1 Notmuch 0.10 (2011-xx-xx)
2 =========================
4 New build and testing features
5 ------------------------------
7 Emacs tests are now done in dtach. This means that dtach is now
8 needed to run the notmuch test suite, at least until the checking for
9 prerequisites is improved.
11 New command-line features
12 -------------------------
14 Add "notmuch restore --accumulate" option
16 The --accumulate switch causes the union of the existing and new tags to be
17 applied, instead of replacing each message's tags as they are read in from
20 Add search terms to "notmuch dump"
22 The dump command now takes an optional search term much like notmuch
23 search/show/tag. The output file argument of dump is deprecated in
24 favour of using stdout.
26 Add "notmuch search" --offset and --limit options
28 The search command now takes options --offset=[-]N and --limit=N to limit
29 the number of results shown.
31 Add "notmuch count --output" option
33 The count command is now capable of counting threads in addition to
34 messages. This is selected using the new --output=(threads|messages) option.
39 Search avoids opening and parsing message files
41 We now store more information in the database so search no longer
42 has to open every message file to get basic headers. This can
43 improve search speed by as much as 10X, but taking advantage of this
44 requires a database rebuild:
46 notmuch dump > notmuch.dump
47 # Backup, then remove notmuch database ($MAIL/.notmuch)
49 notmuch restore notmuch.dump
51 Notmuch 0.9 (2011-10-01)
52 ========================
57 Correct handling of interruptions during "notmuch new"
59 "notmuch new" now operates as a series of small, self-consistent
60 transactions, so it can correctly resume after an interruption or
61 crash. Previously, interruption could lose existing tags, fail to
62 detect messages on resume, or leave the database in a state
63 temporarily or permanently inconsistent with the mail store.
70 notmuch_database_begin_atomic and notmuch_database_end_atomic allow
71 multiple database operations to be performed atomically.
73 notmuch_database_find_message_by_filename does exactly what it says.
77 notmuch_database_find_message (and n_d_f_m_by_filename) now return
78 a status indicator and uses an output parameter for the
79 message. This change required changing the SONAME of libnotmuch to
82 Python bindings changes
83 -----------------------
85 - Re-encode python unicode objects to utf-8 before passing back to
87 - Support Database().begin_atomic()/end_atomic()
88 - Support Database().find_message_by_filename()
89 NB! This needs a db opened in READ-WRITE mode currently, or it will crash
90 the python process. The is a limitation (=bug) of the underlying libnotmuch.
91 - Fixes where we would not throw NotmuchErrors when we should (Justus Winter)
92 - Update for n_d_find_message* API changes (see above).
97 - Wrap new library functions notmuch_database_{begin,end}_atomic.
98 - Add new exception Notmuch::UnbalancedAtomicError.
99 - Rename destroy to destroy! according to Ruby naming conventions.
100 - Update for n_d_find_message* API changes (see above).
105 * Add gpg callback to crypto sigstatus buttons to retrieve/refresh
107 * Add notmuch-show-refresh-view function (and corresponding binding)
108 to refresh the view of a notmuch-show buffer.
110 Reply formatting cleanup
111 ------------------------
113 "notmuch reply" no longer includes notification that non-leafnode
114 MIME parts are being suppressed.
116 Notmuch 0.8 (2011-09-10)
117 ========================
119 Improved handling of message/rfc822 parts
121 Both in the CLI and the emacs interface. Output of rfc822 parts now
122 includes the primary headers, as well as the body and all subparts.
123 Output of the completely raw rfc822-formatted message, including all
124 headers, is unfortunately not yet supported (but hopefully will be
127 Improved Build system portability
129 Certain parts of the shell script generating notmuch.sym were
130 specific to the GNU versions of sed and nm. The new version should
131 be more portable to e.g. OpenBSD.
133 Documentation update for Ruby bindings
135 Added documentation, typo fixes, and improved support for rdoc.
137 Unicode, iterator, PEP8 changes for python bindings
139 - PEP8 (code formatting) changes for python files.
140 - Remove Tags.__len__ ; see 0.6 release notes for motivation.
141 - Decode headers as UTF8, encode (unicode) database paths as UTF8.
