1 Notmuch 0.11 (201x-xx-xx)
2 =========================
4 New command-line features
5 -------------------------
9 Hooks have been introduced to notmuch. Hooks are scripts that notmuch
10 invokes before and after certain actions. Initially, "notmuch new"
11 supports "pre-new" and "post-new" hooks that are run before and after
12 importing new messages into the database.
17 Automatic tag query optimization
19 "notmuch tag" now automatically optimizes the user's query to
20 exclude messages whose tags won't change. In the past, we've
21 suggested that people do this by hand; this is no longer necessary.
24 Notmuch 0.10.2 (2011-12-04)
25 ===========================
30 Fix crash in python bindings.
32 The python bindings did not call g_type_init, which caused crashes
33 for some, but not all users.
35 Notmuch 0.10.1 (2011-11-25)
36 ===========================
43 Argument processing changes in 0.10 introduced a bug where "notmuch
44 --help" crashed while "notmuch help" worked fine. This is fixed in
47 Notmuch 0.10 (2011-11-23)
48 =========================
50 New build and testing features
51 ------------------------------
53 Emacs tests are now done in dtach. This means that dtach is now
54 needed to run the notmuch test suite, at least until the checking for
55 prerequisites is improved.
57 Full test coverage of the stashing feature in Emacs.
59 New command-line features
60 -------------------------
62 Add "notmuch restore --accumulate" option
64 The --accumulate switch causes the union of the existing and new tags to be
65 applied, instead of replacing each message's tags as they are read in from
68 Add search terms to "notmuch dump"
70 The dump command now takes an optional search term much like notmuch
71 search/show/tag. The output file argument of dump is deprecated in
72 favour of using stdout.
74 Add "notmuch search" --offset and --limit options
76 The search command now takes options --offset=[-]N and --limit=N to limit
77 the number of results shown.
79 Add "notmuch count --output" option
81 The count command is now capable of counting threads in addition to
82 messages. This is selected using the new --output=(threads|messages) option.
87 Add tab-completion for notmuch-search and notmuch-search-filter
89 These functions now support completion tags for query parts
92 Turn "id:MSG-ID" links into buttons associated with notmuch searches
94 Text of the form "id:MSG-ID" in mails is now a clickable button that
95 opens a notmuch search for the given message id.
97 Add keybinding ('c I') for stashing Message-ID's without an id: prefix
99 Reduces manual labour when stashing them for use outside notmuch.
101 Do not query on notmuch-search exit
103 It is harmless to kill the external notmuch process, so the user
104 is no longer interrogated when they interrupt a search.
109 Emacs now constructs large search buffers more efficiently
111 Search avoids opening and parsing message files
113 We now store more information in the database so search no longer
114 has to open every message file to get basic headers. This can
115 improve search speed by as much as 10X, but taking advantage of this
116 requires a database rebuild:
118 notmuch dump > notmuch.dump
119 # Backup, then remove notmuch database ($MAIL/.notmuch)
121 notmuch restore notmuch.dump
123 New collection of add-on tools
124 ------------------------------
126 The source directory "contrib" contains tools built on notmuch. These
127 tools are not part of notmuch, and you should check their individual
128 licenses. Feel free to report problems with them to the notmuch
131 nmbug - share tags with a given prefix
133 nmbug helps maintain a git repo containing all tags with a given
134 prefix (by default "notmuch::"). Tags can be shared by commiting
135 them to git in one location and restoring in another.
137 Notmuch 0.9 (2011-10-01)
138 ========================
140 New, general features
141 ---------------------
143 Correct handling of interruptions during "notmuch new"
145 "notmuch new" now operates as a series of small, self-consistent
146 transactions, so it can correctly resume after an interruption or
147 crash. Previously, interruption could lose existing tags, fail to
148 detect messages on resume, or leave the database in a state
149 temporarily or permanently inconsistent with the mail store.
156 notmuch_database_begin_atomic and notmuch_database_end_atomic allow
157 multiple database operations to be performed atomically.
159 notmuch_database_find_message_by_filename does exactly what it says.
163 notmuch_database_find_message (and n_d_f_m_by_filename) now return
164 a status indicator and uses an output parameter for the
165 message. This change required changing the SONAME of libnotmuch to
168 Python bindings changes
169 -----------------------
171 - Re-encode python unicode objects to utf-8 before passing back to
173 - Support Database().begin_atomic()/end_atomic()
174 - Support Database().find_message_by_filename()
175 NB! This needs a db opened in READ-WRITE mode currently, or it will crash
176 the python process. The is a limitation (=bug) of the underlying libnotmuch.
177 - Fixes where we would not throw NotmuchErrors when we should (Justus Winter)
178 - Update for n_d_find_message* API changes (see above).
180 Ruby bindings changes
181 ---------------------
183 - Wrap new library functions notmuch_database_{begin,end}_atomic.
184 - Add new exception Notmuch::UnbalancedAtomicError.
185 - Rename destroy to destroy! according to Ruby naming conventions.
186 - Update for n_d_find_message* API changes (see above).
191 * Add gpg callback to crypto sigstatus buttons to retrieve/refresh
193 * Add notmuch-show-refresh-view function (and corresponding binding)
194 to refresh the view of a notmuch-show buffer.
196 Reply formatting cleanup
197 ------------------------
199 "notmuch reply" no longer includes notification that non-leafnode
200 MIME parts are being suppressed.
202 Notmuch 0.8 (2011-09-10)
203 ========================
205 Improved handling of message/rfc822 parts
207 Both in the CLI and the emacs interface. Output of rfc822 parts now
208 includes the primary headers, as well as the body and all subparts.
