch 0.6.1 (2011-07-17)
193 ==========================
198 Re-export Xapian exception typeinfo symbols.
200 It turned out our aggressive symbol hiding caused problems for
201 people running gcc 4.4.5.
203 Notmuch 0.6 (2011-07-01)
204 =======================
205 New, general features
206 ---------------------
207 Folder-based searching
209 Notmuch queries can now include a search term to match the
210 directories in which mail files are stored (within the mail
211 storage). The syntax is as follows:
215 For example, one might use things such as:
221 to match any path containing a directory "spam", "work/todo", or
222 containing a directory starting with "2011-", respectively.
224 This feature is particularly useful for users of delivery-agent
225 software (such as procmail or maildrop) that is filtering mail and
226 delivering it to particular folders, or users of systems such as
227 Gmail that use filesystem directories to indicate message tags.
229 NOTE: Only messages that are newly indexed with this version of
230 notmuch will be searchable with folder: terms. In order to enable
231 this feature for all mail, the entire notmuch index will need to be
234 notmuch dump > notmuch.dump
235 # Backup, then remove notmuch database ($MAIL/.notmuch)
237 notmuch restore notmuch.dump
241 Both the command line interface and the emacs-interface have new
242 support for PGP/MIME, detailed below. Thanks to Daniel Kahn Gillmor
243 and Jameson Graef Rollins for making this happen.
245 New, automatic tags: "signed" and "encrypted"
247 These tags will automatically be applied to messages containing
248 multipart/signed and multipart/encrypted parts.
250 NOTE: Only messages that are newly indexed with this version of
251 notmuch will receive these tags.
253 New command-line features
254 -------------------------
255 Add new "notmuch show --verify" option for signature verification
257 This option instruct notmuch to verify the signature of
258 PGP/MIME-signed parts.
260 Add new "notmuch show --decrypt" and "notmuch reply --decrypt" options
262 This option instructs notmuch to decrypt PGP/MIME-encrypted parts.
263 Note that this feature currently requires gpg-agent and a passphrase entry
264 tool (e.g. pinentry-gtk or pinentry-curses).
266 Proper nesting of multipart parts in "notmuch show" output
268 MIME parts are now display with proper nesting to reflect original
269 MIME hierarchy of a message. This allows clients to correctly
270 analyze the MIME structure, (such as, for example, determining to
271 which parts a signature part applies).
273 Add new "notmuch show --part" option
275 This is a replacement for the older "notmuch part" command, (which
276 is now deprecated—it should still work as always, but is no longer
277 documented). Putting part output under "notmuch show" allows for all
278 of the "notmuch show" options to be applied when extracting a single
279 part, (such as --format=json for extracting a message part with JSON
282 Deprecate "notmuch search-tags", (in favor of "notmuch search --output=tags *")
284 The "notmuch search-tags" sub-command has been redundant since the
285 addition of the --output=tags option to "notmuch search". We now
286 make that more clear by deprecating "notmuch search-tags", (dropping
287 it from the documentation). We do continue to support the old syntax
288 by translating it internally to the new call.
290 Performance improvements
291 ------------------------
292 Faster searches (by doing fewer searches to construct threads)
294 Whenever a user asks for search results as threads, notmuch first
295 performs a search for messages matching the query, then performs
296 additional searches to find other messages in the resulting threads.
298 Removing inefficiencies and redundancies in these secondary searches
299 results in a measured speedups of 1.5x for a typical search.
301 Faster searches (by doing fewer passes to gather message data)
303 Optimizing Xapian data access patterns (using a single pass to get
304 all message-document data rather than a pass for each data type)
305 results in a measured speedup of 1.7x for a typical search.
307 The benefits of this optimization combine with the preceding
308 optimization. With both in place, Austin Clements measured a speedup
309 of 2.5x for a search of all messages in his inbox (was 4.5s, now
310 1.8s). Thanks, Austin!
312 Faster initial indexing
314 More efficient indexing of new messages results in a measured
315 speedup of 1.4x for the initial indexing of 3 GB of mail (1h 14m
316 rather than 1h 46m). Thanks to Austin Clements and Michal Sojka.
318 Make "notmuch new" faster for unchanged directories
320 Optimizing to not do any further examinations of sub-directories
321 when the filesystem indicates that a directory is unchanged from the
322 last "notmuch new" results in measured speedups of 8.5 for the "No
323 new mail" case, (was 0.77s, now 0.09s). Thanks to Karel Zak.
325 New emacs-interface features
326 ----------------------------
328 Support for PGP/MIME (GnuPG)
330 Automatically indicate validity of signatures for multipart/signed
331 messages. Automatically display decrypted content for
332 multipart/encrypted messages. See the emacs variable
333 notmuch-crypto-process-mime for more information. Note that this
334 needs gpg-agent and a pinentry tool just as the command line tools.
