1 Notmuch 0.10 (2011-xx-xx)
2 =========================
4 New build and testing features
5 ------------------------------
7 Emacs tests are now done in dtach. This means that dtach is now
8 needed to run the notmuch test suite, at least until the checking for
9 prerequisites is improved.
11 New command-line features
12 -------------------------
14 Add "notmuch restore --accumulate" option
16 The --accumulate switch causes the union of the existing and new tags to be
17 applied, instead of replacing each message's tags as they are read in from
20 Add search terms to "notmuch dump"
22 The dump command now takes an optional search term much like notmuch
23 search/show/tag. The output file argument of dump is deprecated in
24 favour of using stdout.
26 Add "notmuch search" --offset and --limit options
28 The search command now takes options --offset=[-]N and --limit=N to limit
29 the number of results shown.
31 Add "notmuch count --output" option
33 The count command is now capable of counting threads in addition to
34 messages. This is selected using the new --output=(threads|messages) option.
39 Emacs now constructs large search buffers more efficiently
41 Search avoids opening and parsing message files
43 We now store more information in the database so search no longer
44 has to open every message file to get basic headers. This can
45 improve search speed by as much as 10X, but taking advantage of this
46 requires a database rebuild:
48 notmuch dump > notmuch.dump
49 # Backup, then remove notmuch database ($MAIL/.notmuch)
51 notmuch restore notmuch.dump
53 New collection of add-on tools
54 ------------------------------
56 The source directory "contrib" contains tools built on notmuch. These
57 tools are not part of notmuch, and you should check their individual
58 licenses. Feel free to report problems with them to the notmuch
61 nmbug - share tags with a given prefix
63 nmbug helps maintain a git repo containing all tags with a given
64 prefix (by default "notmuch::"). Tags can be shared by commiting
65 them to git in one location and restoring in another.
67 Notmuch 0.9 (2011-10-01)
68 ========================
73 Correct handling of interruptions during "notmuch new"
75 "notmuch new" now operates as a series of small, self-consistent
76 transactions, so it can correctly resume after an interruption or
77 crash. Previously, interruption could lose existing tags, fail to
78 detect messages on resume, or leave the database in a state
79 temporarily or permanently inconsistent with the mail store.
86 notmuch_database_begin_atomic and notmuch_database_end_atomic allow
87 multiple database operations to be performed atomically.
89 notmuch_database_find_message_by_filename does exactly what it says.
93 notmuch_database_find_message (and n_d_f_m_by_filename) now return
94 a status indicator and uses an output parameter for the
95 message. This change required changing the SONAME of libnotmuch to
98 Python bindings changes
99 -----------------------
101 - Re-encode python unicode objects to utf-8 before passing back to
103 - Support Database().begin_atomic()/end_atomic()
104 - Support Database().find_message_by_filename()
105 NB! This needs a db opened in READ-WRITE mode currently, or it will crash
106 the python process. The is a limitation (=bug) of the underlying libnotmuch.
107 - Fixes where we would not throw NotmuchErrors when we should (Justus Winter)
108 - Update for n_d_find_message* API changes (see above).
110 Ruby bindings changes
111 ---------------------
113 - Wrap new library functions notmuch_database_{begin,end}_atomic.
114 - Add new exception Notmuch::UnbalancedAtomicError.
115 - Rename destroy to destroy! according to Ruby naming conventions.
116 - Update for n_d_find_message* API changes (see above).
121 * Add gpg callback to crypto sigstatus buttons to retrieve/refresh
123 * Add notmuch-show-refresh-view function (and corresponding binding)
124 to refresh the view of a notmuch-show buffer.
126 Reply formatting cleanup
127 ------------------------
129 "notmuch reply" no longer includes notification that non-leafnode
130 MIME parts are being suppressed.
132 Notmuch 0.8 (2011-09-10)
133 ========================
135 Improved handling of message/rfc822 parts
137 Both in the CLI and the emacs interface. Output of rfc822 parts now
138 includes the primary headers, as well as the body and all subparts.
139 Output of the completely raw rfc822-formatted message, including all
140 headers, is unfortunately not yet supported (but hopefully will be
143 Improved Build system portability
145 Certain parts of the shell script generating notmuch.sym were
146 specific to the GNU versions of sed and nm. The new version should
147 be more portable to e.g. OpenBSD.
149 Documentation update for Ruby bindings
151 Added documentation, typo fixes, and improved support for rdoc.
153 Unicode, iterator, PEP8 changes for python bindings
155 - PEP8 (code formatting) changes for python files.
156 - Remove Tags.__len__ ; see 0.6 release notes for motivation.
157 - Decode headers as UTF8, encode (unicode) database paths as UTF8.
159 Notmuch 0.7 (2011-08-01)
160 ========================
162 Vim interface improvements
163 --------------------------
165 Jason Woofenden provided a number of bug fixes for the Vim interface
167 * fix citation/signature fold lengths
168 * fix cig/cit parsing within multipart/*
169 * fix on-screen instructions for show-signature
170 * fix from list reformatting in search view
171 * fix space key: now archives (did opposite)
173 Uwe Kleine-König contributed
175 * use full path for sendmail/doc fix
176 * fix compose temp file name
178 Python Bindings changes
179 -----------------------
181 Sebastian Spaeth contributed two changes related to unicode and UTF8:
183 * message tags are now explicitly unicode
184 * query string is encoded as a UTF8 byte string
186 Build-System improvments
187 ------------------------
189 Generate notmuch.sym after the relevant object files
191 This fixes a bug in parallel building. Thanks to Thomas Jost for the
194 Notmuch 0.6.1 (2011-07-17)
195 ==========================
200 Re-export Xapian exception typeinfo symbols.
202 It turned out our aggressive symbol hiding caused problems for
203 people running gcc 4.4.5.