209 Output of the completely raw rfc822-formatted message, including all
210 headers, is unfortunately not yet supported (but hopefully will be
213 Improved Build system portability
215 Certain parts of the shell script generating notmuch.sym were
216 specific to the GNU versions of sed and nm. The new version should
217 be more portable to e.g. OpenBSD.
219 Documentation update for Ruby bindings
221 Added documentation, typo fixes, and improved support for rdoc.
223 Unicode, iterator, PEP8 changes for python bindings
225 - PEP8 (code formatting) changes for python files.
226 - Remove Tags.__len__ ; see 0.6 release notes for motivation.
227 - Decode headers as UTF8, encode (unicode) database paths as UTF8.
229 Notmuch 0.7 (2011-08-01)
230 ========================
232 Vim interface improvements
233 --------------------------
235 Jason Woofenden provided a number of bug fixes for the Vim interface
237 * fix citation/signature fold lengths
238 * fix cig/cit parsing within multipart/*
239 * fix on-screen instructions for show-signature
240 * fix from list reformatting in search view
241 * fix space key: now archives (did opposite)
243 Uwe Kleine-König contributed
245 * use full path for sendmail/doc fix
246 * fix compose temp file name
248 Python Bindings changes
249 -----------------------
251 Sebastian Spaeth contributed two changes related to unicode and UTF8:
253 * message tags are now explicitly unicode
254 * query string is encoded as a UTF8 byte string
256 Build-System improvements
257 ------------------------
259 Generate notmuch.sym after the relevant object files
261 This fixes a bug in parallel building. Thanks to Thomas Jost for the
264 Notmuch 0.6.1 (2011-07-17)
265 ==========================
270 Re-export Xapian exception typeinfo symbols.
272 It turned out our aggressive symbol hiding caused problems for
273 people running gcc 4.4.5.
275 Notmuch 0.6 (2011-07-01)
276 =======================
277 New, general features
278 ---------------------
279 Folder-based searching
281 Notmuch queries can now include a search term to match the
282 directories in which mail files are stored (within the mail
283 storage). The syntax is as follows:
287 For example, one might use things such as:
293 to match any path containing a directory "spam", "work/todo", or
294 containing a directory starting with "2011-", respectively.
296 This feature is particularly useful for users of delivery-agent
297 software (such as procmail or maildrop) that is filtering mail and
298 delivering it to particular folders, or users of systems such as
299 Gmail that use filesystem directories to indicate message tags.
301 NOTE: Only messages that are newly indexed with this version of
302 notmuch will be searchable with folder: terms. In order to enable
303 this feature for all mail, the entire notmuch index will need to be
306 notmuch dump > notmuch.dump
307 # Backup, then remove notmuch database ($MAIL/.notmuch)
309 notmuch restore notmuch.dump
313 Both the command line interface and the emacs-interface have new
314 support for PGP/MIME, detailed below. Thanks to Daniel Kahn Gillmor
315 and Jameson Graef Rollins for making this happen.
317 New, automatic tags: "signed" and "encrypted"
319 These tags will automatically be applied to messages containing
320 multipart/signed and multipart/encrypted parts.
322 NOTE: Only messages that are newly indexed with this version of
323 notmuch will receive these tags.
325 New command-line features
326 -------------------------
327 Add new "notmuch show --verify" option for signature verification
329 This option instruct notmuch to verify the signature of
330 PGP/MIME-signed parts.
332 Add new "notmuch show --decrypt" and "notmuch reply --decrypt" options
334 This option instructs notmuch to decrypt PGP/MIME-encrypted parts.
335 Note that this feature currently requires gpg-agent and a passphrase entry
336 tool (e.g. pinentry-gtk or pinentry-curses).
338 Proper nesting of multipart parts in "notmuch show" output
340 MIME parts are now display with proper nesting to reflect original
341 MIME hierarchy of a message. This allows clients to correctly
342 analyze the MIME structure, (such as, for example, determining to
343 which parts a signature part applies).
345 Add new "notmuch show --part" option
347 This is a replacement for the older "notmuch part" command, (which
348 is now deprecated—it should still work as always, but is no longer
349 documented). Putting part output under "notmuch show" allows for all
350 of the "notmuch show" options to be applied when extracting a single
351 part, (such as --format=json for extracting a message part with JSON
354 Deprecate "notmuch search-tags", (in favor of "notmuch search --output=tags *")
356 The "notmuch search-tags" sub-command has been redundant since the
357 addition of the --output=tags option to "notmuch search". We now
358 make that more clear by deprecating "notmuch search-tags", (dropping
359 it from the documentation). We do continue to support the old syntax
360 by translating it internally to the new call.
362 Performance improvements
363 ------------------------
364 Faster searches (by doing fewer searches to construct threads)
366 Whenever a user asks for search results as threads, notmuch first
367 performs a search for messages matching the query, then performs
368 additional searches to find other messages in the resulting threads.
370 Removing inefficiencies and redundancies in these secondary searches
371 results in a measured speedups of 1.5x for a typical search.
373 Faster searches (by doing fewer passes to gather message data)
375 Optimizing Xapian data access patterns (using a single pass to get
376 all message-document data rather than a pass for each data type)
377 results in a measured speedup of 1.7x for a typical search.
379 The benefits of this optimization combine with the preceding
380 optimization. With both in place, Austin Clements measured a speedup
381 of 2.5x for a search of all messages in his inbox (was 4.5s, now
382 1.8s). Thanks, Austin!
384 Faster initial indexing
386 More efficient indexing of new messages results in a measured
387 speedup of 1.4x for the initial indexing of 3 GB of mail (1h 14m
388 rather than 1h 46m). Thanks to Austin Clements and Michal Sojka.