335 Also note there is no support SMIME yet.
337 Output of pipe command is now displayed if pipe command fails
339 This is extremely useful in the common use case of piping a patch to
340 "git am". If git fails to cleanly merge the patch the error messages
341 from the failed merge are now clearly displayed to the user, (where
342 previously they were silently hidden from the user).
344 User-selectable From address
346 A user can choose which configured email addresses should be used as
347 the From address whenever composing a new message. To do so, simply
348 press C-u before the command which will open a new message. Emacs
349 will prompt for the from address to use.
351 The user can customize the "Notmuch Identities" setting in the
352 notmuch customize group in order to use addresses other than those in
353 the notmuch configuration file if desired.
355 The user can also choose to always be prompted for the from address
356 when composing a new message (without having to use C-u) by setting
357 the "Notmuch Always Prompt For Sender" option in the notmuch
360 Hiding of repeated subjects in collapsed thread view
362 In notmuch-show mode, if a collapsed message has the same subject as
363 its parent, the subject is not shown.
365 Automatic detection and hiding of original message in top-posted message
367 When a message contains a line looking something like:
369 ----- Original Message -----
371 emacs hides this and all subsequent lines as an "original message",
372 (allowing the user to click or press enter on the "original message"
373 button to display it again). This makes the handling of top-posted
374 citations work much like conventional citations.
376 New hooks for running code when tags are modified
378 Some users want to perform additional actions whenever a particular
379 tag is added/removed from a message. This could be used to, for
380 example, interface with some external spam-recognition training
381 tool. To facilitate this, two new hooks are added which can be
382 modified in the following settings of the notmuch customize group:
384 Notmuch Before Tag Hook
385 Notmuch After Tag Hook
387 New optional support for hiding some multipart/alternative parts
389 Many emails are sent with redundant content within a
390 multipart/alternative group (such as a text/plain part as well as a
391 text/html part). Users can configure the setting:
393 Notmuch Show All Multipart/Alternative Parts
395 to "off" in the notmuch customize group to have the interface
396 automatically hide some part alternatives (such as text/html
397 parts). This new part hiding is not configured by default yet
398 because there's not yet a simple way to re-display such a hidden
399 part if it is not actually redundant with a displayed part.
401 Better rendering of text/x-vcalendar parts
403 These parts are now displayed in a format suitable for use with the
406 Avoid getting confused by Subject and Author fields with newline characters
408 Replacing all characters with ASCII code less than 32 with a question mark.
410 Cleaner display of From line in email messages (remove double quotes,
411 and drop "name" if it's actually just a repeat of the email address).
413 Vim interface improvements
414 --------------------------
415 Felipe Contreras provided a number of updates for the vim interface:
417 * Using sendmail directly rather than mailx,
418 * Implementing archive in show view
419 * Add support to mark as read in show and search views
420 * Add delete commands
423 Bindings improvements
424 ---------------------
425 Ruby bindings are now much more complete
427 Including QUERY.sort, QUERY.to_s, MESSAGE.maildir_flags_to_tags,
428 MESSAGE.tags_to_maildir_flags, and MESSAGE.get_filenames
430 * Python bindings have been upodated and extended
431 (docs online at http://packages.python.org/notmuch/)
434 - Message().get_filenames(),
435 - Message().tags_to_maildir_flags(),Message().maildir_flags_to_tags()
436 - list(Threads()) and list(Messages) works now
438 - Message().__cmp__() and __hash__()
439 These allow, for example:
442 As well as set arithmetic on Messages():
444 s1, s2= set(msgs1), set(msgs2)
449 - len(Messages()) as it exausted the iterator.
450 Use len(list(Messages())) or
451 Query.count_messages() to get the length.
453 Added initial Go bindings in bindings/go
455 New build-system features
456 -------------------------
457 Added support for building in a directory other than the source directory
459 This can be used with the widely-supported idiom of simply running
460 the configure script from some other directory:
467 Fix to save configure options for future, implicit runs of configure
469 When a user updates the source (such as with "git pull") calling
470 "make" may cause an automatic re-run of the configure script. When
471 this happens, the configure script will automatically be called with
472 the same options the user originally passed in the most-recent
473 manual invocation of configure.
475 New test-suite feature
476 ----------------------
477 Binary for bash for running test suite now located via PATH.
479 The notmuch test suite requires a fairly recent version of bash (>=
480 bash 4). As some systems supply an older version of bash at
481 /bin/bash, the test suite is now updated to search $PATH to locate
482 the bash binary. This allows users of systems with old /bin/bash to
483 simply install bash >= 4 somewhere on $PATH before /bin and then use
486 Support for testing output with a trailing newline.
488 Previously, some tests would fail to notice a difference in the
489 presence/absence of a trailing newline in a program output, (which
490 has led to bugs in the past). Now, carefully-written tests (using
491 test_expect_equal_file rather than test_expect_equal) will detect
492 any change in the presence/absence of a trailing newline. Many tests
493 are updated to take advantage of this.
