1 Notmuch 0.6.1 (2011-07-17)
2 ==========================
7 Re-export Xapian exception typeinfo symbols.
9 It turned out our aggressive symbol hiding caused problems for
10 people running gcc 4.4.5.
12 Notmuch 0.6 (2011-07-01)
13 =======================
16 Folder-based searching
18 Notmuch queries can now include a search term to match the
19 directories in which mail files are stored (within the mail
20 storage). The syntax is as follows:
24 For example, one might use things such as:
30 to match any path containing a directory "spam", "work/todo", or
31 containing a directory starting with "2011-", respectively.
33 This feature is particularly useful for users of delivery-agent
34 software (such as procmail or maildrop) that is filtering mail and
35 delivering it to particular folders, or users of systems such as
36 Gmail that use filesystem directories to indicate message tags.
38 NOTE: Only messages that are newly indexed with this version of
39 notmuch will be searchable with folder: terms. In order to enable
40 this feature for all mail, the entire notmuch index will need to be
43 notmuch dump > notmuch.dump
44 # Backup, then remove notmuch database ($MAIL/.notmuch)
46 notmuch restore notmuch.dump
50 Both the command line interface and the emacs-interface have new
51 support for PGP/MIME, detailed below. Thanks to Daniel Kahn Gillmor
52 and Jameson Graef Rollins for making this happen.
54 New, automatic tags: "signed" and "encrypted"
56 These tags will automatically be applied to messages containing
57 multipart/signed and multipart/encrypted parts.
59 NOTE: Only messages that are newly indexed with this version of
60 notmuch will receive these tags.
62 New command-line features
63 -------------------------
64 Add new "notmuch show --verify" option for signature verification
66 This option instruct notmuch to verify the signature of
67 PGP/MIME-signed parts.
69 Add new "notmuch show --decrypt" and "notmuch reply --decrypt" options
71 This option instructs notmuch to decrypt PGP/MIME-encrypted parts.
72 Note that this feature currently requires gpg-agent and a passphrase entry
73 tool (e.g. pinentry-gtk or pinentry-curses).
75 Proper nesting of multipart parts in "notmuch show" output
77 MIME parts are now display with proper nesting to reflect original
78 MIME hierarchy of a message. This allows clients to correctly
79 analyze the MIME structure, (such as, for example, determining to
80 which parts a signature part applies).
82 Add new "notmuch show --part" option
84 This is a replacement for the older "notmuch part" command, (which
85 is now deprecated—it should still work as always, but is no longer
86 documented). Putting part output under "notmuch show" allows for all
87 of the "notmuch show" options to be applied when extracting a single
88 part, (such as --format=json for extracting a message part with JSON
91 Deprecate "notmuch search-tags", (in favor of "notmuch search --output=tags *")
93 The "notmuch search-tags" sub-command has been redundant since the
94 addition of the --output=tags option to "notmuch search". We now
95 make that more clear by deprecating "notmuch search-tags", (dropping
96 it from the documentation). We do continue to support the old syntax
97 by translating it internally to the new call.
99 Performance improvements
100 ------------------------
101 Faster searches (by doing fewer searches to construct threads)
103 Whenever a user asks for search results as threads, notmuch first
104 performs a search for messages matching the query, then performs
105 additional searches to find other messages in the resulting threads.
107 Removing inefficiencies and redundancies in these secondary searches
108 results in a measured speedups of 1.5x for a typical search.
110 Faster searches (by doing fewer passes to gather message data)
112 Optimizing Xapian data access patterns (using a single pass to get
113 all message-document data rather than a pass for each data type)
114 results in a measured speedup of 1.7x for a typical search.
116 The benefits of this optimization combine with the preceding
117 optimization. With both in place, Austin Clements measured a speedup
118 of 2.5x for a search of all messages in his inbox (was 4.5s, now
119 1.8s). Thanks, Austin!
121 Faster initial indexing
123 More efficient indexing of new messages results in a measured
124 speedup of 1.4x for the initial indexing of 3 GB of mail (1h 14m
125 rather than 1h 46m). Thanks to Austin Clements and Michal Sojka.
127 Make "notmuch new" faster for unchanged directories
129 Optimizing to not do any further examinations of sub-directories
130 when the filesystem indicates that a directory is unchanged from the
131 last "notmuch new" results in measured speedups of 8.5 for the "No
132 new mail" case, (was 0.77s, now 0.09s). Thanks to Karel Zak.
134 New emacs-interface features
135 ----------------------------
137 Support for PGP/MIME (GnuPG)
139 Automatically indicate validity of signatures for multipart/signed
140 messages. Automatically display decrypted content for
141 multipart/encrypted messages. See the emacs variable
142 notmuch-crypto-process-mime for more information. Note that this
143 needs gpg-agent and a pinentry tool just as the command line tools.