205 Notmuch 0.6 (2011-07-01)
206 =======================
207 New, general features
208 ---------------------
209 Folder-based searching
211 Notmuch queries can now include a search term to match the
212 directories in which mail files are stored (within the mail
213 storage). The syntax is as follows:
217 For example, one might use things such as:
223 to match any path containing a directory "spam", "work/todo", or
224 containing a directory starting with "2011-", respectively.
226 This feature is particularly useful for users of delivery-agent
227 software (such as procmail or maildrop) that is filtering mail and
228 delivering it to particular folders, or users of systems such as
229 Gmail that use filesystem directories to indicate message tags.
231 NOTE: Only messages that are newly indexed with this version of
232 notmuch will be searchable with folder: terms. In order to enable
233 this feature for all mail, the entire notmuch index will need to be
236 notmuch dump > notmuch.dump
237 # Backup, then remove notmuch database ($MAIL/.notmuch)
239 notmuch restore notmuch.dump
243 Both the command line interface and the emacs-interface have new
244 support for PGP/MIME, detailed below. Thanks to Daniel Kahn Gillmor
245 and Jameson Graef Rollins for making this happen.
247 New, automatic tags: "signed" and "encrypted"
249 These tags will automatically be applied to messages containing
250 multipart/signed and multipart/encrypted parts.
252 NOTE: Only messages that are newly indexed with this version of
253 notmuch will receive these tags.
255 New command-line features
256 -------------------------
257 Add new "notmuch show --verify" option for signature verification
259 This option instruct notmuch to verify the signature of
260 PGP/MIME-signed parts.
262 Add new "notmuch show --decrypt" and "notmuch reply --decrypt" options
264 This option instructs notmuch to decrypt PGP/MIME-encrypted parts.
265 Note that this feature currently requires gpg-agent and a passphrase entry
266 tool (e.g. pinentry-gtk or pinentry-curses).
268 Proper nesting of multipart parts in "notmuch show" output
270 MIME parts are now display with proper nesting to reflect original
271 MIME hierarchy of a message. This allows clients to correctly
272 analyze the MIME structure, (such as, for example, determining to
273 which parts a signature part applies).
275 Add new "notmuch show --part" option
277 This is a replacement for the older "notmuch part" command, (which
278 is now deprecated—it should still work as always, but is no longer
279 documented). Putting part output under "notmuch show" allows for all
280 of the "notmuch show" options to be applied when extracting a single
281 part, (such as --format=json for extracting a message part with JSON
284 Deprecate "notmuch search-tags", (in favor of "notmuch search --output=tags *")
286 The "notmuch search-tags" sub-command has been redundant since the
287 addition of the --output=tags option to "notmuch search". We now
288 make that more clear by deprecating "notmuch search-tags", (dropping
289 it from the documentation). We do continue to support the old syntax
290 by translating it internally to the new call.
292 Performance improvements
293 ------------------------
294 Faster searches (by doing fewer searches to construct threads)
296 Whenever a user asks for search results as threads, notmuch first
297 performs a search for messages matching the query, then performs
298 additional searches to find other messages in the resulting threads.
300 Removing inefficiencies and redundancies in these secondary searches
301 results in a measured speedups of 1.5x for a typical search.
303 Faster searches (by doing fewer passes to gather message data)
305 Optimizing Xapian data access patterns (using a single pass to get
306 all message-document data rather than a pass for each data type)
307 results in a measured speedup of 1.7x for a typical search.
309 The benefits of this optimization combine with the preceding
310 optimization. With both in place, Austin Clements measured a speedup
311 of 2.5x for a search of all messages in his inbox (was 4.5s, now
312 1.8s). Thanks, Austin!
314 Faster initial indexing
316 More efficient indexing of new messages results in a measured
317 speedup of 1.4x for the initial indexing of 3 GB of mail (1h 14m
318 rather than 1h 46m). Thanks to Austin Clements and Michal Sojka.
320 Make "notmuch new" faster for unchanged directories
322 Optimizing to not do any further examinations of sub-directories
323 when the filesystem indicates that a directory is unchanged from the
324 last "notmuch new" results in measured speedups of 8.5 for the "No
325 new mail" case, (was 0.77s, now 0.09s). Thanks to Karel Zak.
327 New emacs-interface features
328 ----------------------------
330 Support for PGP/MIME (GnuPG)
332 Automatically indicate validity of signatures for multipart/signed
333 messages. Automatically display decrypted content for
334 multipart/encrypted messages. See the emacs variable
335 notmuch-crypto-process-mime for more information. Note that this
336 needs gpg-agent and a pinentry tool just as the command line tools.
337 Also note there is no support SMIME yet.
339 Output of pipe command is now displayed if pipe command fails
341 This is extremely useful in the common use case of piping a patch to
342 "git am". If git fails to cleanly merge the patch the error messages
343 from the failed merge are now clearly displayed to the user, (where
344 previously they were silently hidden from the user).
346 User-selectable From address
348 A user can choose which configured email addresses should be used as
349 the From address whenever composing a new message. To do so, simply
350 press C-u before the command which will open a new message. Emacs
351 will prompt for the from address to use.