495 Avoiding accessing user's $HOME while running test suite
497 The test suite now carefully creates its own HOME directory. This
498 allows the test suite to be run with no existing HOME directory, (as
499 some build systems apparently do), and avoids test-suite differences
500 due to configuration files in the users HOME directory.
505 Output *all* files for "notmuch search --output=files"
507 For the cases where multiple files have the same Message ID,
508 previous versions of notmuch would output only one such file. This
509 command is now fixed to correctly output all files.
511 Fixed spurious search results from "overlapped" indexing of addresses
513 This fixed a bug where a search for:
515 to:user@elsewhere.com
517 would incorrectly match a message sent:
519 To: user@example,com, someone@elsewhere.com
521 Fix --output=json when search has no results
523 A bug present since notmuch 0.4 had caused searches with no results
524 to produce an invalid json object. This is now fixed to cleanly
525 return a valid json object representing an empty array "[]" as
528 fix the automatic detection of the From address for "notmuch reply"
529 from the Received headers in some cases.
531 Fix core dump on DragonFlyBSD due to -1 return value from
532 sysconf(_SC_GETPW_R_SIZE_MAX).
534 Cleaned up several memory leaks
536 Eliminated a few, rare segmentation faults and a double-free.
538 Fix libnotmuch library to only export notmuch API functions
540 Previous release of the notmuch library also exported some Xapian
541 C++ exception type symbols. These were never part of the library
542 interface and were never intended to be exported.
544 Emacs-interface bug fixes
545 -------------------------
546 Display any unexpected output or errors from "notmuch search" invocations
548 Previously any misformatted output or trailing error messages were
549 silently ignored. This output is now clearly displayed. This fix was
550 very helpful in identifying and fixing the bug described below.
552 Fix bug where some threads would be missing from large search results
554 When a search returned a "large" number of results, the emacs
555 interface was incorrectly dropping one thread every time the output
556 of the "notmuch search" process spanned the emacs read-buffer. This
559 Avoid re-compression of .gz files (and similar) when saving attachment
561 Emacs was being too clever for its own good and trying to
562 re-compress pre-compressed .gz files when saving such attachments
563 (potentially corrupting the attachment). The emacs interface is
564 fixed to avoid this bug.
566 Fix hiding of a message when a previously-hidden citation is visible
568 Previously the citation would remain visible in this case. This is
569 fixed so that hiding a message hides all parts.
571 Notmuch 0.5 (2010-11-11)
572 ========================
573 New, general features
574 ---------------------
575 Maildir-flag synchronization
577 Notmuch now knows how to synchronize flags in maildir filenames with
578 tags in the notmuch database. The following flag/tag mappings are
587 'S' unread (added when 'S' flag is not present)
589 The synchronization occurs in both directions, (for example, adding
590 the 'S' flag to a file will cause the "unread" tag to be added, and
591 adding the "replied" tag to a message will cause the file to be
592 renamed with an 'R' flag).
594 This synchronization is enabled by default for users of the
595 command-line interface, (though only files in directories named
596 "cur" or "new" will be renamed). It can be disabled by setting the
597 new maildir.synchronize_flags option in the configuration file. For
600 notmuch config set maildir.synchronize_flags false
602 Users upgrading may also want to run "notmuch setup" once (just
603 accept the existing configuration) to get a new, nicely-commented
604 [maildir] section added to the configuration file.
606 For users of the notmuch library, the new synchronization
607 functionality is available with the following two new functions:
609 notmuch_message_maildir_flags_to_tags
610 notmuch_message_tags_to_maildir_flags
612 It is anticipated that future improvements to this support will
613 allow for safe synchronization of the 'T' flag with the "deleted"
614 tag, as well as support for custom flag/tag mappings.
618 Support for querying multiple filenames for a single message
620 It is common for the mailstore to contain multiple files with the
621 same message ID. Previously, notmuch would always hide these
622 duplicate files, (returning a single, arbitrary filename with
623 notmuch_message_get_filename).
625 With this release, library users can access all filenames for a
626 message with the new function:
628 notmuch_message_get_filenames
630 Together with notmuch_filenames_valid, notmuch_filenames_get, and
631 notmuch_filenames_move_to_next it is now possible to iterate over
632 all available filenames for a given message.
634 New command-line features
635 -------------------------
636 New "notmuch show --format=raw" for getting at original email contents
638 This new feature allows for a fully-functional email client to be
639 built on top of the notmuch command-line without needing any direct
640 access to the mail store itself.