390 Make "notmuch new" faster for unchanged directories
392 Optimizing to not do any further examinations of sub-directories
393 when the filesystem indicates that a directory is unchanged from the
394 last "notmuch new" results in measured speedups of 8.5 for the "No
395 new mail" case, (was 0.77s, now 0.09s). Thanks to Karel Zak.
397 New emacs-interface features
398 ----------------------------
400 Support for PGP/MIME (GnuPG)
402 Automatically indicate validity of signatures for multipart/signed
403 messages. Automatically display decrypted content for
404 multipart/encrypted messages. See the emacs variable
405 notmuch-crypto-process-mime for more information. Note that this
406 needs gpg-agent and a pinentry tool just as the command line tools.
407 Also note there is no support SMIME yet.
409 Output of pipe command is now displayed if pipe command fails
411 This is extremely useful in the common use case of piping a patch to
412 "git am". If git fails to cleanly merge the patch the error messages
413 from the failed merge are now clearly displayed to the user, (where
414 previously they were silently hidden from the user).
416 User-selectable From address
418 A user can choose which configured email addresses should be used as
419 the From address whenever composing a new message. To do so, simply
420 press C-u before the command which will open a new message. Emacs
421 will prompt for the from address to use.
423 The user can customize the "Notmuch Identities" setting in the
424 notmuch customize group in order to use addresses other than those in
425 the notmuch configuration file if desired.
427 The user can also choose to always be prompted for the from address
428 when composing a new message (without having to use C-u) by setting
429 the "Notmuch Always Prompt For Sender" option in the notmuch
432 Hiding of repeated subjects in collapsed thread view
434 In notmuch-show mode, if a collapsed message has the same subject as
435 its parent, the subject is not shown.
437 Automatic detection and hiding of original message in top-posted message
439 When a message contains a line looking something like:
441 ----- Original Message -----
443 emacs hides this and all subsequent lines as an "original message",
444 (allowing the user to click or press enter on the "original message"
445 button to display it again). This makes the handling of top-posted
446 citations work much like conventional citations.
448 New hooks for running code when tags are modified
450 Some users want to perform additional actions whenever a particular
451 tag is added/removed from a message. This could be used to, for
452 example, interface with some external spam-recognition training
453 tool. To facilitate this, two new hooks are added which can be
454 modified in the following settings of the notmuch customize group:
456 Notmuch Before Tag Hook
457 Notmuch After Tag Hook
459 New optional support for hiding some multipart/alternative parts
461 Many emails are sent with redundant content within a
462 multipart/alternative group (such as a text/plain part as well as a
463 text/html part). Users can configure the setting:
465 Notmuch Show All Multipart/Alternative Parts
467 to "off" in the notmuch customize group to have the interface
468 automatically hide some part alternatives (such as text/html
469 parts). This new part hiding is not configured by default yet
470 because there's not yet a simple way to re-display such a hidden
471 part if it is not actually redundant with a displayed part.
473 Better rendering of text/x-vcalendar parts
475 These parts are now displayed in a format suitable for use with the
478 Avoid getting confused by Subject and Author fields with newline characters
480 Replacing all characters with ASCII code less than 32 with a question mark.
482 Cleaner display of From line in email messages (remove double quotes,
483 and drop "name" if it's actually just a repeat of the email address).
485 Vim interface improvements
486 --------------------------
487 Felipe Contreras provided a number of updates for the vim interface:
489 * Using sendmail directly rather than mailx,
490 * Implementing archive in show view
491 * Add support to mark as read in show and search views
492 * Add delete commands
495 Bindings improvements
496 ---------------------
497 Ruby bindings are now much more complete
499 Including QUERY.sort, QUERY.to_s, MESSAGE.maildir_flags_to_tags,
500 MESSAGE.tags_to_maildir_flags, and MESSAGE.get_filenames
502 * Python bindings have been updated and extended
503 (docs online at http://packages.python.org/notmuch/)
506 - Message().get_filenames(),
507 - Message().tags_to_maildir_flags(),Message().maildir_flags_to_tags()
508 - list(Threads()) and list(Messages) works now
510 - Message().__cmp__() and __hash__()
511 These allow, for example:
514 As well as set arithmetic on Messages():
516 s1, s2= set(msgs1), set(msgs2)
521 - len(Messages()) as it exhausted the iterator.
522 Use len(list(Messages())) or
523 Query.count_messages() to get the length.
525 Added initial Go bindings in bindings/go
527 New build-system features
528 -------------------------
529 Added support for building in a directory other than the source directory
531 This can be used with the widely-supported idiom of simply running
532 the configure script from some other directory:
539 Fix to save configure options for future, implicit runs of configure
541 When a user updates the source (such as with "git pull") calling
542 "make" may cause an automatic re-run of the configure script. When
543 this happens, the configure script will automatically be called with
544 the same options the user originally passed in the most-recent
545 manual invocation of configure.
547 New test-suite feature
548 ----------------------
549 Binary for bash for running test suite now located via PATH.
551 The notmuch test suite requires a fairly recent version of bash (>=
552 bash 4). As some systems supply an older version of bash at
553 /bin/bash, the test suite is now updated to search $PATH to locate
554 the bash binary. This allows users of systems with old /bin/bash to
555 simply install bash >= 4 somewhere on $PATH before /bin and then use
558 Support for testing output with a trailing newline.
560 Previously, some tests would fail to notice a difference in the
561 presence/absence of a trailing newline in a program output, (which
562 has led to bugs in the past). Now, carefully-written tests (using
563 test_expect_equal_file rather than test_expect_equal) will detect
564 any change in the presence/absence of a trailing newline. Many tests
565 are updated to take advantage of this.