353 The user can customize the "Notmuch Identities" setting in the
354 notmuch customize group in order to use addresses other than those in
355 the notmuch configuration file if desired.
357 The user can also choose to always be prompted for the from address
358 when composing a new message (without having to use C-u) by setting
359 the "Notmuch Always Prompt For Sender" option in the notmuch
362 Hiding of repeated subjects in collapsed thread view
364 In notmuch-show mode, if a collapsed message has the same subject as
365 its parent, the subject is not shown.
367 Automatic detection and hiding of original message in top-posted message
369 When a message contains a line looking something like:
371 ----- Original Message -----
373 emacs hides this and all subsequent lines as an "original message",
374 (allowing the user to click or press enter on the "original message"
375 button to display it again). This makes the handling of top-posted
376 citations work much like conventional citations.
378 New hooks for running code when tags are modified
380 Some users want to perform additional actions whenever a particular
381 tag is added/removed from a message. This could be used to, for
382 example, interface with some external spam-recognition training
383 tool. To facilitate this, two new hooks are added which can be
384 modified in the following settings of the notmuch customize group:
386 Notmuch Before Tag Hook
387 Notmuch After Tag Hook
389 New optional support for hiding some multipart/alternative parts
391 Many emails are sent with redundant content within a
392 multipart/alternative group (such as a text/plain part as well as a
393 text/html part). Users can configure the setting:
395 Notmuch Show All Multipart/Alternative Parts
397 to "off" in the notmuch customize group to have the interface
398 automatically hide some part alternatives (such as text/html
399 parts). This new part hiding is not configured by default yet
400 because there's not yet a simple way to re-display such a hidden
401 part if it is not actually redundant with a displayed part.
403 Better rendering of text/x-vcalendar parts
405 These parts are now displayed in a format suitable for use with the
408 Avoid getting confused by Subject and Author fields with newline characters
410 Replacing all characters with ASCII code less than 32 with a question mark.
412 Cleaner display of From line in email messages (remove double quotes,
413 and drop "name" if it's actually just a repeat of the email address).
415 Vim interface improvements
416 --------------------------
417 Felipe Contreras provided a number of updates for the vim interface:
419 * Using sendmail directly rather than mailx,
420 * Implementing archive in show view
421 * Add support to mark as read in show and search views
422 * Add delete commands
425 Bindings improvements
426 ---------------------
427 Ruby bindings are now much more complete
429 Including QUERY.sort, QUERY.to_s, MESSAGE.maildir_flags_to_tags,
430 MESSAGE.tags_to_maildir_flags, and MESSAGE.get_filenames
432 * Python bindings have been upodated and extended
433 (docs online at http://packages.python.org/notmuch/)
436 - Message().get_filenames(),
437 - Message().tags_to_maildir_flags(),Message().maildir_flags_to_tags()
438 - list(Threads()) and list(Messages) works now
440 - Message().__cmp__() and __hash__()
441 These allow, for example:
444 As well as set arithmetic on Messages():
446 s1, s2= set(msgs1), set(msgs2)
451 - len(Messages()) as it exausted the iterator.
452 Use len(list(Messages())) or
453 Query.count_messages() to get the length.
455 Added initial Go bindings in bindings/go
457 New build-system features
458 -------------------------
459 Added support for building in a directory other than the source directory
461 This can be used with the widely-supported idiom of simply running
462 the configure script from some other directory:
469 Fix to save configure options for future, implicit runs of configure
471 When a user updates the source (such as with "git pull") calling
472 "make" may cause an automatic re-run of the configure script. When
473 this happens, the configure script will automatically be called with
474 the same options the user originally passed in the most-recent
475 manual invocation of configure.
477 New test-suite feature
478 ----------------------
479 Binary for bash for running test suite now located via PATH.
481 The notmuch test suite requires a fairly recent version of bash (>=
482 bash 4). As some systems supply an older version of bash at
483 /bin/bash, the test suite is now updated to search $PATH to locate
484 the bash binary. This allows users of systems with old /bin/bash to
485 simply install bash >= 4 somewhere on $PATH before /bin and then use
488 Support for testing output with a trailing newline.
490 Previously, some tests would fail to notice a difference in the
491 presence/absence of a trailing newline in a program output, (which
492 has led to bugs in the past). Now, carefully-written tests (using
493 test_expect_equal_file rather than test_expect_equal) will detect
494 any change in the presence/absence of a trailing newline. Many tests
495 are updated to take advantage of this.
497 Avoiding accessing user's $HOME while running test suite
499 The test suite now carefully creates its own HOME directory. This
500 allows the test suite to be run with no existing HOME directory, (as
501 some build systems apparently do), and avoids test-suite differences
502 due to configuration files in the users HOME directory.
507 Output *all* files for "notmuch search --output=files"
509 For the cases where multiple files have the same Message ID,
510 previous versions of notmuch would output only one such file. This
511 command is now fixed to correctly output all files.
513 Fixed spurious search results from "overlapped" indexing of addresses
515 This fixed a bug where a search for:
517 to:user@elsewhere.com
519 would incorrectly match a message sent:
521 To: user@example,com, someone@elsewhere.com
523 Fix --output=json when search has no results
525 A bug present since notmuch 0.4 had caused searches with no results
526 to produce an invalid json object. This is now fixed to cleanly
527 return a valid json object representing an empty array "[]" as
530 fix the automatic detection of the From address for "notmuch reply"
531 from the Received headers in some cases.
533 Fix core dump on DragonFlyBSD due to -1 return value from
534 sysconf(_SC_GETPW_R_SIZE_MAX).