642 For example, it's now possible to run "emacs -f notmuch" on a local
643 machine with only ssh access to the mail store/notmuch database. To
644 do this, simply set the notmuch-command variable in emacs to the
645 name of a script containing:
647 ssh user@host notmuch "$@"
649 If the ssh client has enabled connection sharing (ControlMaster
650 option in OpenSSH), the emacs interface can be quite responsive this
655 Fix "notmuch search" to print nothing when nothing matches
657 The 0.4 release had a bug in which:
659 notmuch search <expression-with-no-matches>
661 would produce a single blank line of output, (where previous
662 versions would produce no output. This fix also causes a change in
663 the --format=json output, (which would previously produce "[]" and
664 now produces nothing).
666 Emacs interface improvements
667 ----------------------------
668 Fix to allow pipe ('|') command to work when using notmuch over ssh
670 Fix count of lines in hidden signatures.
672 Omit repeated subject lines in (collapsed) thread display.
674 Display current thread subject in a header line.
676 Provide a "c i" binding to copy a thread ID from the search view.
678 Allow for notmuch-fcc-dirs to have a value of nil.
680 Also, the more complex form of notmuch-fcc-dirs now has a slightly
681 different format. It no longer has a special first-element, fallback
682 string. Instead it's now a list of cons cells where the car of each
683 cell is a regular expression to be matched against the sender
684 address, and the cdr is the name of a folder to use for an FCC. So
685 the old fallback behavior can be achieved by including a final cell
686 of (".*" . "default-fcc-folder").
688 Vim interface improvements
689 --------------------------
690 Felipe Contreras provided a number of updates for the vim interface.
692 These include optimizations, support for newer versions of vim, fixed
693 support for sending mail on modern systems, new commands, and
698 Added initial ruby bindings in bindings/ruby
700 Notmuch 0.4 (2010-11-01)
701 ========================
702 New command-line features
703 -------------------------
704 notmuch search --output=(summary|threads|messages|tags|files)
706 This new option allows for particular items to be returned from
707 notmuch searches. The "summary" option is the default and behaves
708 just as "notmuch search" has historically behaved.
710 The new option values allow for thread IDs, message IDs, lists of
711 tags, and lists of filenames to be returned from searches. It is
712 expected that this new option will be very useful in shell
713 scripts. For example:
715 for file in $(notmuch search --output=files <search-terms>); do
716 <operations-on> "$file"
719 notmuch show --format=mbox <search-specification>
721 This new option allows for the messages matching a search
722 specification to be presented as an mbox. Specifically the "mboxrd"
723 format is used which allows for reversible quoting of lines
724 beginning with "From ". A reader should remove a single '>' from the
725 beginning of all lines beginning with one or more '>' characters
726 followed by the 5 characters "From ".
728 notmuch config [get|set] <section>.<item> [value ...]
730 The new top-level "config" command allows for any value in the
731 notmuch configuration file to be queried or set to a new value. Both
732 single-valued and multi-valued items are supported, as our any
733 custom items stored in the configuration file.
735 Avoid setting Bcc header in "notmuch reply"
737 We decided that this was a bit heavy-handed as the actual mail
738 user-agent should be responsible for setting any Bcc option. Also,
739 see below for the notmuch/emacs user-agent now setting an Fcc by
740 default rather than Bcc.
744 Add notmuch_query_get_query_string and notmuch_query_get_sort
746 These are simply functions for querying properties of a
747 notmuch_query_t object.
751 Enable Fcc of all sent messages by default (to "sent" directory)
753 All messages sent from the emacs interface will now be saved to the
754 notmuch mail store where they will be incorporated to the database
755 by the next "notmuch new". By default, messages are saved to the
756 "sent" directory at the top-level of the mail store. This directory
757 can be customized by means of the "Notmuch Fcc Dirs" option in the
758 notmuch customize interface.
760 Ability to all open messages in a thread to a pipe
762 Historically, the '|' keybinding allows for piping a single message
763 to an external command. Now, by prefixing this key with a prefix
764 argument, (for example, by pressing "Control-U |"), all open
765 messages in the current thread will be sent to the external command.
767 Optional support for detecting inline patches
769 This hook is disabled by default but can be enabled with a checkbox
770 under "Notmuch Show Insert Text/Plain Hook" in the notmuch customize
771 interface. It allows for inline patches to be detected and treated
772 as if they were attachments, (with context-sensitive highlighting).
774 Automatically tag messages as "replied" when sending a reply
776 Messages replied to within the emacs interface will now be tagged as
777 "replied". This feature can easily be customized to add or remove
778 other tags as well. For example, a user might use a tag of
779 "needs-reply" and can configure this feature to automatically remove
780 that tag when replying. See "Notmuch Message Mark Replied" in the
781 notmuch customize interface.