144 Also note there is no support SMIME yet.
146 Output of pipe command is now displayed if pipe command fails
148 This is extremely useful in the common use case of piping a patch to
149 "git am". If git fails to cleanly merge the patch the error messages
150 from the failed merge are now clearly displayed to the user, (where
151 previously they were silently hidden from the user).
153 User-selectable From address
155 A user can choose which configured email addresses should be used as
156 the From address whenever composing a new message. To do so, simply
157 press C-u before the command which will open a new message. Emacs
158 will prompt for the from address to use.
160 The user can customize the "Notmuch Identities" setting in the
161 notmuch customize group in order to use addresses other than those in
162 the notmuch configuration file if desired.
164 The user can also choose to always be prompted for the from address
165 when composing a new message (without having to use C-u) by setting
166 the "Notmuch Always Prompt For Sender" option in the notmuch
169 Hiding of repeated subjects in collapsed thread view
171 In notmuch-show mode, if a collapsed message has the same subject as
172 its parent, the subject is not shown.
174 Automatic detection and hiding of original message in top-posted message
176 When a message contains a line looking something like:
178 ----- Original Message -----
180 emacs hides this and all subsequent lines as an "original message",
181 (allowing the user to click or press enter on the "original message"
182 button to display it again). This makes the handling of top-posted
183 citations work much like conventional citations.
185 New hooks for running code when tags are modified
187 Some users want to perform additional actions whenever a particular
188 tag is added/removed from a message. This could be used to, for
189 example, interface with some external spam-recognition training
190 tool. To facilitate this, two new hooks are added which can be
191 modified in the following settings of the notmuch customize group:
193 Notmuch Before Tag Hook
194 Notmuch After Tag Hook
196 New optional support for hiding some multipart/alternative parts
198 Many emails are sent with redundant content within a
199 multipart/alternative group (such as a text/plain part as well as a
200 text/html part). Users can configure the setting:
202 Notmuch Show All Multipart/Alternative Parts
204 to "off" in the notmuch customize group to have the interface
205 automatically hide some part alternatives (such as text/html
206 parts). This new part hiding is not configured by default yet
207 because there's not yet a simple way to re-display such a hidden
208 part if it is not actually redundant with a displayed part.
210 Better rendering of text/x-vcalendar parts
212 These parts are now displayed in a format suitable for use with the
215 Avoid getting confused by Subject and Author fields with newline characters
217 Replacing all characters with ASCII code less than 32 with a question mark.
219 Cleaner display of From line in email messages (remove double quotes,
220 and drop "name" if it's actually just a repeat of the email address).
222 Vim interface improvements
223 --------------------------
224 Felipe Contreras provided a number of updates for the vim interface:
226 * Using sendmail directly rather than mailx,
227 * Implementing archive in show view
228 * Add support to mark as read in show and search views
229 * Add delete commands
232 Bindings improvements
233 ---------------------
234 Ruby bindings are now much more complete
236 Including QUERY.sort, QUERY.to_s, MESSAGE.maildir_flags_to_tags,
237 MESSAGE.tags_to_maildir_flags, and MESSAGE.get_filenames
239 * Python bindings have been upodated and extended
240 (docs online at http://packages.python.org/notmuch/)
243 - Message().get_filenames(),
244 - Message().tags_to_maildir_flags(),Message().maildir_flags_to_tags()
245 - list(Threads()) and list(Messages) works now
247 - Message().__cmp__() and __hash__()
248 These allow, for example:
251 As well as set arithmetic on Messages():
253 s1, s2= set(msgs1), set(msgs2)
258 - len(Messages()) as it exausted the iterator.
259 Use len(list(Messages())) or
260 Query.count_messages() to get the length.
262 Added initial Go bindings in bindings/go
264 New build-system features
265 -------------------------
266 Added support for building in a directory other than the source directory
268 This can be used with the widely-supported idiom of simply running
269 the configure script from some other directory:
276 Fix to save configure options for future, implicit runs of configure
278 When a user updates the source (such as with "git pull") calling
279 "make" may cause an automatic re-run of the configure script. When
280 this happens, the configure script will automatically be called with
281 the same options the user originally passed in the most-recent
282 manual invocation of configure.
284 New test-suite feature
285 ----------------------
286 Binary for bash for running test suite now located via PATH.
288 The notmuch test suite requires a fairly recent version of bash (>=
289 bash 4). As some systems supply an older version of bash at
290 /bin/bash, the test suite is now updated to search $PATH to locate
291 the bash binary. This allows users of systems with old /bin/bash to
292 simply install bash >= 4 somewhere on $PATH before /bin and then use
295 Support for testing output with a trailing newline.
297 Previously, some tests would fail to notice a difference in the
298 presence/absence of a trailing newline in a program output, (which
299 has led to bugs in the past). Now, carefully-written tests (using
300 test_expect_equal_file rather than test_expect_equal) will detect
301 any change in the presence/absence of a trailing newline. Many tests
302 are updated to take advantage of this.