567 Avoiding accessing user's $HOME while running test suite
569 The test suite now carefully creates its own HOME directory. This
570 allows the test suite to be run with no existing HOME directory, (as
571 some build systems apparently do), and avoids test-suite differences
572 due to configuration files in the users HOME directory.
577 Output *all* files for "notmuch search --output=files"
579 For the cases where multiple files have the same Message ID,
580 previous versions of notmuch would output only one such file. This
581 command is now fixed to correctly output all files.
583 Fixed spurious search results from "overlapped" indexing of addresses
585 This fixed a bug where a search for:
587 to:user@elsewhere.com
589 would incorrectly match a message sent:
591 To: user@example,com, someone@elsewhere.com
593 Fix --output=json when search has no results
595 A bug present since notmuch 0.4 had caused searches with no results
596 to produce an invalid json object. This is now fixed to cleanly
597 return a valid json object representing an empty array "[]" as
600 fix the automatic detection of the From address for "notmuch reply"
601 from the Received headers in some cases.
603 Fix core dump on DragonFlyBSD due to -1 return value from
604 sysconf(_SC_GETPW_R_SIZE_MAX).
606 Cleaned up several memory leaks
608 Eliminated a few, rare segmentation faults and a double-free.
610 Fix libnotmuch library to only export notmuch API functions
612 Previous release of the notmuch library also exported some Xapian
613 C++ exception type symbols. These were never part of the library
614 interface and were never intended to be exported.
616 Emacs-interface bug fixes
617 -------------------------
618 Display any unexpected output or errors from "notmuch search" invocations
620 Previously any misformatted output or trailing error messages were
621 silently ignored. This output is now clearly displayed. This fix was
622 very helpful in identifying and fixing the bug described below.
624 Fix bug where some threads would be missing from large search results
626 When a search returned a "large" number of results, the emacs
627 interface was incorrectly dropping one thread every time the output
628 of the "notmuch search" process spanned the emacs read-buffer. This
631 Avoid re-compression of .gz files (and similar) when saving attachment
633 Emacs was being too clever for its own good and trying to
634 re-compress pre-compressed .gz files when saving such attachments
635 (potentially corrupting the attachment). The emacs interface is
636 fixed to avoid this bug.
638 Fix hiding of a message when a previously-hidden citation is visible
640 Previously the citation would remain visible in this case. This is
641 fixed so that hiding a message hides all parts.
643 Notmuch 0.5 (2010-11-11)
644 ========================
645 New, general features
646 ---------------------
647 Maildir-flag synchronization
649 Notmuch now knows how to synchronize flags in maildir filenames with
650 tags in the notmuch database. The following flag/tag mappings are
659 'S' unread (added when 'S' flag is not present)
661 The synchronization occurs in both directions, (for example, adding
662 the 'S' flag to a file will cause the "unread" tag to be added, and
663 adding the "replied" tag to a message will cause the file to be
664 renamed with an 'R' flag).
666 This synchronization is enabled by default for users of the
667 command-line interface, (though only files in directories named
668 "cur" or "new" will be renamed). It can be disabled by setting the
669 new maildir.synchronize_flags option in the configuration file. For
672 notmuch config set maildir.synchronize_flags false
674 Users upgrading may also want to run "notmuch setup" once (just
675 accept the existing configuration) to get a new, nicely-commented
676 [maildir] section added to the configuration file.
678 For users of the notmuch library, the new synchronization
679 functionality is available with the following two new functions:
681 notmuch_message_maildir_flags_to_tags
682 notmuch_message_tags_to_maildir_flags
684 It is anticipated that future improvements to this support will
685 allow for safe synchronization of the 'T' flag with the "deleted"
686 tag, as well as support for custom flag/tag mappings.
690 Support for querying multiple filenames for a single message
692 It is common for the mailstore to contain multiple files with the
693 same message ID. Previously, notmuch would always hide these
694 duplicate files, (returning a single, arbitrary filename with
695 notmuch_message_get_filename).
697 With this release, library users can access all filenames for a
698 message with the new function:
700 notmuch_message_get_filenames
702 Together with notmuch_filenames_valid, notmuch_filenames_get, and
703 notmuch_filenames_move_to_next it is now possible to iterate over
704 all available filenames for a given message.
706 New command-line features
707 -------------------------
708 New "notmuch show --format=raw" for getting at original email contents
710 This new feature allows for a fully-functional email client to be
711 built on top of the notmuch command-line without needing any direct
712 access to the mail store itself.
714 For example, it's now possible to run "emacs -f notmuch" on a local
715 machine with only ssh access to the mail store/notmuch database. To
716 do this, simply set the notmuch-command variable in emacs to the
717 name of a script containing:
719 ssh user@host notmuch "$@"
721 If the ssh client has enabled connection sharing (ControlMaster
722 option in OpenSSH), the emacs interface can be quite responsive this
727 Fix "notmuch search" to print nothing when nothing matches
729 The 0.4 release had a bug in which:
731 notmuch search <expression-with-no-matches>
733 would produce a single blank line of output, (where previous
734 versions would produce no output. This fix also causes a change in
735 the --format=json output, (which would previously produce "[]" and
736 now produces nothing).
738 Emacs interface improvements
739 ----------------------------
740 Fix to allow pipe ('|') command to work when using notmuch over ssh
742 Fix count of lines in hidden signatures.
744 Omit repeated subject lines in (collapsed) thread display.
746 Display current thread subject in a header line.
748 Provide a "c i" binding to copy a thread ID from the search view.
750 Allow for notmuch-fcc-dirs to have a value of nil.
752 Also, the more complex form of notmuch-fcc-dirs now has a slightly
753 different format. It no longer has a special first-element, fallback
754 string. Instead it's now a list of cons cells where the car of each
755 cell is a regular expression to be matched against the sender
756 address, and the cdr is the name of a folder to use for an FCC. So
757 the old fallback behavior can be achieved by including a final cell
758 of (".*" . "default-fcc-folder").