143 Notmuch 0.7 (2011-08-01)
144 ========================
146 Vim interface improvements
147 --------------------------
149 Jason Woofenden provided a number of bug fixes for the Vim interface
151 * fix citation/signature fold lengths
152 * fix cig/cit parsing within multipart/*
153 * fix on-screen instructions for show-signature
154 * fix from list reformatting in search view
155 * fix space key: now archives (did opposite)
157 Uwe Kleine-König contributed
159 * use full path for sendmail/doc fix
160 * fix compose temp file name
162 Python Bindings changes
163 -----------------------
165 Sebastian Spaeth contributed two changes related to unicode and UTF8:
167 * message tags are now explicitly unicode
168 * query string is encoded as a UTF8 byte string
170 Build-System improvments
171 ------------------------
173 Generate notmuch.sym after the relevant object files
175 This fixes a bug in parallel building. Thanks to Thomas Jost for the
178 Notmuch 0.6.1 (2011-07-17)
179 ==========================
184 Re-export Xapian exception typeinfo symbols.
186 It turned out our aggressive symbol hiding caused problems for
187 people running gcc 4.4.5.
189 Notmuch 0.6 (2011-07-01)
190 =======================
191 New, general features
192 ---------------------
193 Folder-based searching
195 Notmuch queries can now include a search term to match the
196 directories in which mail files are stored (within the mail
197 storage). The syntax is as follows:
201 For example, one might use things such as:
207 to match any path containing a directory "spam", "work/todo", or
208 containing a directory starting with "2011-", respectively.
210 This feature is particularly useful for users of delivery-agent
211 software (such as procmail or maildrop) that is filtering mail and
212 delivering it to particular folders, or users of systems such as
213 Gmail that use filesystem directories to indicate message tags.
215 NOTE: Only messages that are newly indexed with this version of
216 notmuch will be searchable with folder: terms. In order to enable
217 this feature for all mail, the entire notmuch index will need to be
220 notmuch dump > notmuch.dump
221 # Backup, then remove notmuch database ($MAIL/.notmuch)
223 notmuch restore notmuch.dump
227 Both the command line interface and the emacs-interface have new
228 support for PGP/MIME, detailed below. Thanks to Daniel Kahn Gillmor
229 and Jameson Graef Rollins for making this happen.
231 New, automatic tags: "signed" and "encrypted"
233 These tags will automatically be applied to messages containing
234 multipart/signed and multipart/encrypted parts.
236 NOTE: Only messages that are newly indexed with this version of
237 notmuch will receive these tags.
239 New command-line features
240 -------------------------
241 Add new "notmuch show --verify" option for signature verification
243 This option instruct notmuch to verify the signature of
244 PGP/MIME-signed parts.
246 Add new "notmuch show --decrypt" and "notmuch reply --decrypt" options
248 This option instructs notmuch to decrypt PGP/MIME-encrypted parts.
249 Note that this feature currently requires gpg-agent and a passphrase entry
250 tool (e.g. pinentry-gtk or pinentry-curses).
252 Proper nesting of multipart parts in "notmuch show" output
254 MIME parts are now display with proper nesting to reflect original
255 MIME hierarchy of a message. This allows clients to correctly
256 analyze the MIME structure, (such as, for example, determining to
257 which parts a signature part applies).
259 Add new "notmuch show --part" option
261 This is a replacement for the older "notmuch part" command, (which
262 is now deprecated—it should still work as always, but is no longer
263 documented). Putting part output under "notmuch show" allows for all
264 of the "notmuch show" options to be applied when extracting a single
265 part, (such as --format=json for extracting a message part with JSON
268 Deprecate "notmuch search-tags", (in favor of "notmuch search --output=tags *")
270 The "notmuch search-tags" sub-command has been redundant since the
271 addition of the --output=tags option to "notmuch search". We now
272 make that more clear by deprecating "notmuch search-tags", (dropping
273 it from the documentation). We do continue to support the old syntax
274 by translating it internally to the new call.
276 Performance improvements
277 ------------------------
278 Faster searches (by doing fewer searches to construct threads)
280 Whenever a user asks for search results as threads, notmuch first
281 performs a search for messages matching the query, then performs
282 additional searches to find other messages in the resulting threads.
284 Removing inefficiencies and redundancies in these secondary searches
285 results in a measured speedups of 1.5x for a typical search.
287 Faster searches (by doing fewer passes to gather message data)
289 Optimizing Xapian data access patterns (using a single pass to get
290 all message-document data rather than a pass for each data type)
291 results in a measured speedup of 1.7x for a typical search.
293 The benefits of this optimization combine with the preceding
294 optimization. With both in place, Austin Clements measured a speedup
295 of 2.5x for a search of all messages in his inbox (was 4.5s, now
296 1.8s). Thanks, Austin!