304 Avoiding accessing user's $HOME while running test suite
306 The test suite now carefully creates its own HOME directory. This
307 allows the test suite to be run with no existing HOME directory, (as
308 some build systems apparently do), and avoids test-suite differences
309 due to configuration files in the users HOME directory.
314 Output *all* files for "notmuch search --output=files"
316 For the cases where multiple files have the same Message ID,
317 previous versions of notmuch would output only one such file. This
318 command is now fixed to correctly output all files.
320 Fixed spurious search results from "overlapped" indexing of addresses
322 This fixed a bug where a search for:
324 to:user@elsewhere.com
326 would incorrectly match a message sent:
328 To: user@example,com, someone@elsewhere.com
330 Fix --output=json when search has no results
332 A bug present since notmuch 0.4 had caused searches with no results
333 to produce an invalid json object. This is now fixed to cleanly
334 return a valid json object representing an empty array "[]" as
337 fix the automatic detection of the From address for "notmuch reply"
338 from the Received headers in some cases.
340 Fix core dump on DragonFlyBSD due to -1 return value from
341 sysconf(_SC_GETPW_R_SIZE_MAX).
343 Cleaned up several memory leaks
345 Eliminated a few, rare segmentation faults and a double-free.
347 Fix libnotmuch library to only export notmuch API functions
349 Previous release of the notmuch library also exported some Xapian
350 C++ exception type symbols. These were never part of the library
351 interface and were never intended to be exported.
353 Emacs-interface bug fixes
354 -------------------------
355 Display any unexpected output or errors from "notmuch search" invocations
357 Previously any misformatted output or trailing error messages were
358 silently ignored. This output is now clearly displayed. This fix was
359 very helpful in identifying and fixing the bug described below.
361 Fix bug where some threads would be missing from large search results
363 When a search returned a "large" number of results, the emacs
364 interface was incorrectly dropping one thread every time the output
365 of the "notmuch search" process spanned the emacs read-buffer. This
368 Avoid re-compression of .gz files (and similar) when saving attachment
370 Emacs was being too clever for its own good and trying to
371 re-compress pre-compressed .gz files when saving such attachments
372 (potentially corrupting the attachment). The emacs interface is
373 fixed to avoid this bug.
375 Fix hiding of a message when a previously-hidden citation is visible
377 Previously the citation would remain visible in this case. This is
378 fixed so that hiding a message hides all parts.
380 Notmuch 0.5 (2010-11-11)
381 ========================
382 New, general features
383 ---------------------
384 Maildir-flag synchronization
386 Notmuch now knows how to synchronize flags in maildir filenames with
387 tags in the notmuch database. The following flag/tag mappings are
396 'S' unread (added when 'S' flag is not present)
398 The synchronization occurs in both directions, (for example, adding
399 the 'S' flag to a file will cause the "unread" tag to be added, and
400 adding the "replied" tag to a message will cause the file to be
401 renamed with an 'R' flag).
403 This synchronization is enabled by default for users of the
404 command-line interface, (though only files in directories named
405 "cur" or "new" will be renamed). It can be disabled by setting the
406 new maildir.synchronize_flags option in the configuration file. For
409 notmuch config set maildir.synchronize_flags false
411 Users upgrading may also want to run "notmuch setup" once (just
412 accept the existing configuration) to get a new, nicely-commented
413 [maildir] section added to the configuration file.
415 For users of the notmuch library, the new synchronization
416 functionality is available with the following two new functions:
418 notmuch_message_maildir_flags_to_tags
419 notmuch_message_tags_to_maildir_flags
421 It is anticipated that future improvements to this support will
422 allow for safe synchronization of the 'T' flag with the "deleted"
423 tag, as well as support for custom flag/tag mappings.
427 Support for querying multiple filenames for a single message
429 It is common for the mailstore to contain multiple files with the
430 same message ID. Previously, notmuch would always hide these
431 duplicate files, (returning a single, arbitrary filename with
432 notmuch_message_get_filename).
434 With this release, library users can access all filenames for a
435 message with the new function:
437 notmuch_message_get_filenames
439 Together with notmuch_filenames_valid, notmuch_filenames_get, and
440 notmuch_filenames_move_to_next it is now possible to iterate over
441 all available filenames for a given message.
443 New command-line features
444 -------------------------
445 New "notmuch show --format=raw" for getting at original email contents
447 This new feature allows for a fully-functional email client to be
448 built on top of the notmuch command-line without needing any direct
449 access to the mail store itself.