760 Vim interface improvements
761 --------------------------
762 Felipe Contreras provided a number of updates for the vim interface.
764 These include optimizations, support for newer versions of vim, fixed
765 support for sending mail on modern systems, new commands, and
770 Added initial ruby bindings in bindings/ruby
772 Notmuch 0.4 (2010-11-01)
773 ========================
774 New command-line features
775 -------------------------
776 notmuch search --output=(summary|threads|messages|tags|files)
778 This new option allows for particular items to be returned from
779 notmuch searches. The "summary" option is the default and behaves
780 just as "notmuch search" has historically behaved.
782 The new option values allow for thread IDs, message IDs, lists of
783 tags, and lists of filenames to be returned from searches. It is
784 expected that this new option will be very useful in shell
785 scripts. For example:
787 for file in $(notmuch search --output=files <search-terms>); do
788 <operations-on> "$file"
791 notmuch show --format=mbox <search-specification>
793 This new option allows for the messages matching a search
794 specification to be presented as an mbox. Specifically the "mboxrd"
795 format is used which allows for reversible quoting of lines
796 beginning with "From ". A reader should remove a single '>' from the
797 beginning of all lines beginning with one or more '>' characters
798 followed by the 5 characters "From ".
800 notmuch config [get|set] <section>.<item> [value ...]
802 The new top-level "config" command allows for any value in the
803 notmuch configuration file to be queried or set to a new value. Both
804 single-valued and multi-valued items are supported, as our any
805 custom items stored in the configuration file.
807 Avoid setting Bcc header in "notmuch reply"
809 We decided that this was a bit heavy-handed as the actual mail
810 user-agent should be responsible for setting any Bcc option. Also,
811 see below for the notmuch/emacs user-agent now setting an Fcc by
812 default rather than Bcc.
816 Add notmuch_query_get_query_string and notmuch_query_get_sort
818 These are simply functions for querying properties of a
819 notmuch_query_t object.
823 Enable Fcc of all sent messages by default (to "sent" directory)
825 All messages sent from the emacs interface will now be saved to the
826 notmuch mail store where they will be incorporated to the database
827 by the next "notmuch new". By default, messages are saved to the
828 "sent" directory at the top-level of the mail store. This directory
829 can be customized by means of the "Notmuch Fcc Dirs" option in the
830 notmuch customize interface.
832 Ability to all open messages in a thread to a pipe
834 Historically, the '|' keybinding allows for piping a single message
835 to an external command. Now, by prefixing this key with a prefix
836 argument, (for example, by pressing "Control-U |"), all open
837 messages in the current thread will be sent to the external command.
839 Optional support for detecting inline patches
841 This hook is disabled by default but can be enabled with a checkbox
842 under "Notmuch Show Insert Text/Plain Hook" in the notmuch customize
843 interface. It allows for inline patches to be detected and treated
844 as if they were attachments, (with context-sensitive highlighting).
846 Automatically tag messages as "replied" when sending a reply
848 Messages replied to within the emacs interface will now be tagged as
849 "replied". This feature can easily be customized to add or remove
850 other tags as well. For example, a user might use a tag of
851 "needs-reply" and can configure this feature to automatically remove
852 that tag when replying. See "Notmuch Message Mark Replied" in the
853 notmuch customize interface.
855 Allow search-result color specifications to overlay each other
857 For example, one tag can specify the background color of matching
858 lines, while another can specify the foreground. With this change,
859 both settings will now be visible simultaneously, (which was not the
860 case in previous releases). See "Notmuch Search Line Faces" in the
861 notmuch customize interface.
863 Make hidden author names still available for incremental search.
865 When there is insufficient space to display all authors of a thread
866 in search results, the names of hidden authors are now still made
867 available to emacs' incremental search commands. As the user
868 searches, matching lines will temporarily expand to show the hidden
871 New binding of Control-TAB (works like TAB in reverse)
873 Many notmuch nodes already use TAB to navigate forward through
874 various items allowing actions, (message headers, email attachments,
875 etc.). The new Control-TAB binding operates similarly but in the
878 New build-system features
879 -------------------------
880 Various portability fixes have been applied
882 These include fixes for build failures on at least Solaris, FreeBSD,
883 and Fedora systems. We're hopeful that the notmuch code base is now
884 more portable than ever before.
886 Arrange for libnotmuch to be found automatically after make install
888 The notmuch build system is now careful to help the user avoid
889 errors of the form "libnotmuch.so could not be found" immediately
890 after installing. This support takes two forms:
892 1. If the library is installed to a system directory,
893 (configured in /etc/ld.so.conf), then "make install" will
894 automatically run ldconfig.
896 2. If the library is installed to a non-system directory, the
897 build system adds a DR_RUNPATH entry to the final binary
898 pointing to the directory to which the library is installed.
900 When this support works, the user should be able to run notmuch
901 immediately after "make install", without any errors trying to find
902 the notmuch library, and without having to manually set environment
903 variables such as LD_LIBRARY_PATH.
905 Check compiler/linker options before using them
907 The configure script now carefully checks that any desired
908 compilation options, (whether for enabling compiler warnings, or for
909 embedding rpath, etc.), are supported. Only supported options are
910 used in the resulting Makefile.
912 New test-suite features
913 -----------------------
914 New modularization of test suite.
916 Thanks to a gracious relicensing of the test-suite infrastructure
917 from the git project, notmuch now has a modular test suite. This
918 provides the ability to run individual sections of the test suite
919 rather than the whole things. It also provides better summary of
920 test results, with support for tests that are expected to fail
921 (BROKEN and FIXED) in addition to PASS and FAIL. Finally, it makes
922 it easy to run the test suite within valgrind (pass --valgrind to
923 notmuch-test or to any sub-script) which has been very useful.