298 Faster initial indexing
300 More efficient indexing of new messages results in a measured
301 speedup of 1.4x for the initial indexing of 3 GB of mail (1h 14m
302 rather than 1h 46m). Thanks to Austin Clements and Michal Sojka.
304 Make "notmuch new" faster for unchanged directories
306 Optimizing to not do any further examinations of sub-directories
307 when the filesystem indicates that a directory is unchanged from the
308 last "notmuch new" results in measured speedups of 8.5 for the "No
309 new mail" case, (was 0.77s, now 0.09s). Thanks to Karel Zak.
311 New emacs-interface features
312 ----------------------------
314 Support for PGP/MIME (GnuPG)
316 Automatically indicate validity of signatures for multipart/signed
317 messages. Automatically display decrypted content for
318 multipart/encrypted messages. See the emacs variable
319 notmuch-crypto-process-mime for more information. Note that this
320 needs gpg-agent and a pinentry tool just as the command line tools.
321 Also note there is no support SMIME yet.
323 Output of pipe command is now displayed if pipe command fails
325 This is extremely useful in the common use case of piping a patch to
326 "git am". If git fails to cleanly merge the patch the error messages
327 from the failed merge are now clearly displayed to the user, (where
328 previously they were silently hidden from the user).
330 User-selectable From address
332 A user can choose which configured email addresses should be used as
333 the From address whenever composing a new message. To do so, simply
334 press C-u before the command which will open a new message. Emacs
335 will prompt for the from address to use.
337 The user can customize the "Notmuch Identities" setting in the
338 notmuch customize group in order to use addresses other than those in
339 the notmuch configuration file if desired.
341 The user can also choose to always be prompted for the from address
342 when composing a new message (without having to use C-u) by setting
343 the "Notmuch Always Prompt For Sender" option in the notmuch
346 Hiding of repeated subjects in collapsed thread view
348 In notmuch-show mode, if a collapsed message has the same subject as
349 its parent, the subject is not shown.
351 Automatic detection and hiding of original message in top-posted message
353 When a message contains a line looking something like:
355 ----- Original Message -----
357 emacs hides this and all subsequent lines as an "original message",
358 (allowing the user to click or press enter on the "original message"
359 button to display it again). This makes the handling of top-posted
360 citations work much like conventional citations.
362 New hooks for running code when tags are modified
364 Some users want to perform additional actions whenever a particular
365 tag is added/removed from a message. This could be used to, for
366 example, interface with some external spam-recognition training
367 tool. To facilitate this, two new hooks are added which can be
368 modified in the following settings of the notmuch customize group:
370 Notmuch Before Tag Hook
371 Notmuch After Tag Hook
373 New optional support for hiding some multipart/alternative parts
375 Many emails are sent with redundant content within a
376 multipart/alternative group (such as a text/plain part as well as a
377 text/html part). Users can configure the setting:
379 Notmuch Show All Multipart/Alternative Parts
381 to "off" in the notmuch customize group to have the interface
382 automatically hide some part alternatives (such as text/html
383 parts). This new part hiding is not configured by default yet
384 because there's not yet a simple way to re-display such a hidden
385 part if it is not actually redundant with a displayed part.
387 Better rendering of text/x-vcalendar parts
389 These parts are now displayed in a format suitable for use with the
392 Avoid getting confused by Subject and Author fields with newline characters
394 Replacing all characters with ASCII code less than 32 with a question mark.
396 Cleaner display of From line in email messages (remove double quotes,
397 and drop "name" if it's actually just a repeat of the email address).
399 Vim interface improvements
400 --------------------------
401 Felipe Contreras provided a number of updates for the vim interface:
403 * Using sendmail directly rather than mailx,
404 * Implementing archive in show view
405 * Add support to mark as read in show and search views
406 * Add delete commands
409 Bindings improvements
410 ---------------------
411 Ruby bindings are now much more complete
413 Including QUERY.sort, QUERY.to_s, MESSAGE.maildir_flags_to_tags,
414 MESSAGE.tags_to_maildir_flags, and MESSAGE.get_filenames
416 * Python bindings have been upodated and extended
417 (docs online at http://packages.python.org/notmuch/)
420 - Message().get_filenames(),
421 - Message().tags_to_maildir_flags(),Message().maildir_flags_to_tags()
422 - list(Threads()) and list(Messages) works now
424 - Message().__cmp__() and __hash__()
425 These allow, for example:
428 As well as set arithmetic on Messages():
430 s1, s2= set(msgs1), set(msgs2)
435 - len(Messages()) as it exausted the iterator.