451 For example, it's now possible to run "emacs -f notmuch" on a local
452 machine with only ssh access to the mail store/notmuch database. To
453 do this, simply set the notmuch-command variable in emacs to the
454 name of a script containing:
456 ssh user@host notmuch "$@"
458 If the ssh client has enabled connection sharing (ControlMaster
459 option in OpenSSH), the emacs interface can be quite responsive this
464 Fix "notmuch search" to print nothing when nothing matches
466 The 0.4 release had a bug in which:
468 notmuch search <expression-with-no-matches>
470 would produce a single blank line of output, (where previous
471 versions would produce no output. This fix also causes a change in
472 the --format=json output, (which would previously produce "[]" and
473 now produces nothing).
475 Emacs interface improvements
476 ----------------------------
477 Fix to allow pipe ('|') command to work when using notmuch over ssh
479 Fix count of lines in hidden signatures.
481 Omit repeated subject lines in (collapsed) thread display.
483 Display current thread subject in a header line.
485 Provide a "c i" binding to copy a thread ID from the search view.
487 Allow for notmuch-fcc-dirs to have a value of nil.
489 Also, the more complex form of notmuch-fcc-dirs now has a slightly
490 different format. It no longer has a special first-element, fallback
491 string. Instead it's now a list of cons cells where the car of each
492 cell is a regular expression to be matched against the sender
493 address, and the cdr is the name of a folder to use for an FCC. So
494 the old fallback behavior can be achieved by including a final cell
495 of (".*" . "default-fcc-folder").
497 Vim interface improvements
498 --------------------------
499 Felipe Contreras provided a number of updates for the vim interface.
501 These include optimizations, support for newer versions of vim, fixed
502 support for sending mail on modern systems, new commands, and
507 Added initial ruby bindings in bindings/ruby
509 Notmuch 0.4 (2010-11-01)
510 ========================
511 New command-line features
512 -------------------------
513 notmuch search --output=(summary|threads|messages|tags|files)
515 This new option allows for particular items to be returned from
516 notmuch searches. The "summary" option is the default and behaves
517 just as "notmuch search" has historically behaved.
519 The new option values allow for thread IDs, message IDs, lists of
520 tags, and lists of filenames to be returned from searches. It is
521 expected that this new option will be very useful in shell
522 scripts. For example:
524 for file in $(notmuch search --output=files <search-terms>); do
525 <operations-on> "$file"
528 notmuch show --format=mbox <search-specification>
530 This new option allows for the messages matching a search
531 specification to be presented as an mbox. Specifically the "mboxrd"
532 format is used which allows for reversible quoting of lines
533 beginning with "From ". A reader should remove a single '>' from the
534 beginning of all lines beginning with one or more '>' characters
535 followed by the 5 characters "From ".
537 notmuch config [get|set] <section>.<item> [value ...]
539 The new top-level "config" command allows for any value in the
540 notmuch configuration file to be queried or set to a new value. Both
541 single-valued and multi-valued items are supported, as our any
542 custom items stored in the configuration file.
544 Avoid setting Bcc header in "notmuch reply"
546 We decided that this was a bit heavy-handed as the actual mail
547 user-agent should be responsible for setting any Bcc option. Also,
548 see below for the notmuch/emacs user-agent now setting an Fcc by
549 default rather than Bcc.
553 Add notmuch_query_get_query_string and notmuch_query_get_sort
555 These are simply functions for querying properties of a
556 notmuch_query_t object.
560 Enable Fcc of all sent messages by default (to "sent" directory)
562 All messages sent from the emacs interface will now be saved to the
563 notmuch mail store where they will be incorporated to the database
564 by the next "notmuch new". By default, messages are saved to the
565 "sent" directory at the top-level of the mail store. This directory
566 can be customized by means of the "Notmuch Fcc Dirs" option in the
567 notmuch customize interface.
569 Ability to all open messages in a thread to a pipe
571 Historically, the '|' keybinding allows for piping a single message
572 to an external command. Now, by prefixing this key with a prefix
573 argument, (for example, by pressing "Control-U |"), all open
574 messages in the current thread will be sent to the external command.
576 Optional support for detecting inline patches
578 This hook is disabled by default but can be enabled with a checkbox
579 under "Notmuch Show Insert Text/Plain Hook" in the notmuch customize
580 interface. It allows for inline patches to be detected and treated
581 as if they were attachments, (with context-sensitive highlighting).
583 Automatically tag messages as "replied" when sending a reply
585 Messages replied to within the emacs interface will now be tagged as
586 "replied". This feature can easily be customized to add or remove
587 other tags as well. For example, a user might use a tag of
588 "needs-reply" and can configure this feature to automatically remove
589 that tag when replying. See "Notmuch Message Mark Replied" in the
590 notmuch customize interface.