925 New testing of emacs interface.
927 The test suite has been augmented to allow automated testing of the
928 emacs interfaces. So far, this includes basic searches, display of
929 threads, and tag manipulation. This also includes a test that a new
930 message can successfully be sent out through a (dummy) SMTP server
931 and that said message is successfully integrated into the notmuch
932 database via the FCC setting.
936 Fix potential corruption of database when "notmuch new " is interrupted.
938 Previously, an interruption of "notmuch new" would (rarely) result
939 in a corrupt database. The corruption would manifest itself by a
940 persistent error of the form:
942 document ID of 1234 has no thread ID
944 The message-adding code has been carefully audited and reworked to
945 avoid this sort of corruption regardless of when it is interrupted.
947 Fix failure with extremely long message ID headers.
949 Previously, a message with an extremely long message ID, (say, more
950 than 300 characters), would fail to be added to notmuch, (triggering
951 Xapian exceptions). This has now been fixed.
953 Fix for messages with "charset=unknown-8bit"
955 Previously, messages with this charset would cause notmuch to emit a
956 GMime warning, (which would then trip up emacs or other interfaces
957 parsing the notmuch results).
959 Fix notmuch_query_search_threads function to return NULL on any exception
961 Fix "notmuch search" to return non-zero if notmuch_query_search_threads fails
963 Previously, this command could confusingly report a Xapian
964 exception, yet still return an error code of 0. It now correctly
965 returns a failing error code of 1 in this case.
969 Fix to handle a message with a subject containing, for example "[1234]"
971 Previously, a message subject containing a sequence of digits within
972 square brackets would cause the emacs interface to mis-parse the
973 output of "notmuch search". This would result in the message being
974 mis-displayed and prevent the user from manipulating the message in
977 Fix to correctly handle message IDs containing ".."
979 The emacs interface now properly quotes message IDs to avoid a
980 Xapian bug in which the ".." within a message ID would be
981 misinterpreted as a numeric range specification.
985 The python bindings for notmuch have been updated to work with python3.
987 Debian-specific fixes
988 ---------------------
989 Fix emacs initialization so "M-x notmuch" works for users by default.
991 Now, a new Debian user can immediately run "emacs -f notmuch" after
992 "apt-get install notmuch". Previously, the user would have had to
993 edit the ~/.emacs file to add "(require 'notmuch)" before this would
996 Notmuch 0.3.1 (2010-04-27)
997 ==========================
1000 Fix an infinite loop in "notmuch reply"
1002 This bug could be triggered by replying to a message where the
1003 user's primary email address did not appear in the To: header and
1004 the user had not configured any secondary email addresses. The bug
1005 was a simple re-use of the same iterator variable in nested loops.
1007 Fix a potential SEGV in "notmuch search"
1009 This bug could be triggered by an author name ending in a ','.
1010 Admittedly - that's almost certainly a spam email, but we never
1011 want notmuch to crash.
1015 Fix calculations for line wrapping in the primary "notmuch" view.
1017 Fix Fcc support to prompt to create a directory if the specified Fcc
1018 directory does not exist.
1022 Fix build on OpenSolaris (at least) due to missing 'extern "C"' block.
1024 Without this, the C++ sources could not find strcasestr and the
1025 final linking of notmuch would fail.
1027 Notmuch 0.3 (2010-04-27)
1028 ========================
1029 New command-line features
1030 -------------------------
1031 User-configurable tags for new messages
1033 A new "new.tags" option is available in the configuration file to
1034 determine which tags are applied to new messages. Run "notmuch
1035 setup" to generate new documentation within ~/.notmuch-config on how
1036 to specify this value.
1038 Threads search results named based on subjects that match search
1040 This means that when new mails arrived to a thread you've previously
1041 read, and the new mails have a new subject, you will see that
1042 subject in the search results rather than the old subject.
1044 Faster operation of "notmuch tag" (avoid unneeded sorting)
1046 Since the user just wants to tag all matching messages, we can make
1047 things perform a bit faster by avoiding the sort.
1049 Even Better guessing of From: header for "notmuch reply"
1051 Notmuch now looks at a number of headers when trying to figure out
1052 the best From: header to use in a reply. This is helpful if you have
1053 several configured email addresses, and you also subscribe to various
1054 mailing lists with different addresses, (so that mails you are
1055 replying to won't always include your subscribed address in the To:
1058 Indication of author names that match a search
1060 When notmuch displays threads as the result of a search, it now
1061 lists the authors that match the search before listing the other
1062 authors in the thread. It inserts a pipe '|' symbol between the last
1063 matching and first non-matching author. This is especially useful in
1064 a search that includes tag:unread. Now the authors of the unread
1065 messages in the thread are listed first.
1067 New: Python bindings
1068 --------------------
1069 Sebastian Spaeth has contributed his python bindings for the notmuch
1070 library to the central repository. These bindings were previously
1071 known as "cnotmuch" within python but have now been renamed to be
1072 accessible with a simple, and more official-looking "import notmuch".
1074 The bindings have already proven very useful as people proficient in
1075 python have been able to easily develop programs to do notmuch-based
1076 searches for email-address completion, maildir-flag synchronization,
1079 These bindings are available within the bindings/python directory, but
1080 are not yet integrated into the top-level Makefiles, nor the top-level
1081 package-building scripts. Improvements are welcome.