783 Allow search-result color specifications to overlay each other
785 For example, one tag can specify the background color of matching
786 lines, while another can specify the foreground. With this change,
787 both settings will now be visible simultaneously, (which was not the
788 case in previous releases). See "Notmuch Search Line Faces" in the
789 notmuch customize interface.
791 Make hidden author names still available for incremental search.
793 When there is insufficient space to display all authors of a thread
794 in search results, the names of hidden authors are now still made
795 available to emacs' incremental search commands. As the user
796 searches, matching lines will temporarily expand to show the hidden
799 New binding of Control-TAB (works like TAB in reverse)
801 Many notmuch nodes already use TAB to navigate forward through
802 various items allowing actions, (message headers, email attachments,
803 etc.). The new Control-TAB binding operates similarly but in the
806 New build-system features
807 -------------------------
808 Various portability fixes have been applied
810 These include fixes for build failures on at least Solaris, FreeBSD,
811 and Fedora systems. We're hopeful that the notmuch code base is now
812 more portable than ever before.
814 Arrange for libnotmuch to be found automatically after make install
816 The notmuch build system is now careful to help the user avoid
817 errors of the form "libnotmuch.so could not be found" immediately
818 after installing. This support takes two forms:
820 1. If the library is installed to a system directory,
821 (configured in /etc/ld.so.conf), then "make install" will
822 automatically run ldconfig.
824 2. If the library is installed to a non-system directory, the
825 build system adds a DR_RUNPATH entry to the final binary
826 pointing to the directory to which the library is installed.
828 When this support works, the user should be able to run notmuch
829 immediately after "make install", without any errors trying to find
830 the notmuch library, and without having to manually set environment
831 variables such as LD_LIBRARY_PATH.
833 Check compiler/linker options before using them
835 The configure script now carefully checks that any desired
836 compilation options, (whether for enabling compiler warnings, or for
837 embedding rpath, etc.), are supported. Only supported options are
838 used in the resulting Makefile.
840 New test-suite features
841 -----------------------
842 New modularization of test suite.
844 Thanks to a gracious relicensing of the test-suite infrastructure
845 from the git project, notmuch now has a modular test suite. This
846 provides the ability to run individual sections of the test suite
847 rather than the whole things. It also provides better summary of
848 test results, with support for tests that are expected to fail
849 (BROKEN and FIXED) in addition to PASS and FAIL. Finally, it makes
850 it easy to run the test suite within valgrind (pass --valgrind to
851 notmuch-test or to any sub-script) which has been very useful.
853 New testing of emacs interface.
855 The test suite has been augmented to allow automated testing of the
856 emacs interfaces. So far, this includes basic searches, display of
857 threads, and tag manipulation. This also includes a test that a new
858 message can successfully be sent out through a (dummy) SMTP server
859 and that said message is successfully integrated into the notmuch
860 database via the FCC setting.
864 Fix potential corruption of database when "notmuch new " is interrupted.
866 Previously, an interruption of "notmuch new" would (rarely) result
867 in a corrupt database. The corruption would manifest itself by a
868 persistent error of the form:
870 document ID of 1234 has no thread ID
872 The message-adding code has been carefully audited and reworked to
873 avoid this sort of corruption regardless of when it is interrupted.
875 Fix failure with extremely long message ID headers.
877 Previously, a message with an extremely long message ID, (say, more
878 than 300 characters), would fail to be added to notmuch, (triggering
879 Xapian exceptions). This has now been fixed.
881 Fix for messages with "charset=unknown-8bit"
883 Previously, messages with this charset would cause notmuch to emit a
884 GMime warning, (which would then trip up emacs or other interfaces
885 parsing the notmuch results).
887 Fix notmuch_query_search_threads function to return NULL on any exception
889 Fix "notmuch search" to return non-zero if notmuch_query_search_threads fails
891 Previously, this command could confusingly report a Xapian
892 exception, yet still return an error code of 0. It now correctly
893 returns a failing error code of 1 in this case.
897 Fix to handle a message with a subject containing, for example "[1234]"
899 Previously, a message subject containing a sequence of digits within
900 square brackets would cause the emacs interface to mis-parse the
901 output of "notmuch search". This would result in the message being
902 mis-displayed and prevent the user from manipulating the message in
905 Fix to correctly handle message IDs containing ".."
907 The emacs interface now properly quotes message IDs to avoid a
908 Xapian bug in which the ".." within a message ID would be
909 misinterpreted as a numeric range specification.
913 The python bindings for notmuch have been updated to work with python3.
915 Debian-specific fixes
916 ---------------------
917 Fix emacs initialization so "M-x notmuch" works for users by default.
919 Now, a new Debian user can immediately run "emacs -f notmuch" after
920 "apt-get install notmuch". Previously, the user would have had to
921 edit the ~/.emacs file to add "(require 'notmuch)" before this would
924 Notmuch 0.3.1 (2010-04-27)
925 ==========================
928 Fix an infinite loop in "notmuch reply"
930 This bug could be triggered by replying to a message where the
931 user's primary email address did not appear in the To: header and
932 the user had not configured any secondary email addresses. The bug
933 was a simple re-use of the same iterator variable in nested loops.