536 Cleaned up several memory leaks
538 Eliminated a few, rare segmentation faults and a double-free.
540 Fix libnotmuch library to only export notmuch API functions
542 Previous release of the notmuch library also exported some Xapian
543 C++ exception type symbols. These were never part of the library
544 interface and were never intended to be exported.
546 Emacs-interface bug fixes
547 -------------------------
548 Display any unexpected output or errors from "notmuch search" invocations
550 Previously any misformatted output or trailing error messages were
551 silently ignored. This output is now clearly displayed. This fix was
552 very helpful in identifying and fixing the bug described below.
554 Fix bug where some threads would be missing from large search results
556 When a search returned a "large" number of results, the emacs
557 interface was incorrectly dropping one thread every time the output
558 of the "notmuch search" process spanned the emacs read-buffer. This
561 Avoid re-compression of .gz files (and similar) when saving attachment
563 Emacs was being too clever for its own good and trying to
564 re-compress pre-compressed .gz files when saving such attachments
565 (potentially corrupting the attachment). The emacs interface is
566 fixed to avoid this bug.
568 Fix hiding of a message when a previously-hidden citation is visible
570 Previously the citation would remain visible in this case. This is
571 fixed so that hiding a message hides all parts.
573 Notmuch 0.5 (2010-11-11)
574 ========================
575 New, general features
576 ---------------------
577 Maildir-flag synchronization
579 Notmuch now knows how to synchronize flags in maildir filenames with
580 tags in the notmuch database. The following flag/tag mappings are
589 'S' unread (added when 'S' flag is not present)
591 The synchronization occurs in both directions, (for example, adding
592 the 'S' flag to a file will cause the "unread" tag to be added, and
593 adding the "replied" tag to a message will cause the file to be
594 renamed with an 'R' flag).
596 This synchronization is enabled by default for users of the
597 command-line interface, (though only files in directories named
598 "cur" or "new" will be renamed). It can be disabled by setting the
599 new maildir.synchronize_flags option in the configuration file. For
602 notmuch config set maildir.synchronize_flags false
604 Users upgrading may also want to run "notmuch setup" once (just
605 accept the existing configuration) to get a new, nicely-commented
606 [maildir] section added to the configuration file.
608 For users of the notmuch library, the new synchronization
609 functionality is available with the following two new functions:
611 notmuch_message_maildir_flags_to_tags
612 notmuch_message_tags_to_maildir_flags
614 It is anticipated that future improvements to this support will
615 allow for safe synchronization of the 'T' flag with the "deleted"
616 tag, as well as support for custom flag/tag mappings.
620 Support for querying multiple filenames for a single message
622 It is common for the mailstore to contain multiple files with the
623 same message ID. Previously, notmuch would always hide these
624 duplicate files, (returning a single, arbitrary filename with
625 notmuch_message_get_filename).
627 With this release, library users can access all filenames for a
628 message with the new function:
630 notmuch_message_get_filenames
632 Together with notmuch_filenames_valid, notmuch_filenames_get, and
633 notmuch_filenames_move_to_next it is now possible to iterate over
634 all available filenames for a given message.
636 New command-line features
637 -------------------------
638 New "notmuch show --format=raw" for getting at original email contents
640 This new feature allows for a fully-functional email client to be
641 built on top of the notmuch command-line without needing any direct
642 access to the mail store itself.
644 For example, it's now possible to run "emacs -f notmuch" on a local
645 machine with only ssh access to the mail store/notmuch database. To
646 do this, simply set the notmuch-command variable in emacs to the
647 name of a script containing:
649 ssh user@host notmuch "$@"
651 If the ssh client has enabled connection sharing (ControlMaster
652 option in OpenSSH), the emacs interface can be quite responsive this
657 Fix "notmuch search" to print nothing when nothing matches
659 The 0.4 release had a bug in which:
661 notmuch search <expression-with-no-matches>
663 would produce a single blank line of output, (where previous
664 versions would produce no output. This fix also causes a change in
665 the --format=json output, (which would previously produce "[]" and
666 now produces nothing).
668 Emacs interface improvements
669 ----------------------------
670 Fix to allow pipe ('|') command to work when using notmuch over ssh
672 Fix count of lines in hidden signatures.
674 Omit repeated subject lines in (collapsed) thread display.
676 Display current thread subject in a header line.
678 Provide a "c i" binding to copy a thread ID from the search view.
680 Allow for notmuch-fcc-dirs to have a value of nil.
682 Also, the more complex form of notmuch-fcc-dirs now has a slightly
683 different format. It no longer has a special first-element, fallback
684 string. Instead it's now a list of cons cells where the car of each
685 cell is a regular expression to be matched against the sender
686 address, and the cdr is the name of a folder to use for an FCC. So
687 the old fallback behavior can be achieved by including a final cell
688 of (".*" . "default-fcc-folder").
690 Vim interface improvements
691 --------------------------
692 Felipe Contreras provided a number of updates for the vim interface.
694 These include optimizations, support for newer versions of vim, fixed
695 support for sending mail on modern systems, new commands, and
700 Added initial ruby bindings in bindings/ruby
702 Notmuch 0.4 (2010-11-01)
703 ========================
704 New command-line features
705 -------------------------
706 notmuch search --output=(summary|threads|messages|tags|files)
708 This new option allows for particular items to be returned from
709 notmuch searches. The "summary" option is the default and behaves
710 just as "notmuch search" has historically behaved.