1083 Emacs interface improvements
1084 ----------------------------
1085 An entirely new initial view for notmuch, (friendly yet powerful)
1087 Some of us call the new view "notmuch hello" but you can get at it
1088 by simply calling "emacs -f notmuch". The new view provides a search
1089 bar where new searches can be performed. It also displays a list of
1090 recent searches, along with a button to save any of these, giving it
1091 a new name as a "saved search". Many people find these "saved
1092 searches" one of the most convenient ways of organizing their mail,
1093 (providing all of the features of "folders" in other mail clients,
1094 but without any of the disadvantages).
1096 Finally, this view can also optionally display all of the tags that
1097 exist in the database, along with a count for each tag, and a custom
1098 search of messages with that tag that's simply a click (or keypress)
1101 Note: For users that liked the original mode of "emacs -f notmuch"
1102 immediately displaying a particular search result, we
1103 recommend instead running something like:
1105 emacs --eval '(notmuch search "tag:inbox" t)'
1107 The "t" means to sort the messages in an "oldest first" order,
1108 (as notmuch would do previously by default). You can also
1109 leave that off to have your search results in "newest first"
1112 Full-featured "customize" support for configuring notmuch
1114 Notmuch now plugs in well to the emacs "customize" mode to make it
1115 much simpler to find things about the notmuch interface that can be
1116 tweaked by the user.
1118 You can get to this mode by starting at the main "Customize" menu in
1119 emacs, then browsing through "Applications", "Mail", and
1120 "Notmuch". Or you can go straight to "M-x customize-group"
1123 Once you're at the customize screen, you'll see a list of documented
1124 options that can be manipulated along with checkboxes, drop-down
1125 selectors, and text-entry boxes for configuring the various
1128 Support for doing tab-completion of email addresses
1130 This support currently relies on an external program,
1131 (notmuch-addresses), that is not yet shipped with notmuch
1132 itself. But multiple, suitable implementations of this program have
1133 already been written that generate address completions by doing
1134 notmuch searches of your email collection. For example, providing
1135 first those addresses that you have composed messages to in the
1138 One such program (implemented in python with the python bindings to
1139 notmuch) is available via:
1141 git clone http://jkr.acm.jhu.edu/git/notmuch_addresses.git
1143 Install that program as notmuch-addresses on your PATH, and then
1144 hitting TAB on a partial email address or name within the To: or Cc:
1145 line of an email message will provide matching completions.
1147 Support for file-based (Fcc) delivery of sent messages to mail store
1149 This isn't yet enabled by default. To enable this, one will have to
1150 set the "Notmuch Fcc Dirs" setting within the notmuch customize
1151 screen, (see its documentation there for details). We anticipate
1152 making this automatic in a future release.
1154 New 'G' key binding to trigger mail refresh (G == "Get new mail")
1156 The 'G' key works wherever '=' works. Before refreshing the screen
1157 it calls an external program that can be used to poll email servers,
1158 run notmuch new and setup specific tags for the new emails. The
1159 script to be called should be configured with the "Notmuch Poll
1160 Script" setting in the customize interface. This script will
1161 typically invoke "notmuch new" and then perhaps several "notmuch
1164 Implement emacs message display with the JSON output from notmuch.
1166 This is much more robust than the previous implementation, (where
1167 some HTML mails and mail quoting the notmuch code with the delimiter
1168 characters in it would cause the parser to fall over).
1170 Better handling of HTML messages and MIME attachments (inline images!)
1172 Allow for any MIME parts that emacs can display to be displayed
1173 inline. This includes inline viewing of image attachments, (provided
1174 the window is large enough to fit the image at its natural size).
1176 Much more robust handling of HTML messages. Currently both text/plain
1177 and text/html alternates will be rendered next to each other. In a
1178 future release, users will be able to decide to see only one or the
1179 other representation.
1181 Each attachment now has its own button so that attachments can be
1182 saved individually (the 'w' key is still available to save all
1185 Customizable support for tidying of text/plain message content
1187 Many new functions are available for tidying up message
1188 content. These include options such as wrapping long lines,
1189 compressing duplicate blank lines, etc.
1191 Most of these are disabled by default, but can easily be enabled by
1192 clicking the available check boxes under the "Notmuch Show Insert
1193 Text/Plain Hook" within the notmuch customize screen.
1195 New support for searchable citations (even when hidden)
1197 When portions of overly-long citations are hidden, the contents of
1198 these citations will still be available for emacs' standard
1199 "incremental search" functions. When the search matches any portion
1200 of a hidden citation, the citation will become visible temporarily
1201 to display the search result.
1203 More flexible handling of header visibility
1205 As an answer to complaints from many users, the To, Cc, and Date
1206 headers of messages are no longer hidden by default. For those users
1207 that liked that these were hidden, a new "Notmuch Messages Headers
1208 Visible" option in the customize interface can be set to nil. The
1209 visibility of headers can still be toggled on a per-message basis
1210 with the 'h' keybinding.
1212 For users that don't want to see some subset of those headers, the
1213 new "Notmuch Message Headers" variable can be customized to list
1214 only those headers that should be present in the display of a message.
1216 The Return key now toggles message visibility anywhere
1218 Previously this worked only on the first summary-line of a message.
1220 Customizable formatting of search results
1222 The user can easily customize the order, width, and formatting of
1223 the various fields in a "notmuch search" buffer. See the "Notmuch
1224 Search Result Format" section of the customize interface.
1226 Generate nicer names for search buffers when using a saved search.
1228 Add a notmuch User-Agent header when sending mail from notmuch/emacs.
1230 New keybinding (M-Ret) to open all collapsed messages in a thread.
1234 Provide a new NOTMUCH_SORT_UNSORTED value for queries
1236 This can be somewhat faster when sorting simply isn't desired. For
1237 example when collecting a set of messages that will all be
1238 manipulated identically, (adding a tag, removing a tag, deleting the
1239 messages), then there's no advantage to sorting the messages by
1244 Fix to compile against GMime 2.6
1246 Previously notmuch insisted on being able to find GMime 2.4, (even
1247 though GMime 2.6 would have worked all along).