436 Use len(list(Messages())) or
437 Query.count_messages() to get the length.
439 Added initial Go bindings in bindings/go
441 New build-system features
442 -------------------------
443 Added support for building in a directory other than the source directory
445 This can be used with the widely-supported idiom of simply running
446 the configure script from some other directory:
453 Fix to save configure options for future, implicit runs of configure
455 When a user updates the source (such as with "git pull") calling
456 "make" may cause an automatic re-run of the configure script. When
457 this happens, the configure script will automatically be called with
458 the same options the user originally passed in the most-recent
459 manual invocation of configure.
461 New test-suite feature
462 ----------------------
463 Binary for bash for running test suite now located via PATH.
465 The notmuch test suite requires a fairly recent version of bash (>=
466 bash 4). As some systems supply an older version of bash at
467 /bin/bash, the test suite is now updated to search $PATH to locate
468 the bash binary. This allows users of systems with old /bin/bash to
469 simply install bash >= 4 somewhere on $PATH before /bin and then use
472 Support for testing output with a trailing newline.
474 Previously, some tests would fail to notice a difference in the
475 presence/absence of a trailing newline in a program output, (which
476 has led to bugs in the past). Now, carefully-written tests (using
477 test_expect_equal_file rather than test_expect_equal) will detect
478 any change in the presence/absence of a trailing newline. Many tests
479 are updated to take advantage of this.
481 Avoiding accessing user's $HOME while running test suite
483 The test suite now carefully creates its own HOME directory. This
484 allows the test suite to be run with no existing HOME directory, (as
485 some build systems apparently do), and avoids test-suite differences
486 due to configuration files in the users HOME directory.
491 Output *all* files for "notmuch search --output=files"
493 For the cases where multiple files have the same Message ID,
494 previous versions of notmuch would output only one such file. This
495 command is now fixed to correctly output all files.
497 Fixed spurious search results from "overlapped" indexing of addresses
499 This fixed a bug where a search for:
501 to:user@elsewhere.com
503 would incorrectly match a message sent:
505 To: user@example,com, someone@elsewhere.com
507 Fix --output=json when search has no results
509 A bug present since notmuch 0.4 had caused searches with no results
510 to produce an invalid json object. This is now fixed to cleanly
511 return a valid json object representing an empty array "[]" as
514 fix the automatic detection of the From address for "notmuch reply"
515 from the Received headers in some cases.
517 Fix core dump on DragonFlyBSD due to -1 return value from
518 sysconf(_SC_GETPW_R_SIZE_MAX).
520 Cleaned up several memory leaks
522 Eliminated a few, rare segmentation faults and a double-free.
524 Fix libnotmuch library to only export notmuch API functions
526 Previous release of the notmuch library also exported some Xapian
527 C++ exception type symbols. These were never part of the library
528 interface and were never intended to be exported.
530 Emacs-interface bug fixes
531 -------------------------
532 Display any unexpected output or errors from "notmuch search" invocations
534 Previously any misformatted output or trailing error messages were
535 silently ignored. This output is now clearly displayed. This fix was
536 very helpful in identifying and fixing the bug described below.
538 Fix bug where some threads would be missing from large search results
540 When a search returned a "large" number of results, the emacs
541 interface was incorrectly dropping one thread every time the output
542 of the "notmuch search" process spanned the emacs read-buffer. This
545 Avoid re-compression of .gz files (and similar) when saving attachment
547 Emacs was being too clever for its own good and trying to
548 re-compress pre-compressed .gz files when saving such attachments
549 (potentially corrupting the attachment). The emacs interface is
550 fixed to avoid this bug.
552 Fix hiding of a message when a previously-hidden citation is visible
554 Previously the citation would remain visible in this case. This is
555 fixed so that hiding a message hides all parts.
557 Notmuch 0.5 (2010-11-11)
558 ========================
559 New, general features
560 ---------------------
561 Maildir-flag synchronization
563 Notmuch now knows how to synchronize flags in maildir filenames with
564 tags in the notmuch database. The following flag/tag mappings are
573 'S' unread (added when 'S' flag is not present)
575 The synchronization occurs in both directions, (for example, adding
576 the 'S' flag to a file will cause the "unread" tag to be added, and
577 adding the "replied" tag to a message will cause the file to be
578 renamed with an 'R' flag).
580 This synchronization is enabled by default for users of the
581 command-line interface, (though only files in directories named
582 "cur" or "new" will be renamed). It can be disabled by setting the
583 new maildir.synchronize_flags option in the configuration file. For
586 notmuch config set maildir.synchronize_flags false
588 Users upgrading may also want to run "notmuch setup" once (just
589 accept the existing configuration) to get a new, nicely-commented
590 [maildir] section added to the configuration file.