712 The new option values allow for thread IDs, message IDs, lists of
713 tags, and lists of filenames to be returned from searches. It is
714 expected that this new option will be very useful in shell
715 scripts. For example:
717 for file in $(notmuch search --output=files <search-terms>); do
718 <operations-on> "$file"
721 notmuch show --format=mbox <search-specification>
723 This new option allows for the messages matching a search
724 specification to be presented as an mbox. Specifically the "mboxrd"
725 format is used which allows for reversible quoting of lines
726 beginning with "From ". A reader should remove a single '>' from the
727 beginning of all lines beginning with one or more '>' characters
728 followed by the 5 characters "From ".
730 notmuch config [get|set] <section>.<item> [value ...]
732 The new top-level "config" command allows for any value in the
733 notmuch configuration file to be queried or set to a new value. Both
734 single-valued and multi-valued items are supported, as our any
735 custom items stored in the configuration file.
737 Avoid setting Bcc header in "notmuch reply"
739 We decided that this was a bit heavy-handed as the actual mail
740 user-agent should be responsible for setting any Bcc option. Also,
741 see below for the notmuch/emacs user-agent now setting an Fcc by
742 default rather than Bcc.
746 Add notmuch_query_get_query_string and notmuch_query_get_sort
748 These are simply functions for querying properties of a
749 notmuch_query_t object.
753 Enable Fcc of all sent messages by default (to "sent" directory)
755 All messages sent from the emacs interface will now be saved to the
756 notmuch mail store where they will be incorporated to the database
757 by the next "notmuch new". By default, messages are saved to the
758 "sent" directory at the top-level of the mail store. This directory
759 can be customized by means of the "Notmuch Fcc Dirs" option in the
760 notmuch customize interface.
762 Ability to all open messages in a thread to a pipe
764 Historically, the '|' keybinding allows for piping a single message
765 to an external command. Now, by prefixing this key with a prefix
766 argument, (for example, by pressing "Control-U |"), all open
767 messages in the current thread will be sent to the external command.
769 Optional support for detecting inline patches
771 This hook is disabled by default but can be enabled with a checkbox
772 under "Notmuch Show Insert Text/Plain Hook" in the notmuch customize
773 interface. It allows for inline patches to be detected and treated
774 as if they were attachments, (with context-sensitive highlighting).
776 Automatically tag messages as "replied" when sending a reply
778 Messages replied to within the emacs interface will now be tagged as
779 "replied". This feature can easily be customized to add or remove
780 other tags as well. For example, a user might use a tag of
781 "needs-reply" and can configure this feature to automatically remove
782 that tag when replying. See "Notmuch Message Mark Replied" in the
783 notmuch customize interface.
785 Allow search-result color specifications to overlay each other
787 For example, one tag can specify the background color of matching
788 lines, while another can specify the foreground. With this change,
789 both settings will now be visible simultaneously, (which was not the
790 case in previous releases). See "Notmuch Search Line Faces" in the
791 notmuch customize interface.
793 Make hidden author names still available for incremental search.
795 When there is insufficient space to display all authors of a thread
796 in search results, the names of hidden authors are now still made
797 available to emacs' incremental search commands. As the user
798 searches, matching lines will temporarily expand to show the hidden
801 New binding of Control-TAB (works like TAB in reverse)
803 Many notmuch nodes already use TAB to navigate forward through
804 various items allowing actions, (message headers, email attachments,
805 etc.). The new Control-TAB binding operates similarly but in the
808 New build-system features
809 -------------------------
810 Various portability fixes have been applied
812 These include fixes for build failures on at least Solaris, FreeBSD,
813 and Fedora systems. We're hopeful that the notmuch code base is now
814 more portable than ever before.
816 Arrange for libnotmuch to be found automatically after make install
818 The notmuch build system is now careful to help the user avoid
819 errors of the form "libnotmuch.so could not be found" immediately
820 after installing. This support takes two forms:
822 1. If the library is installed to a system directory,
823 (configured in /etc/ld.so.conf), then "make install" will
824 automatically run ldconfig.
826 2. If the library is installed to a non-system directory, the
827 build system adds a DR_RUNPATH entry to the final binary
828 pointing to the directory to which the library is installed.
830 When this support works, the user should be able to run notmuch
831 immediately after "make install", without any errors trying to find
832 the notmuch library, and without having to manually set environment
833 variables such as LD_LIBRARY_PATH.
835 Check compiler/linker options before using them
837 The configure script now carefully checks that any desired
838 compilation options, (whether for enabling compiler warnings, or for
839 embedding rpath, etc.), are supported. Only supported options are
840 used in the resulting Makefile.
842 New test-suite features
843 -----------------------
844 New modularization of test suite.
846 Thanks to a gracious relicensing of the test-suite infrastructure
847 from the git project, notmuch now has a modular test suite. This
848 provides the ability to run individual sections of the test suite
849 rather than the whole things. It also provides better summary of
850 test results, with support for tests that are expected to fail
851 (BROKEN and FIXED) in addition to PASS and FAIL. Finally, it makes
852 it easy to run the test suite within valgrind (pass --valgrind to
853 notmuch-test or to any sub-script) which has been very useful.
855 New testing of emacs interface.
857 The test suite has been augmented to allow automated testing of the
858 emacs interfaces. So far, this includes basic searches, display of
859 threads, and tag manipulation. This also includes a test that a new
860 message can successfully be sent out through a (dummy) SMTP server
861 and that said message is successfully integrated into the notmuch
862 database via the FCC setting.