935 Fix a potential SEGV in "notmuch search"
937 This bug could be triggered by an author name ending in a ','.
938 Admittedly - that's almost certainly a spam email, but we never
939 want notmuch to crash.
943 Fix calculations for line wrapping in the primary "notmuch" view.
945 Fix Fcc support to prompt to create a directory if the specified Fcc
946 directory does not exist.
950 Fix build on OpenSolaris (at least) due to missing 'extern "C"' block.
952 Without this, the C++ sources could not find strcasestr and the
953 final linking of notmuch would fail.
955 Notmuch 0.3 (2010-04-27)
956 ========================
957 New command-line features
958 -------------------------
959 User-configurable tags for new messages
961 A new "new.tags" option is available in the configuration file to
962 determine which tags are applied to new messages. Run "notmuch
963 setup" to generate new documentation within ~/.notmuch-config on how
964 to specify this value.
966 Threads search results named based on subjects that match search
968 This means that when new mails arrived to a thread you've previously
969 read, and the new mails have a new subject, you will see that
970 subject in the search results rather than the old subject.
972 Faster operation of "notmuch tag" (avoid unneeded sorting)
974 Since the user just wants to tag all matching messages, we can make
975 things perform a bit faster by avoiding the sort.
977 Even Better guessing of From: header for "notmuch reply"
979 Notmuch now looks at a number of headers when trying to figure out
980 the best From: header to use in a reply. This is helpful if you have
981 several configured email addresses, and you also subscribe to various
982 mailing lists with different addresses, (so that mails you are
983 replying to won't always include your subscribed address in the To:
986 Indication of author names that match a search
988 When notmuch displays threads as the result of a search, it now
989 lists the authors that match the search before listing the other
990 authors in the thread. It inserts a pipe '|' symbol between the last
991 matching and first non-matching author. This is especially useful in
992 a search that includes tag:unread. Now the authors of the unread
993 messages in the thread are listed first.
997 Sebastian Spaeth has contributed his python bindings for the notmuch
998 library to the central repository. These bindings were previously
999 known as "cnotmuch" within python but have now been renamed to be
1000 accessible with a simple, and more official-looking "import notmuch".
1002 The bindings have already proven very useful as people proficient in
1003 python have been able to easily develop programs to do notmuch-based
1004 searches for email-address completion, maildir-flag synchronization,
1007 These bindings are available within the bindings/python directory, but
1008 are not yet integrated into the top-level Makefiles, nor the top-level
1009 package-building scripts. Improvements are welcome.
1011 Emacs interface improvements
1012 ----------------------------
1013 An entirely new initial view for notmuch, (friendly yet powerful)
1015 Some of us call the new view "notmuch hello" but you can get at it
1016 by simply calling "emacs -f notmuch". The new view provides a search
1017 bar where new searches can be performed. It also displays a list of
1018 recent searches, along with a button to save any of these, giving it
1019 a new name as a "saved search". Many people find these "saved
1020 searches" one of the most convenient ways of organizing their mail,
1021 (providing all of the features of "folders" in other mail clients,
1022 but without any of the disadvantages).
1024 Finally, this view can also optionally display all of the tags that
1025 exist in the database, along with a count for each tag, and a custom
1026 search of messages with that tag that's simply a click (or keypress)
1029 Note: For users that liked the original mode of "emacs -f notmuch"
1030 immediately displaying a particular search result, we
1031 recommend instead running something like:
1033 emacs --eval '(notmuch search "tag:inbox" t)'
1035 The "t" means to sort the messages in an "oldest first" order,
1036 (as notmuch would do previously by default). You can also
1037 leave that off to have your search results in "newest first"
1040 Full-featured "customize" support for configuring notmuch
1042 Notmuch now plugs in well to the emacs "customize" mode to make it
1043 much simpler to find things about the notmuch interface that can be
1044 tweaked by the user.
1046 You can get to this mode by starting at the main "Customize" menu in
1047 emacs, then browsing through "Applications", "Mail", and
1048 "Notmuch". Or you can go straight to "M-x customize-group"
1051 Once you're at the customize screen, you'll see a list of documented
1052 options that can be manipulated along with checkboxes, drop-down
1053 selectors, and text-entry boxes for configuring the various
1056 Support for doing tab-completion of email addresses
1058 This support currently relies on an external program,
1059 (notmuch-addresses), that is not yet shipped with notmuch
1060 itself. But multiple, suitable implementations of this program have
1061 already been written that generate address completions by doing
1062 notmuch searches of your email collection. For example, providing
1063 first those addresses that you have composed messages to in the
1066 One such program (implemented in python with the python bindings to
1067 notmuch) is available via:
1069 git clone http://jkr.acm.jhu.edu/git/notmuch_addresses.git
1071 Install that program as notmuch-addresses on your PATH, and then
1072 hitting TAB on a partial email address or name within the To: or Cc:
1073 line of an email message will provide matching completions.