1249 Fix configure script to accept (and ignore) various standard options.
1251 For example, those that the Gentoo build scripts expect configure to
1252 accept are now all accepted.
1256 A large number of new tests for the many new features.
1258 Better display of output from failed tests.
1260 Now shows failures with diff rather than forcing the user to gaze at
1261 complete actual and expected output looking for deviation.
1263 Notmuch 0.2 (2010-04-16)
1264 ========================
1265 This is the second release of the notmuch mail system, with actual
1266 detailed release notes this time!
1268 This release consists of a number of minor new features that make
1269 notmuch more pleasant to use, and a few fairly major bug fixes.
1271 We didn't quite hit our release target of "about a week" from the 0.1
1272 release, (0.2 is happening 11 days after 0.1), but we hope to do
1273 better for next week. Look forward to some major features coming to
1274 notmuch in subsequent releases.
1280 Better guessing of From: header.
1282 Notmuch now tries harder to guess which configured address should be
1283 used as the From: line in a "notmuch reply". It will examine the
1284 Received: headers if it fails to find any configured address in To:
1285 or Cc:. This allows it to often choose the correct address even when
1286 replying to a message sent to a mailing list, and not directly to a
1289 Make "notmuch count" with no arguments count all messages
1291 Previously, it was hard to construct a search term that was
1292 guaranteed to match all messages.
1294 Provide a new special-case search term of "*" to match all messages.
1296 This can be used in any command accepting a search term, such as
1297 "notmuch search '*'". Note that you'll want to take care that the
1298 shell doesn't expand * against the current files. And note that the
1299 support for "*" is a special case. It's only meaningful as a single
1300 search term and loses its special meaning when combined with any
1303 Automatically detect thread connections even when a parent message is
1306 Previously, if two or more message were received with a common
1307 parent, but that parent was not received, then these messages would
1308 not be recognized as belonging to the same thread. This is now fixed
1309 so that such messages are properly connected in a thread.
1313 Fix potential data loss in "notmuch new" with SIGINT
1315 One code path in "notmuch new" was not properly handling
1316 SIGINT. Previously, this could lead to messages being removed from
1317 the database (and their tags being lost) if the user pressed
1318 Control-C while "notmuch new" was working.
1320 Fix segfault when a message includes a MIME part that is empty.
1322 Fix handling of non-ASCII characters with --format=json
1324 Previously, characters outside the range of 7-bit ASCII were
1325 silently dropped from the JSON output. This led to corrupted display
1326 of utf-8 content in the upcoming notmuch web-based frontends.
1328 Fix headers to be properly decoded in "notmuch reply"
1330 Previously, the user might see:
1332 Subject: Re: =?iso-8859-2?q?Rozlu=E8ka?=
1336 Subject: Re: Rozlučka
1338 The former text is properly encoded to be RFC-compliant SMTP, will
1339 be sent correctly, and will be properly decoded by the
1340 recipient. But the user trying to edit the reply would likely be
1341 unable to read or edit that field in its encoded form.
1343 Emacs client features
1344 ---------------------
1345 Show the last few lines of citations as well as the first few lines.
1347 It's often the case that the last sentence of a citation is what is
1348 being replied to directly, so the last few lines are often much more
1349 important. The number of lines shown at the beginning and end of any
1350 citation can be configured, (notmuch-show-citation-lines-prefix and
1351 notmuch-show-citation-lines-suffix).
1353 The '+' and '-' commands in the search view can now add and remove
1356 Selective bulk tagging is now possible by selecting a region of
1357 threads and then using either the '+' or '-' keybindings. Bulk
1358 tagging is still available for all threads matching the current
1359 search with the '*' binding.
1361 More meaningful buffer names for thread-view buffers.
1363 Notmuch now uses the Subject of the thread as the buffer
1364 name. Previously it was using the thread ID, which is a meaningless
1367 Provide for customized colors of threads in search view based on tags.
1369 See the documentation of notmuch-search-line-faces, (or us "M-x
1370 customize" and browse to the "notmuch" group within "Applications"
1371 and "Mail"), for details on how to configure this colorization.
1373 Build-system features
1374 ---------------------
1375 Add support to properly build libnotmuch on Darwin systems (OS X).
1377 Add support to configure for many standard options.
1379 We include actual support for:
1381 --includedir --mandir --sysconfdir
1383 And accept and silently ignore several more:
1385 --build --infodir --libexecdir --localstatedir
1386 --disable-maintainer-mode --disable-dependency-tracking
1388 Install emacs client in "make install" rather than requiring a
1389 separate "make install-emacs".
1391 Automatically compute versions numbers between releases.
1393 This support uses the git-describe notation, so a version such as
1394 0.1-144-g43cbbfc indicates a version that is 144 commits since the
1395 0.1 release and is available as git commit "43cbbfc".
1397 Add a new "make test" target to run the test suite and actually verify
1400 Notmuch 0.1 (2010-04-05)
1401 ========================
1402 This is the first release of the notmuch mail system.
1404 It includes the libnotmuch library, the notmuch command-line
1405 interface, and an emacs-based interface to notmuch.
1407 Note: Notmuch will work best with Xapian 1.0.18 (or later) or Xapian
1408 1.1.4 (or later). Previous versions of Xapian (whether 1.0 or 1.1) had
1409 a performance bug that made notmuch very slow when modifying
1410 tags. This would cause distracting pauses when reading mail while
1411 notmuch would wait for Xapian when removing the "inbox" and "unread"
1412 tags from messages in a thread.