592 For users of the notmuch library, the new synchronization
593 functionality is available with the following two new functions:
595 notmuch_message_maildir_flags_to_tags
596 notmuch_message_tags_to_maildir_flags
598 It is anticipated that future improvements to this support will
599 allow for safe synchronization of the 'T' flag with the "deleted"
600 tag, as well as support for custom flag/tag mappings.
604 Support for querying multiple filenames for a single message
606 It is common for the mailstore to contain multiple files with the
607 same message ID. Previously, notmuch would always hide these
608 duplicate files, (returning a single, arbitrary filename with
609 notmuch_message_get_filename).
611 With this release, library users can access all filenames for a
612 message with the new function:
614 notmuch_message_get_filenames
616 Together with notmuch_filenames_valid, notmuch_filenames_get, and
617 notmuch_filenames_move_to_next it is now possible to iterate over
618 all available filenames for a given message.
620 New command-line features
621 -------------------------
622 New "notmuch show --format=raw" for getting at original email contents
624 This new feature allows for a fully-functional email client to be
625 built on top of the notmuch command-line without needing any direct
626 access to the mail store itself.
628 For example, it's now possible to run "emacs -f notmuch" on a local
629 machine with only ssh access to the mail store/notmuch database. To
630 do this, simply set the notmuch-command variable in emacs to the
631 name of a script containing:
633 ssh user@host notmuch "$@"
635 If the ssh client has enabled connection sharing (ControlMaster
636 option in OpenSSH), the emacs interface can be quite responsive this
641 Fix "notmuch search" to print nothing when nothing matches
643 The 0.4 release had a bug in which:
645 notmuch search <expression-with-no-matches>
647 would produce a single blank line of output, (where previous
648 versions would produce no output. This fix also causes a change in
649 the --format=json output, (which would previously produce "[]" and
650 now produces nothing).
652 Emacs interface improvements
653 ----------------------------
654 Fix to allow pipe ('|') command to work when using notmuch over ssh
656 Fix count of lines in hidden signatures.
658 Omit repeated subject lines in (collapsed) thread display.
660 Display current thread subject in a header line.
662 Provide a "c i" binding to copy a thread ID from the search view.
664 Allow for notmuch-fcc-dirs to have a value of nil.
666 Also, the more complex form of notmuch-fcc-dirs now has a slightly
667 different format. It no longer has a special first-element, fallback
668 string. Instead it's now a list of cons cells where the car of each
669 cell is a regular expression to be matched against the sender
670 address, and the cdr is the name of a folder to use for an FCC. So
671 the old fallback behavior can be achieved by including a final cell
672 of (".*" . "default-fcc-folder").
674 Vim interface improvements
675 --------------------------
676 Felipe Contreras provided a number of updates for the vim interface.
678 These include optimizations, support for newer versions of vim, fixed
679 support for sending mail on modern systems, new commands, and
684 Added initial ruby bindings in bindings/ruby
686 Notmuch 0.4 (2010-11-01)
687 ========================
688 New command-line features
689 -------------------------
690 notmuch search --output=(summary|threads|messages|tags|files)
692 This new option allows for particular items to be returned from
693 notmuch searches. The "summary" option is the default and behaves
694 just as "notmuch search" has historically behaved.
696 The new option values allow for thread IDs, message IDs, lists of
697 tags, and lists of filenames to be returned from searches. It is
698 expected that this new option will be very useful in shell
699 scripts. For example:
701 for file in $(notmuch search --output=files <search-terms>); do
702 <operations-on> "$file"
705 notmuch show --format=mbox <search-specification>
707 This new option allows for the messages matching a search
708 specification to be presented as an mbox. Specifically the "mboxrd"
709 format is used which allows for reversible quoting of lines
710 beginning with "From ". A reader should remove a single '>' from the
711 beginning of all lines beginning with one or more '>' characters
712 followed by the 5 characters "From ".
714 notmuch config [get|set] <section>.<item> [value ...]
716 The new top-level "config" command allows for any value in the
717 notmuch configuration file to be queried or set to a new value. Both
718 single-valued and multi-valued items are supported, as our any
719 custom items stored in the configuration file.
721 Avoid setting Bcc header in "notmuch reply"
723 We decided that this was a bit heavy-handed as the actual mail
724 user-agent should be responsible for setting any Bcc option. Also,
725 see below for the notmuch/emacs user-agent now setting an Fcc by
726 default rather than Bcc.