866 Fix potential corruption of database when "notmuch new " is interrupted.
868 Previously, an interruption of "notmuch new" would (rarely) result
869 in a corrupt database. The corruption would manifest itself by a
870 persistent error of the form:
872 document ID of 1234 has no thread ID
874 The message-adding code has been carefully audited and reworked to
875 avoid this sort of corruption regardless of when it is interrupted.
877 Fix failure with extremely long message ID headers.
879 Previously, a message with an extremely long message ID, (say, more
880 than 300 characters), would fail to be added to notmuch, (triggering
881 Xapian exceptions). This has now been fixed.
883 Fix for messages with "charset=unknown-8bit"
885 Previously, messages with this charset would cause notmuch to emit a
886 GMime warning, (which would then trip up emacs or other interfaces
887 parsing the notmuch results).
889 Fix notmuch_query_search_threads function to return NULL on any exception
891 Fix "notmuch search" to return non-zero if notmuch_query_search_threads fails
893 Previously, this command could confusingly report a Xapian
894 exception, yet still return an error code of 0. It now correctly
895 returns a failing error code of 1 in this case.
899 Fix to handle a message with a subject containing, for example "[1234]"
901 Previously, a message subject containing a sequence of digits within
902 square brackets would cause the emacs interface to mis-parse the
903 output of "notmuch search". This would result in the message being
904 mis-displayed and prevent the user from manipulating the message in
907 Fix to correctly handle message IDs containing ".."
909 The emacs interface now properly quotes message IDs to avoid a
910 Xapian bug in which the ".." within a message ID would be
911 misinterpreted as a numeric range specification.
915 The python bindings for notmuch have been updated to work with python3.
917 Debian-specific fixes
918 ---------------------
919 Fix emacs initialization so "M-x notmuch" works for users by default.
921 Now, a new Debian user can immediately run "emacs -f notmuch" after
922 "apt-get install notmuch". Previously, the user would have had to
923 edit the ~/.emacs file to add "(require 'notmuch)" before this would
926 Notmuch 0.3.1 (2010-04-27)
927 ==========================
930 Fix an infinite loop in "notmuch reply"
932 This bug could be triggered by replying to a message where the
933 user's primary email address did not appear in the To: header and
934 the user had not configured any secondary email addresses. The bug
935 was a simple re-use of the same iterator variable in nested loops.
937 Fix a potential SEGV in "notmuch search"
939 This bug could be triggered by an author name ending in a ','.
940 Admittedly - that's almost certainly a spam email, but we never
941 want notmuch to crash.
945 Fix calculations for line wrapping in the primary "notmuch" view.
947 Fix Fcc support to prompt to create a directory if the specified Fcc
948 directory does not exist.
952 Fix build on OpenSolaris (at least) due to missing 'extern "C"' block.
954 Without this, the C++ sources could not find strcasestr and the
955 final linking of notmuch would fail.
957 Notmuch 0.3 (2010-04-27)
958 ========================
959 New command-line features
960 -------------------------
961 User-configurable tags for new messages
963 A new "new.tags" option is available in the configuration file to
964 determine which tags are applied to new messages. Run "notmuch
965 setup" to generate new documentation within ~/.notmuch-config on how
966 to specify this value.
968 Threads search results named based on subjects that match search
970 This means that when new mails arrived to a thread you've previously
971 read, and the new mails have a new subject, you will see that
972 subject in the search results rather than the old subject.
974 Faster operation of "notmuch tag" (avoid unneeded sorting)
976 Since the user just wants to tag all matching messages, we can make
977 things perform a bit faster by avoiding the sort.
979 Even Better guessing of From: header for "notmuch reply"
981 Notmuch now looks at a number of headers when trying to figure out
982 the best From: header to use in a reply. This is helpful if you have
983 several configured email addresses, and you also subscribe to various
984 mailing lists with different addresses, (so that mails you are
985 replying to won't always include your subscribed address in the To:
988 Indication of author names that match a search
990 When notmuch displays threads as the result of a search, it now
991 lists the authors that match the search before listing the other
992 authors in the thread. It inserts a pipe '|' symbol between the last
993 matching and first non-matching author. This is especially useful in
994 a search that includes tag:unread. Now the authors of the unread
995 messages in the thread are listed first.
999 Sebastian Spaeth has contributed his python bindings for the notmuch
1000 library to the central repository. These bindings were previously
1001 known as "cnotmuch" within python but have now been renamed to be
1002 accessible with a simple, and more official-looking "import notmuch".
1004 The bindings have already proven very useful as people proficient in
1005 python have been able to easily develop programs to do notmuch-based
1006 searches for email-address completion, maildir-flag synchronization,
1009 These bindings are available within the bindings/python directory, but
1010 are not yet integrated into the top-level Makefiles, nor the top-level
1011 package-building scripts. Improvements are welcome.
1013 Emacs interface improvements
1014 ----------------------------
1015 An entirely new initial view for notmuch, (friendly yet powerful)
1017 Some of us call the new view "notmuch hello" but you can get at it
1018 by simply calling "emacs -f notmuch". The new view provides a search
1019 bar where new searches can be performed. It also displays a list of
1020 recent searches, along with a button to save any of these, giving it
1021 a new name as a "saved search". Many people find these "saved
1022 searches" one of the most convenient ways of organizing their mail,
1023 (providing all of the features of "folders" in other mail clients,
1024 but without any of the disadvantages).