1075 Support for file-based (Fcc) delivery of sent messages to mail store
1077 This isn't yet enabled by default. To enable this, one will have to
1078 set the "Notmuch Fcc Dirs" setting within the notmuch customize
1079 screen, (see its documentation there for details). We anticipate
1080 making this automatic in a future release.
1082 New 'G' key binding to trigger mail refresh (G == "Get new mail")
1084 The 'G' key works wherever '=' works. Before refreshing the screen
1085 it calls an external program that can be used to poll email servers,
1086 run notmuch new and setup specific tags for the new emails. The
1087 script to be called should be configured with the "Notmuch Poll
1088 Script" setting in the customize interface. This script will
1089 typically invoke "notmuch new" and then perhaps several "notmuch
1092 Implement emacs message display with the JSON output from notmuch.
1094 This is much more robust than the previous implementation, (where
1095 some HTML mails and mail quoting the notmuch code with the delimiter
1096 characters in it would cause the parser to fall over).
1098 Better handling of HTML messages and MIME attachments (inline images!)
1100 Allow for any MIME parts that emacs can display to be displayed
1101 inline. This includes inline viewing of image attachments, (provided
1102 the window is large enough to fit the image at its natural size).
1104 Much more robust handling of HTML messages. Currently both text/plain
1105 and text/html alternates will be rendered next to each other. In a
1106 future release, users will be able to decide to see only one or the
1107 other representation.
1109 Each attachment now has its own button so that attachments can be
1110 saved individually (the 'w' key is still available to save all
1113 Customizable support for tidying of text/plain message content
1115 Many new functions are available for tidying up message
1116 content. These include options such as wrapping long lines,
1117 compressing duplicate blank lines, etc.
1119 Most of these are disabled by default, but can easily be enabled by
1120 clicking the available check boxes under the "Notmuch Show Insert
1121 Text/Plain Hook" within the notmuch customize screen.
1123 New support for searchable citations (even when hidden)
1125 When portions of overly-long citations are hidden, the contents of
1126 these citations will still be available for emacs' standard
1127 "incremental search" functions. When the search matches any portion
1128 of a hidden citation, the citation will become visible temporarily
1129 to display the search result.
1131 More flexible handling of header visibility
1133 As an answer to complaints from many users, the To, Cc, and Date
1134 headers of messages are no longer hidden by default. For those users
1135 that liked that these were hidden, a new "Notmuch Messages Headers
1136 Visible" option in the customize interface can be set to nil. The
1137 visibility of headers can still be toggled on a per-message basis
1138 with the 'h' keybinding.
1140 For users that don't want to see some subset of those headers, the
1141 new "Notmuch Message Headers" variable can be customized to list
1142 only those headers that should be present in the display of a message.
1144 The Return key now toggles message visibility anywhere
1146 Previously this worked only on the first summary-line of a message.
1148 Customizable formatting of search results
1150 The user can easily customize the order, width, and formatting of
1151 the various fields in a "notmuch search" buffer. See the "Notmuch
1152 Search Result Format" section of the customize interface.
1154 Generate nicer names for search buffers when using a saved search.
1156 Add a notmuch User-Agent header when sending mail from notmuch/emacs.
1158 New keybinding (M-Ret) to open all collapsed messages in a thread.
1162 Provide a new NOTMUCH_SORT_UNSORTED value for queries
1164 This can be somewhat faster when sorting simply isn't desired. For
1165 example when collecting a set of messages that will all be
1166 manipulated identically, (adding a tag, removing a tag, deleting the
1167 messages), then there's no advantage to sorting the messages by
1172 Fix to compile against GMime 2.6
1174 Previously notmuch insisted on being able to find GMime 2.4, (even
1175 though GMime 2.6 would have worked all along).
1177 Fix configure script to accept (and ignore) various standard options.
1179 For example, those that the Gentoo build scripts expect configure to
1180 accept are now all accepted.
1184 A large number of new tests for the many new features.
1186 Better display of output from failed tests.
1188 Now shows failures with diff rather than forcing the user to gaze at
1189 complete actual and expected output looking for deviation.
1191 Notmuch 0.2 (2010-04-16)
1192 ========================
1193 This is the second release of the notmuch mail system, with actual
1194 detailed release notes this time!
1196 This release consists of a number of minor new features that make
1197 notmuch more pleasant to use, and a few fairly major bug fixes.