730 Add notmuch_query_get_query_string and notmuch_query_get_sort
732 These are simply functions for querying properties of a
733 notmuch_query_t object.
737 Enable Fcc of all sent messages by default (to "sent" directory)
739 All messages sent from the emacs interface will now be saved to the
740 notmuch mail store where they will be incorporated to the database
741 by the next "notmuch new". By default, messages are saved to the
742 "sent" directory at the top-level of the mail store. This directory
743 can be customized by means of the "Notmuch Fcc Dirs" option in the
744 notmuch customize interface.
746 Ability to all open messages in a thread to a pipe
748 Historically, the '|' keybinding allows for piping a single message
749 to an external command. Now, by prefixing this key with a prefix
750 argument, (for example, by pressing "Control-U |"), all open
751 messages in the current thread will be sent to the external command.
753 Optional support for detecting inline patches
755 This hook is disabled by default but can be enabled with a checkbox
756 under "Notmuch Show Insert Text/Plain Hook" in the notmuch customize
757 interface. It allows for inline patches to be detected and treated
758 as if they were attachments, (with context-sensitive highlighting).
760 Automatically tag messages as "replied" when sending a reply
762 Messages replied to within the emacs interface will now be tagged as
763 "replied". This feature can easily be customized to add or remove
764 other tags as well. For example, a user might use a tag of
765 "needs-reply" and can configure this feature to automatically remove
766 that tag when replying. See "Notmuch Message Mark Replied" in the
767 notmuch customize interface.
769 Allow search-result color specifications to overlay each other
771 For example, one tag can specify the background color of matching
772 lines, while another can specify the foreground. With this change,
773 both settings will now be visible simultaneously, (which was not the
774 case in previous releases). See "Notmuch Search Line Faces" in the
775 notmuch customize interface.
777 Make hidden author names still available for incremental search.
779 When there is insufficient space to display all authors of a thread
780 in search results, the names of hidden authors are now still made
781 available to emacs' incremental search commands. As the user
782 searches, matching lines will temporarily expand to show the hidden
785 New binding of Control-TAB (works like TAB in reverse)
787 Many notmuch nodes already use TAB to navigate forward through
788 various items allowing actions, (message headers, email attachments,
789 etc.). The new Control-TAB binding operates similarly but in the
792 New build-system features
793 -------------------------
794 Various portability fixes have been applied
796 These include fixes for build failures on at least Solaris, FreeBSD,
797 and Fedora systems. We're hopeful that the notmuch code base is now
798 more portable than ever before.
800 Arrange for libnotmuch to be found automatically after make install
802 The notmuch build system is now careful to help the user avoid
803 errors of the form "libnotmuch.so could not be found" immediately
804 after installing. This support takes two forms:
806 1. If the library is installed to a system directory,
807 (configured in /etc/ld.so.conf), then "make install" will
808 automatically run ldconfig.
810 2. If the library is installed to a non-system directory, the
811 build system adds a DR_RUNPATH entry to the final binary
812 pointing to the directory to which the library is installed.
814 When this support works, the user should be able to run notmuch
815 immediately after "make install", without any errors trying to find
816 the notmuch library, and without having to manually set environment
817 variables such as LD_LIBRARY_PATH.
819 Check compiler/linker options before using them
821 The configure script now carefully checks that any desired
822 compilation options, (whether for enabling compiler warnings, or for
823 embedding rpath, etc.), are supported. Only supported options are
824 used in the resulting Makefile.
826 New test-suite features
827 -----------------------
828 New modularization of test suite.
830 Thanks to a gracious relicensing of the test-suite infrastructure
831 from the git project, notmuch now has a modular test suite. This
832 provides the ability to run individual sections of the test suite
833 rather than the whole things. It also provides better summary of
834 test results, with support for tests that are expected to fail
835 (BROKEN and FIXED) in addition to PASS and FAIL. Finally, it makes
836 it easy to run the test suite within valgrind (pass --valgrind to
837 notmuch-test or to any sub-script) which has been very useful.
839 New testing of emacs interface.
841 The test suite has been augmented to allow automated testing of the
842 emacs interfaces. So far, this includes basic searches, display of
843 threads, and tag manipulation. This also includes a test that a new
844 message can successfully be sent out through a (dummy) SMTP server
845 and that said message is successfully integrated into the notmuch
846 database via the FCC setting.