592 Allow search-result color specifications to overlay each other
594 For example, one tag can specify the background color of matching
595 lines, while another can specify the foreground. With this change,
596 both settings will now be visible simultaneously, (which was not the
597 case in previous releases). See "Notmuch Search Line Faces" in the
598 notmuch customize interface.
600 Make hidden author names still available for incremental search.
602 When there is insufficient space to display all authors of a thread
603 in search results, the names of hidden authors are now still made
604 available to emacs' incremental search commands. As the user
605 searches, matching lines will temporarily expand to show the hidden
608 New binding of Control-TAB (works like TAB in reverse)
610 Many notmuch nodes already use TAB to navigate forward through
611 various items allowing actions, (message headers, email attachments,
612 etc.). The new Control-TAB binding operates similarly but in the
615 New build-system features
616 -------------------------
617 Various portability fixes have been applied
619 These include fixes for build failures on at least Solaris, FreeBSD,
620 and Fedora systems. We're hopeful that the notmuch code base is now
621 more portable than ever before.
623 Arrange for libnotmuch to be found automatically after make install
625 The notmuch build system is now careful to help the user avoid
626 errors of the form "libnotmuch.so could not be found" immediately
627 after installing. This support takes two forms:
629 1. If the library is installed to a system directory,
630 (configured in /etc/ld.so.conf), then "make install" will
631 automatically run ldconfig.
633 2. If the library is installed to a non-system directory, the
634 build system adds a DR_RUNPATH entry to the final binary
635 pointing to the directory to which the library is installed.
637 When this support works, the user should be able to run notmuch
638 immediately after "make install", without any errors trying to find
639 the notmuch library, and without having to manually set environment
640 variables such as LD_LIBRARY_PATH.
642 Check compiler/linker options before using them
644 The configure script now carefully checks that any desired
645 compilation options, (whether for enabling compiler warnings, or for
646 embedding rpath, etc.), are supported. Only supported options are
647 used in the resulting Makefile.
649 New test-suite features
650 -----------------------
651 New modularization of test suite.
653 Thanks to a gracious relicensing of the test-suite infrastructure
654 from the git project, notmuch now has a modular test suite. This
655 provides the ability to run individual sections of the test suite
656 rather than the whole things. It also provides better summary of
657 test results, with support for tests that are expected to fail
658 (BROKEN and FIXED) in addition to PASS and FAIL. Finally, it makes
659 it easy to run the test suite within valgrind (pass --valgrind to
660 notmuch-test or to any sub-script) which has been very useful.
662 New testing of emacs interface.
664 The test suite has been augmented to allow automated testing of the
665 emacs interfaces. So far, this includes basic searches, display of
666 threads, and tag manipulation. This also includes a test that a new
667 message can successfully be sent out through a (dummy) SMTP server
668 and that said message is successfully integrated into the notmuch
669 database via the FCC setting.
673 Fix potential corruption of database when "notmuch new " is interrupted.
675 Previously, an interruption of "notmuch new" would (rarely) result
676 in a corrupt database. The corruption would manifest itself by a
677 persistent error of the form:
679 document ID of 1234 has no thread ID
681 The message-adding code has been carefully audited and reworked to
682 avoid this sort of corruption regardless of when it is interrupted.
684 Fix failure with extremely long message ID headers.
686 Previously, a message with an extremely long message ID, (say, more
687 than 300 characters), would fail to be added to notmuch, (triggering
688 Xapian exceptions). This has now been fixed.
690 Fix for messages with "charset=unknown-8bit"
692 Previously, messages with this charset would cause notmuch to emit a
693 GMime warning, (which would then trip up emacs or other interfaces
694 parsing the notmuch results).
696 Fix notmuch_query_search_threads function to return NULL on any exception
698 Fix "notmuch search" to return non-zero if notmuch_query_search_threads fails
700 Previously, this command could confusingly report a Xapian
701 exception, yet still return an error code of 0. It now correctly
702 returns a failing error code of 1 in this case.
706 Fix to handle a message with a subject containing, for example "[1234]"
708 Previously, a message subject containing a sequence of digits within
709 square brackets would cause the emacs interface to mis-parse the
710 output of "notmuch search". This would result in the message being
711 mis-displayed and prevent the user from manipulating the message in
714 Fix to correctly handle message IDs containing ".."
716 The emacs interface now properly quotes message IDs to avoid a
717 Xapian bug in which the ".." within a message ID would be
718 misinterpreted as a numeric range specification.