1199 We didn't quite hit our release target of "about a week" from the 0.1
1200 release, (0.2 is happening 11 days after 0.1), but we hope to do
1201 better for next week. Look forward to some major features coming to
1202 notmuch in subsequent releases.
1208 Better guessing of From: header.
1210 Notmuch now tries harder to guess which configured address should be
1211 used as the From: line in a "notmuch reply". It will examine the
1212 Received: headers if it fails to find any configured address in To:
1213 or Cc:. This allows it to often choose the correct address even when
1214 replying to a message sent to a mailing list, and not directly to a
1217 Make "notmuch count" with no arguments count all messages
1219 Previously, it was hard to construct a search term that was
1220 guaranteed to match all messages.
1222 Provide a new special-case search term of "*" to match all messages.
1224 This can be used in any command accepting a search term, such as
1225 "notmuch search '*'". Note that you'll want to take care that the
1226 shell doesn't expand * against the current files. And note that the
1227 support for "*" is a special case. It's only meaningful as a single
1228 search term and loses its special meaning when combined with any
1231 Automatically detect thread connections even when a parent message is
1234 Previously, if two or more message were received with a common
1235 parent, but that parent was not received, then these messages would
1236 not be recognized as belonging to the same thread. This is now fixed
1237 so that such messages are properly connected in a thread.
1241 Fix potential data loss in "notmuch new" with SIGINT
1243 One code path in "notmuch new" was not properly handling
1244 SIGINT. Previously, this could lead to messages being removed from
1245 the database (and their tags being lost) if the user pressed
1246 Control-C while "notmuch new" was working.
1248 Fix segfault when a message includes a MIME part that is empty.
1250 Fix handling of non-ASCII characters with --format=json
1252 Previously, characters outside the range of 7-bit ASCII were
1253 silently dropped from the JSON output. This led to corrupted display
1254 of utf-8 content in the upcoming notmuch web-based frontends.
1256 Fix headers to be properly decoded in "notmuch reply"
1258 Previously, the user might see:
1260 Subject: Re: =?iso-8859-2?q?Rozlu=E8ka?=
1264 Subject: Re: Rozlučka
1266 The former text is properly encoded to be RFC-compliant SMTP, will
1267 be sent correctly, and will be properly decoded by the
1268 recipient. But the user trying to edit the reply would likely be
1269 unable to read or edit that field in its encoded form.
1271 Emacs client features
1272 ---------------------
1273 Show the last few lines of citations as well as the first few lines.
1275 It's often the case that the last sentence of a citation is what is
1276 being replied to directly, so the last few lines are often much more
1277 important. The number of lines shown at the beginning and end of any
1278 citation can be configured, (notmuch-show-citation-lines-prefix and
1279 notmuch-show-citation-lines-suffix).
1281 The '+' and '-' commands in the search view can now add and remove
1284 Selective bulk tagging is now possible by selecting a region of
1285 threads and then using either the '+' or '-' keybindings. Bulk
1286 tagging is still available for all threads matching the current
1287 search with the '*' binding.
1289 More meaningful buffer names for thread-view buffers.
1291 Notmuch now uses the Subject of the thread as the buffer
1292 name. Previously it was using the thread ID, which is a meaningless
1295 Provide for customized colors of threads in search view based on tags.
1297 See the documentation of notmuch-search-line-faces, (or us "M-x
1298 customize" and browse to the "notmuch" group within "Applications"
1299 and "Mail"), for details on how to configure this colorization.
1301 Build-system features
1302 ---------------------
1303 Add support to properly build libnotmuch on Darwin systems (OS X).
1305 Add support to configure for many standard options.
1307 We include actual support for:
1309 --includedir --mandir --sysconfdir
1311 And accept and silently ignore several more:
1313 --build --infodir --libexecdir --localstatedir
1314 --disable-maintainer-mode --disable-dependency-tracking
1316 Install emacs client in "make install" rather than requiring a
1317 separate "make install-emacs".
1319 Automatically compute versions numbers between releases.
1321 This support uses the git-describe notation, so a version such as
1322 0.1-144-g43cbbfc indicates a version that is 144 commits since the
1323 0.1 release and is available as git commit "43cbbfc".
1325 Add a new "make test" target to run the test suite and actually verify
1328 Notmuch 0.1 (2010-04-05)
1329 ========================
1330 This is the first release of the notmuch mail system.
1332 It includes the libnotmuch library, the notmuch command-line
1333 interface, and an emacs-based interface to notmuch.
1335 Note: Notmuch will work best with Xapian 1.0.18 (or later) or Xapian
1336 1.1.4 (or later). Previous versions of Xapian (whether 1.0 or 1.1) had
1337 a performance bug that made notmuch very slow when modifying
1338 tags. This would cause distracting pauses when reading mail while
1339 notmuch would wait for Xapian when removing the "inbox" and "unread"
1340 tags from messages in a thread.