850 Fix potential corruption of database when "notmuch new " is interrupted.
852 Previously, an interruption of "notmuch new" would (rarely) result
853 in a corrupt database. The corruption would manifest itself by a
854 persistent error of the form:
856 document ID of 1234 has no thread ID
858 The message-adding code has been carefully audited and reworked to
859 avoid this sort of corruption regardless of when it is interrupted.
861 Fix failure with extremely long message ID headers.
863 Previously, a message with an extremely long message ID, (say, more
864 than 300 characters), would fail to be added to notmuch, (triggering
865 Xapian exceptions). This has now been fixed.
867 Fix for messages with "charset=unknown-8bit"
869 Previously, messages with this charset would cause notmuch to emit a
870 GMime warning, (which would then trip up emacs or other interfaces
871 parsing the notmuch results).
873 Fix notmuch_query_search_threads function to return NULL on any exception
875 Fix "notmuch search" to return non-zero if notmuch_query_search_threads fails
877 Previously, this command could confusingly report a Xapian
878 exception, yet still return an error code of 0. It now correctly
879 returns a failing error code of 1 in this case.
883 Fix to handle a message with a subject containing, for example "[1234]"
885 Previously, a message subject containing a sequence of digits within
886 square brackets would cause the emacs interface to mis-parse the
887 output of "notmuch search". This would result in the message being
888 mis-displayed and prevent the user from manipulating the message in
891 Fix to correctly handle message IDs containing ".."
893 The emacs interface now properly quotes message IDs to avoid a
894 Xapian bug in which the ".." within a message ID would be
895 misinterpreted as a numeric range specification.
899 The python bindings for notmuch have been updated to work with python3.
901 Debian-specific fixes
902 ---------------------
903 Fix emacs initialization so "M-x notmuch" works for users by default.
905 Now, a new Debian user can immediately run "emacs -f notmuch" after
906 "apt-get install notmuch". Previously, the user would have had to
907 edit the ~/.emacs file to add "(require 'notmuch)" before this would
910 Notmuch 0.3.1 (2010-04-27)
911 ==========================
914 Fix an infinite loop in "notmuch reply"
916 This bug could be triggered by replying to a message where the
917 user's primary email address did not appear in the To: header and
918 the user had not configured any secondary email addresses. The bug
919 was a simple re-use of the same iterator variable in nested loops.
921 Fix a potential SEGV in "notmuch search"
923 This bug could be triggered by an author name ending in a ','.
924 Admittedly - that's almost certainly a spam email, but we never
925 want notmuch to crash.
929 Fix calculations for line wrapping in the primary "notmuch" view.
931 Fix Fcc support to prompt to create a directory if the specified Fcc
932 directory does not exist.
936 Fix build on OpenSolaris (at least) due to missing 'extern "C"' block.
938 Without this, the C++ sources could not find strcasestr and the
939 final linking of notmuch would fail.
941 Notmuch 0.3 (2010-04-27)
942 ========================
943 New command-line features
944 -------------------------
945 User-configurable tags for new messages
947 A new "new.tags" option is available in the configuration file to
948 determine which tags are applied to new messages. Run "notmuch
949 setup" to generate new documentation within ~/.notmuch-config on how
950 to specify this value.
952 Threads search results named based on subjects that match search
954 This means that when new mails arrived to a thread you've previously
955 read, and the new mails have a new subject, you will see that
956 subject in the search results rather than the old subject.
958 Faster operation of "notmuch tag" (avoid unneeded sorting)
960 Since the user just wants to tag all matching messages, we can make
961 things perform a bit faster by avoiding the sort.
963 Even Better guessing of From: header for "notmuch reply"
965 Notmuch now looks at a number of headers when trying to figure out
966 the best From: header to use in a reply. This is helpful if you have
967 several configured email addresses, and you also subscribe to various
968 mailing lists with different addresses, (so that mails you are
969 replying to won't always include your subscribed address in the To:
972 Indication of author names that match a search
974 When notmuch displays threads as the result of a search, it now
975 lists the authors that match the search before listing the other
976 authors in the thread. It inserts a pipe '|' symbol between the last
977 matching and first non-matching author. This is especially useful in
978 a search that includes tag:unread. Now the authors of the unread
979 messages in the thread are listed first.
983 Sebastian Spaeth has contributed his python bindings for the notmuch
984 library to the central repository. These bindings were previously
985 known as "cnotmuch" within python but have now been renamed to be
986 accessible with a simple, and more official-looking "import notmuch".