1026 Finally, this view can also optionally display all of the tags that
1027 exist in the database, along with a count for each tag, and a custom
1028 search of messages with that tag that's simply a click (or keypress)
1031 Note: For users that liked the original mode of "emacs -f notmuch"
1032 immediately displaying a particular search result, we
1033 recommend instead running something like:
1035 emacs --eval '(notmuch search "tag:inbox" t)'
1037 The "t" means to sort the messages in an "oldest first" order,
1038 (as notmuch would do previously by default). You can also
1039 leave that off to have your search results in "newest first"
1042 Full-featured "customize" support for configuring notmuch
1044 Notmuch now plugs in well to the emacs "customize" mode to make it
1045 much simpler to find things about the notmuch interface that can be
1046 tweaked by the user.
1048 You can get to this mode by starting at the main "Customize" menu in
1049 emacs, then browsing through "Applications", "Mail", and
1050 "Notmuch". Or you can go straight to "M-x customize-group"
1053 Once you're at the customize screen, you'll see a list of documented
1054 options that can be manipulated along with checkboxes, drop-down
1055 selectors, and text-entry boxes for configuring the various
1058 Support for doing tab-completion of email addresses
1060 This support currently relies on an external program,
1061 (notmuch-addresses), that is not yet shipped with notmuch
1062 itself. But multiple, suitable implementations of this program have
1063 already been written that generate address completions by doing
1064 notmuch searches of your email collection. For example, providing
1065 first those addresses that you have composed messages to in the
1068 One such program (implemented in python with the python bindings to
1069 notmuch) is available via:
1071 git clone http://jkr.acm.jhu.edu/git/notmuch_addresses.git
1073 Install that program as notmuch-addresses on your PATH, and then
1074 hitting TAB on a partial email address or name within the To: or Cc:
1075 line of an email message will provide matching completions.
1077 Support for file-based (Fcc) delivery of sent messages to mail store
1079 This isn't yet enabled by default. To enable this, one will have to
1080 set the "Notmuch Fcc Dirs" setting within the notmuch customize
1081 screen, (see its documentation there for details). We anticipate
1082 making this automatic in a future release.
1084 New 'G' key binding to trigger mail refresh (G == "Get new mail")
1086 The 'G' key works wherever '=' works. Before refreshing the screen
1087 it calls an external program that can be used to poll email servers,
1088 run notmuch new and setup specific tags for the new emails. The
1089 script to be called should be configured with the "Notmuch Poll
1090 Script" setting in the customize interface. This script will
1091 typically invoke "notmuch new" and then perhaps several "notmuch
1094 Implement emacs message display with the JSON output from notmuch.
1096 This is much more robust than the previous implementation, (where
1097 some HTML mails and mail quoting the notmuch code with the delimiter
1098 characters in it would cause the parser to fall over).
1100 Better handling of HTML messages and MIME attachments (inline images!)
1102 Allow for any MIME parts that emacs can display to be displayed
1103 inline. This includes inline viewing of image attachments, (provided
1104 the window is large enough to fit the image at its natural size).
1106 Much more robust handling of HTML messages. Currently both text/plain
1107 and text/html alternates will be rendered next to each other. In a
1108 future release, users will be able to decide to see only one or the
1109 other representation.
1111 Each attachment now has its own button so that attachments can be
1112 saved individually (the 'w' key is still available to save all
1115 Customizable support for tidying of text/plain message content
1117 Many new functions are available for tidying up message
1118 content. These include options such as wrapping long lines,
1119 compressing duplicate blank lines, etc.
1121 Most of these are disabled by default, but can easily be enabled by
1122 clicking the available check boxes under the "Notmuch Show Insert
1123 Text/Plain Hook" within the notmuch customize screen.
1125 New support for searchable citations (even when hidden)
1127 When portions of overly-long citations are hidden, the contents of
1128 these citations will still be available for emacs' standard
1129 "incremental search" functions. When the search matches any portion
1130 of a hidden citation, the citation will become visible temporarily
1131 to display the search result.
1133 More flexible handling of header visibility
1135 As an answer to complaints from many users, the To, Cc, and Date
1136 headers of messages are no longer hidden by default. For those users
1137 that liked that these were hidden, a new "Notmuch Messages Headers
1138 Visible" option in the customize interface can be set to nil. The
1139 visibility of headers can still be toggled on a per-message basis
1140 with the 'h' keybinding.
1142 For users that don't want to see some subset of those headers, the
1143 new "Notmuch Message Headers" variable can be customized to list
1144 only those headers that should be present in the display of a message.
1146 The Return key now toggles message visibility anywhere
1148 Previously this worked only on the first summary-line of a message.
1150 Customizable formatting of search results
1152 The user can easily customize the order, width, and formatting of
1153 the various fields in a "notmuch search" buffer. See the "Notmuch
1154 Search Result Format" section of the customize interface.
1156 Generate nicer names for search buffers when using a saved search.
1158 Add a notmuch User-Agent header when sending mail from notmuch/emacs.
1160 New keybinding (M-Ret) to open all collapsed messages in a thread.
1164 Provide a new NOTMUCH_SORT_UNSORTED value for queries
1166 This can be somewhat faster when sorting simply isn't desired. For
1167 example when collecting a set of messages that will all be
1168 manipulated identically, (adding a tag, removing a tag, deleting the
1169 messages), then there's no advantage to sorting the messages by
1174 Fix to compile against GMime 2.6
1176 Previously notmuch insisted on being able to find GMime 2.4, (even
1177 though GMime 2.6 would have worked all along).