722 The python bindings for notmuch have been updated to work with python3.
724 Debian-specific fixes
725 ---------------------
726 Fix emacs initialization so "M-x notmuch" works for users by default.
728 Now, a new Debian user can immediately run "emacs -f notmuch" after
729 "apt-get install notmuch". Previously, the user would have had to
730 edit the ~/.emacs file to add "(require 'notmuch)" before this would
733 Notmuch 0.3.1 (2010-04-27)
734 ==========================
737 Fix an infinite loop in "notmuch reply"
739 This bug could be triggered by replying to a message where the
740 user's primary email address did not appear in the To: header and
741 the user had not configured any secondary email addresses. The bug
742 was a simple re-use of the same iterator variable in nested loops.
744 Fix a potential SEGV in "notmuch search"
746 This bug could be triggered by an author name ending in a ','.
747 Admittedly - that's almost certainly a spam email, but we never
748 want notmuch to crash.
752 Fix calculations for line wrapping in the primary "notmuch" view.
754 Fix Fcc support to prompt to create a directory if the specified Fcc
755 directory does not exist.
759 Fix build on OpenSolaris (at least) due to missing 'extern "C"' block.
761 Without this, the C++ sources could not find strcasestr and the
762 final linking of notmuch would fail.
764 Notmuch 0.3 (2010-04-27)
765 ========================
766 New command-line features
767 -------------------------
768 User-configurable tags for new messages
770 A new "new.tags" option is available in the configuration file to
771 determine which tags are applied to new messages. Run "notmuch
772 setup" to generate new documentation within ~/.notmuch-config on how
773 to specify this value.
775 Threads search results named based on subjects that match search
777 This means that when new mails arrived to a thread you've previously
778 read, and the new mails have a new subject, you will see that
779 subject in the search results rather than the old subject.
781 Faster operation of "notmuch tag" (avoid unneeded sorting)
783 Since the user just wants to tag all matching messages, we can make
784 things perform a bit faster by avoiding the sort.
786 Even Better guessing of From: header for "notmuch reply"
788 Notmuch now looks at a number of headers when trying to figure out
789 the best From: header to use in a reply. This is helpful if you have
790 several configured email addresses, and you also subscribe to various
791 mailing lists with different addresses, (so that mails you are
792 replying to won't always include your subscribed address in the To:
795 Indication of author names that match a search
797 When notmuch displays threads as the result of a search, it now
798 lists the authors that match the search before listing the other
799 authors in the thread. It inserts a pipe '|' symbol between the last
800 matching and first non-matching author. This is especially useful in
801 a search that includes tag:unread. Now the authors of the unread
802 messages in the thread are listed first.
806 Sebastian Spaeth has contributed his python bindings for the notmuch
807 library to the central repository. These bindings were previously
808 known as "cnotmuch" within python but have now been renamed to be
809 accessible with a simple, and more official-looking "import notmuch".
811 The bindings have already proven very useful as people proficient in
812 python have been able to easily develop programs to do notmuch-based
813 searches for email-address completion, maildir-flag synchronization,
816 These bindings are available within the bindings/python directory, but
817 are not yet integrated into the top-level Makefiles, nor the top-level
818 package-building scripts. Improvements are welcome.
820 Emacs interface improvements
821 ----------------------------
822 An entirely new initial view for notmuch, (friendly yet powerful)
824 Some of us call the new view "notmuch hello" but you can get at it
825 by simply calling "emacs -f notmuch". The new view provides a search
826 bar where new searches can be performed. It also displays a list of
827 recent searches, along with a button to save any of these, giving it
828 a new name as a "saved search". Many people find these "saved
829 searches" one of the most convenient ways of organizing their mail,
830 (providing all of the features of "folders" in other mail clients,
831 but without any of the disadvantages).
833 Finally, this view can also optionally display all of the tags that
834 exist in the database, along with a count for each tag, and a custom
835 search of messages with that tag that's simply a click (or keypress)
838 Note: For users that liked the original mode of "emacs -f notmuch"
839 immediately displaying a particular search result, we
840 recommend instead running something like:
842 emacs --eval '(notmuch search "tag:inbox" t)'
844 The "t" means to sort the messages in an "oldest first" order,
845 (as notmuch would do previously by default). You can also
846 leave that off to have your search results in "newest first"
849 Full-featured "customize" support for configuring notmuch
851 Notmuch now plugs in well to the emacs "customize" mode to make it
852 much simpler to find things about the notmuch interface that can be
855 You can get to this mode by starting at the main "Customize" menu in
856 emacs, then browsing through "Applications", "Mail", and
857 "Notmuch". Or you can go straight to "M-x customize-group"
860 Once you're at the customize screen, you'll see a list of documented
861 options that can be manipulated along with checkboxes, drop-down
862 selectors, and text-entry boxes for configuring the various
865 Support for doing tab-completion of email addresses
867 This support currently relies on an external program,
868 (notmuch-addresses), that is not yet shipped with notmuch
869 itself. But multiple, suitable implementations of this program have
870 already been written that generate address completions by doing
871 notmuch searches of your email collection. For example, providing
872 first those addresses that you have composed messages to in the
875 One such program (implemented in python with the python bindings to
876 notmuch) is available via:
878 git clone http://jkr.acm.jhu.edu/git/notmuch_addresses.git
880 Install that program as notmuch-addresses on your PATH, and then
881 hitting TAB on a partial email address or name within the To: or Cc:
882 line of an email message will provide matching completions.