1179 Fix configure script to accept (and ignore) various standard options.
1181 For example, those that the Gentoo build scripts expect configure to
1182 accept are now all accepted.
1186 A large number of new tests for the many new features.
1188 Better display of output from failed tests.
1190 Now shows failures with diff rather than forcing the user to gaze at
1191 complete actual and expected output looking for deviation.
1193 Notmuch 0.2 (2010-04-16)
1194 ========================
1195 This is the second release of the notmuch mail system, with actual
1196 detailed release notes this time!
1198 This release consists of a number of minor new features that make
1199 notmuch more pleasant to use, and a few fairly major bug fixes.
1201 We didn't quite hit our release target of "about a week" from the 0.1
1202 release, (0.2 is happening 11 days after 0.1), but we hope to do
1203 better for next week. Look forward to some major features coming to
1204 notmuch in subsequent releases.
1210 Better guessing of From: header.
1212 Notmuch now tries harder to guess which configured address should be
1213 used as the From: line in a "notmuch reply". It will examine the
1214 Received: headers if it fails to find any configured address in To:
1215 or Cc:. This allows it to often choose the correct address even when
1216 replying to a message sent to a mailing list, and not directly to a
1219 Make "notmuch count" with no arguments count all messages
1221 Previously, it was hard to construct a search term that was
1222 guaranteed to match all messages.
1224 Provide a new special-case search term of "*" to match all messages.
1226 This can be used in any command accepting a search term, such as
1227 "notmuch search '*'". Note that you'll want to take care that the
1228 shell doesn't expand * against the current files. And note that the
1229 support for "*" is a special case. It's only meaningful as a single
1230 search term and loses its special meaning when combined with any
1233 Automatically detect thread connections even when a parent message is
1236 Previously, if two or more message were received with a common
1237 parent, but that parent was not received, then these messages would
1238 not be recognized as belonging to the same thread. This is now fixed
1239 so that such messages are properly connected in a thread.
1243 Fix potential data loss in "notmuch new" with SIGINT
1245 One code path in "notmuch new" was not properly handling
1246 SIGINT. Previously, this could lead to messages being removed from
1247 the database (and their tags being lost) if the user pressed
1248 Control-C while "notmuch new" was working.
1250 Fix segfault when a message includes a MIME part that is empty.
1252 Fix handling of non-ASCII characters with --format=json
1254 Previously, characters outside the range of 7-bit ASCII were
1255 silently dropped from the JSON output. This led to corrupted display
1256 of utf-8 content in the upcoming notmuch web-based frontends.
1258 Fix headers to be properly decoded in "notmuch reply"
1260 Previously, the user might see:
1262 Subject: Re: =?iso-8859-2?q?Rozlu=E8ka?=
1266 Subject: Re: Rozlučka
1268 The former text is properly encoded to be RFC-compliant SMTP, will
1269 be sent correctly, and will be properly decoded by the
1270 recipient. But the user trying to edit the reply would likely be
1271 unable to read or edit that field in its encoded form.
1273 Emacs client features
1274 ---------------------
1275 Show the last few lines of citations as well as the first few lines.
1277 It's often the case that the last sentence of a citation is what is
1278 being replied to directly, so the last few lines are often much more
1279 important. The number of lines shown at the beginning and end of any
1280 citation can be configured, (notmuch-show-citation-lines-prefix and
1281 notmuch-show-citation-lines-suffix).
1283 The '+' and '-' commands in the search view can now add and remove
1286 Selective bulk tagging is now possible by selecting a region of
1287 threads and then using either the '+' or '-' keybindings. Bulk
1288 tagging is still available for all threads matching the current
1289 search with the '*' binding.
1291 More meaningful buffer names for thread-view buffers.
1293 Notmuch now uses the Subject of the thread as the buffer
1294 name. Previously it was using the thread ID, which is a meaningless
1297 Provide for customized colors of threads in search view based on tags.
1299 See the documentation of notmuch-search-line-faces, (or us "M-x
1300 customize" and browse to the "notmuch" group within "Applications"
1301 and "Mail"), for details on how to configure this colorization.
1303 Build-system features
1304 ---------------------
1305 Add support to properly build libnotmuch on Darwin systems (OS X).
1307 Add support to configure for many standard options.
1309 We include actual support for:
1311 --includedir --mandir --sysconfdir
1313 And accept and silently ignore several more:
1315 --build --infodir --libexecdir --localstatedir
1316 --disable-maintainer-mode --disable-dependency-tracking
1318 Install emacs client in "make install" rather than requiring a
1319 separate "make install-emacs".
1321 Automatically compute versions numbers between releases.
1323 This support uses the git-describe notation, so a version such as
1324 0.1-144-g43cbbfc indicates a version that is 144 commits since the
1325 0.1 release and is available as git commit "43cbbfc".
1327 Add a new "make test" target to run the test suite and actually verify
1330 Notmuch 0.1 (2010-04-05)
1331 ========================
1332 This is the first release of the notmuch mail system.
1334 It includes the libnotmuch library, the notmuch command-line
1335 interface, and an emacs-based interface to notmuch.
1337 Note: Notmuch will work best with Xapian 1.0.18 (or later) or Xapian
1338 1.1.4 (or later). Previous versions of Xapian (whether 1.0 or 1.1) had
1339 a performance bug that made notmuch very slow when modifying
1340 tags. This would cause distracting pauses when reading mail while
1341 notmuch would wait for Xapian when removing the "inbox" and "unread"
1342 tags from messages in a thread.