884 Support for file-based (Fcc) delivery of sent messages to mail store
886 This isn't yet enabled by default. To enable this, one will have to
887 set the "Notmuch Fcc Dirs" setting within the notmuch customize
888 screen, (see its documentation there for details). We anticipate
889 making this automatic in a future release.
891 New 'G' key binding to trigger mail refresh (G == "Get new mail")
893 The 'G' key works wherever '=' works. Before refreshing the screen
894 it calls an external program that can be used to poll email servers,
895 run notmuch new and setup specific tags for the new emails. The
896 script to be called should be configured with the "Notmuch Poll
897 Script" setting in the customize interface. This script will
898 typically invoke "notmuch new" and then perhaps several "notmuch
901 Implement emacs message display with the JSON output from notmuch.
903 This is much more robust than the previous implementation, (where
904 some HTML mails and mail quoting the notmuch code with the delimiter
905 characters in it would cause the parser to fall over).
907 Better handling of HTML messages and MIME attachments (inline images!)
909 Allow for any MIME parts that emacs can display to be displayed
910 inline. This includes inline viewing of image attachments, (provided
911 the window is large enough to fit the image at its natural size).
913 Much more robust handling of HTML messages. Currently both text/plain
914 and text/html alternates will be rendered next to each other. In a
915 future release, users will be able to decide to see only one or the
916 other representation.
918 Each attachment now has its own button so that attachments can be
919 saved individually (the 'w' key is still available to save all
922 Customizable support for tidying of text/plain message content
924 Many new functions are available for tidying up message
925 content. These include options such as wrapping long lines,
926 compressing duplicate blank lines, etc.
928 Most of these are disabled by default, but can easily be enabled by
929 clicking the available check boxes under the "Notmuch Show Insert
930 Text/Plain Hook" within the notmuch customize screen.
932 New support for searchable citations (even when hidden)
934 When portions of overly-long citations are hidden, the contents of
935 these citations will still be available for emacs' standard
936 "incremental search" functions. When the search matches any portion
937 of a hidden citation, the citation will become visible temporarily
938 to display the search result.
940 More flexible handling of header visibility
942 As an answer to complaints from many users, the To, Cc, and Date
943 headers of messages are no longer hidden by default. For those users
944 that liked that these were hidden, a new "Notmuch Messages Headers
945 Visible" option in the customize interface can be set to nil. The
946 visibility of headers can still be toggled on a per-message basis
947 with the 'h' keybinding.
949 For users that don't want to see some subset of those headers, the
950 new "Notmuch Message Headers" variable can be customized to list
951 only those headers that should be present in the display of a message.
953 The Return key now toggles message visibility anywhere
955 Previously this worked only on the first summary-line of a message.
957 Customizable formatting of search results
959 The user can easily customize the order, width, and formatting of
960 the various fields in a "notmuch search" buffer. See the "Notmuch
961 Search Result Format" section of the customize interface.
963 Generate nicer names for search buffers when using a saved search.
965 Add a notmuch User-Agent header when sending mail from notmuch/emacs.
967 New keybinding (M-Ret) to open all collapsed messages in a thread.
971 Provide a new NOTMUCH_SORT_UNSORTED value for queries
973 This can be somewhat faster when sorting simply isn't desired. For
974 example when collecting a set of messages that will all be
975 manipulated identically, (adding a tag, removing a tag, deleting the
976 messages), then there's no advantage to sorting the messages by
981 Fix to compile against GMime 2.6
983 Previously notmuch insisted on being able to find GMime 2.4, (even
984 though GMime 2.6 would have worked all along).
986 Fix configure script to accept (and ignore) various standard options.
988 For example, those that the Gentoo build scripts expect configure to
989 accept are now all accepted.
993 A large number of new tests for the many new features.
995 Better display of output from failed tests.
997 Now shows failures with diff rather than forcing the user to gaze at
998 complete actual and expected output looking for deviation.
1000 Notmuch 0.2 (2010-04-16)
1001 ========================
1002 This is the second release of the notmuch mail system, with actual
1003 detailed release notes this time!
1005 This release consists of a number of minor new features that make
1006 notmuch more pleasant to use, and a few fairly major bug fixes.
1008 We didn't quite hit our release target of "about a week" from the 0.1
1009 release, (0.2 is happening 11 days after 0.1), but we hope to do
1010 better for next week. Look forward to some major features coming to
1011 notmuch in subsequent releases.
1017 Better guessing of From: header.
1019 Notmuch now tries harder to guess which configured address should be
1020 used as the From: line in a "notmuch reply". It will examine the
1021 Received: headers if it fails to find any configured address in To:
1022 or Cc:. This allows it to often choose the correct address even when
1023 replying to a message sent to a mailing list, and not directly to a
1026 Make "notmuch count" with no arguments count all messages
1028 Previously, it was hard to construct a search term that was
1029 guaranteed to match all messages.
1031 Provide a new special-case search term of "*" to match all messages.
1033 This can be used in any command accepting a search term, such as
1034 "notmuch search '*'". Note that you'll want to take care that the
1035 shell doesn't expand * against the current files. And note that the
1036 support for "*" is a special case. It's only meaningful as a single
1037 search term and loses its special meaning when combined with any
1040 Automatically detect thread connections even when a parent message is
1043 Previously, if two or more message were received with a common
1044 parent, but that parent was not received, then these messages would
1045 not be recognized as belonging to the same thread. This is now fixed
1046 so that such messages are properly connected in a thread.
1050 Fix potential data loss in "notmuch new" with SIGINT
1052 One code path in "notmuch new" was not properly handling
1053 SIGINT. Previously, this could lead to messages being removed from
1054 the database (and their tags being lost) if the user pressed
1055 Control-C while "notmuch new" was working.
1057 Fix segfault when a message includes a MIME part that is empty.
1059 Fix handling of non-ASCII characters with --format=json
1061 Previously, characters outside the range of 7-bit ASCII were
1062 silently dropped from the JSON output. This led to corrupted display
1063 of utf-8 content in the upcoming notmuch web-based frontends.
1065 Fix headers to be properly decoded in "notmuch reply"
1067 Previously, the user might see:
1069 Subject: Re: =?iso-8859-2?q?Rozlu=E8ka?=
1073 Subject: Re: Rozlučka
1075 The former text is properly encoded to be RFC-compliant SMTP, will
1076 be sent correctly, and will be properly decoded by the
1077 recipient. But the user trying to edit the reply would likely be
1078 unable to read or edit that field in its encoded form.
1080 Emacs client features
1081 ---------------------
1082 Show the last few lines of citations as well as the first few lines.
1084 It's often the case that the last sentence of a citation is what is
1085 being replied to directly, so the last few lines are often much more
1086 important. The number of lines shown at the beginning and end of any
1087 citation can be configured, (notmuch-show-citation-lines-prefix and
1088 notmuch-show-citation-lines-suffix).
1090 The '+' and '-' commands in the search view can now add and remove
1093 Selective bulk tagging is now possible by selecting a region of
1094 threads and then using either the '+' or '-' keybindings. Bulk
1095 tagging is still available for all threads matching the current
1096 search with the '*' binding.
1098 More meaningful buffer names for thread-view buffers.
1100 Notmuch now uses the Subject of the thread as the buffer
1101 name. Previously it was using the thread ID, which is a meaningless
1104 Provide for customized colors of threads in search view based on tags.
1106 See the documentation of notmuch-search-line-faces, (or us "M-x
1107 customize" and browse to the "notmuch" group within "Applications"
1108 and "Mail"), for details on how to configure this colorization.
1110 Build-system features
1111 ---------------------
1112 Add support to properly build libnotmuch on Darwin systems (OS X).
1114 Add support to configure for many standard options.
1116 We include actual support for:
1118 --includedir --mandir --sysconfdir
1120 And accept and silently ignore several more:
1122 --build --infodir --libexecdir --localstatedir
1123 --disable-maintainer-mode --disable-dependency-tracking
1125 Install emacs client in "make install" rather than requiring a
1126 separate "make install-emacs".
1128 Automatically compute versions numbers between releases.
1130 This support uses the git-describe notation, so a version such as
1131 0.1-144-g43cbbfc indicates a version that is 144 commits since the
1132 0.1 release and is available as git commit "43cbbfc".
1134 Add a new "make test" target to run the test suite and actually verify
1137 Notmuch 0.1 (2010-04-05)
1138 ========================
1139 This is the first release of the notmuch mail system.
1141 It includes the libnotmuch library, the notmuch command-line
1142 interface, and an emacs-based interface to notmuch.
1144 Note: Notmuch will work best with Xapian 1.0.18 (or later) or Xapian
1145 1.1.4 (or later). Previous versions of Xapian (whether 1.0 or 1.1) had
1146 a performance bug that made notmuch very slow when modifying
1147 tags. This would cause distracting pauses when reading mail while
1148 notmuch would wait for Xapian when removing the "inbox" and "unread"
1149 tags from messages in a thread.