988 The bindings have already proven very useful as people proficient in
989 python have been able to easily develop programs to do notmuch-based
990 searches for email-address completion, maildir-flag synchronization,
993 These bindings are available within the bindings/python directory, but
994 are not yet integrated into the top-level Makefiles, nor the top-level
995 package-building scripts. Improvements are welcome.
997 Emacs interface improvements
998 ----------------------------
999 An entirely new initial view for notmuch, (friendly yet powerful)
1001 Some of us call the new view "notmuch hello" but you can get at it
1002 by simply calling "emacs -f notmuch". The new view provides a search
1003 bar where new searches can be performed. It also displays a list of
1004 recent searches, along with a button to save any of these, giving it
1005 a new name as a "saved search". Many people find these "saved
1006 searches" one of the most convenient ways of organizing their mail,
1007 (providing all of the features of "folders" in other mail clients,
1008 but without any of the disadvantages).
1010 Finally, this view can also optionally display all of the tags that
1011 exist in the database, along with a count for each tag, and a custom
1012 search of messages with that tag that's simply a click (or keypress)
1015 Note: For users that liked the original mode of "emacs -f notmuch"
1016 immediately displaying a particular search result, we
1017 recommend instead running something like:
1019 emacs --eval '(notmuch search "tag:inbox" t)'
1021 The "t" means to sort the messages in an "oldest first" order,
1022 (as notmuch would do previously by default). You can also
1023 leave that off to have your search results in "newest first"
1026 Full-featured "customize" support for configuring notmuch
1028 Notmuch now plugs in well to the emacs "customize" mode to make it
1029 much simpler to find things about the notmuch interface that can be
1030 tweaked by the user.
1032 You can get to this mode by starting at the main "Customize" menu in
1033 emacs, then browsing through "Applications", "Mail", and
1034 "Notmuch". Or you can go straight to "M-x customize-group"
1037 Once you're at the customize screen, you'll see a list of documented
1038 options that can be manipulated along with checkboxes, drop-down
1039 selectors, and text-entry boxes for configuring the various
1042 Support for doing tab-completion of email addresses
1044 This support currently relies on an external program,
1045 (notmuch-addresses), that is not yet shipped with notmuch
1046 itself. But multiple, suitable implementations of this program have
1047 already been written that generate address completions by doing
1048 notmuch searches of your email collection. For example, providing
1049 first those addresses that you have composed messages to in the
1052 One such program (implemented in python with the python bindings to
1053 notmuch) is available via:
1055 git clone http://jkr.acm.jhu.edu/git/notmuch_addresses.git
1057 Install that program as notmuch-addresses on your PATH, and then
1058 hitting TAB on a partial email address or name within the To: or Cc:
1059 line of an email message will provide matching completions.
1061 Support for file-based (Fcc) delivery of sent messages to mail store
1063 This isn't yet enabled by default. To enable this, one will have to
1064 set the "Notmuch Fcc Dirs" setting within the notmuch customize
1065 screen, (see its documentation there for details). We anticipate
1066 making this automatic in a future release.
1068 New 'G' key binding to trigger mail refresh (G == "Get new mail")
1070 The 'G' key works wherever '=' works. Before refreshing the screen
1071 it calls an external program that can be used to poll email servers,
1072 run notmuch new and setup specific tags for the new emails. The
1073 script to be called should be configured with the "Notmuch Poll
1074 Script" setting in the customize interface. This script will
1075 typically invoke "notmuch new" and then perhaps several "notmuch
1078 Implement emacs message display with the JSON output from notmuch.
1080 This is much more robust than the previous implementation, (where
1081 some HTML mails and mail quoting the notmuch code with the delimiter
1082 characters in it would cause the parser to fall over).
1084 Better handling of HTML messages and MIME attachments (inline images!)
1086 Allow for any MIME parts that emacs can display to be displayed
1087 inline. This includes inline viewing of image attachments, (provided
1088 the window is large enough to fit the image at its natural size).
1090 Much more robust handling of HTML messages. Currently both text/plain
1091 and text/html alternates will be rendered next to each other. In a
1092 future release, users will be able to decide to see only one or the
1093 other representation.
1095 Each attachment now has its own button so that attachments can be
1096 saved individually (the 'w' key is still available to save all
1099 Customizable support for tidying of text/plain message content
1101 Many new functions are available for tidying up message
1102 content. These include options such as wrapping long lines,
1103 compressing duplicate blank lines, etc.
1105 Most of these are disabled by default, but can easily be enabled by
1106 clicking the available check boxes under the "Notmuch Show Insert
1107 Text/Plain Hook" within the notmuch customize screen.
1109 New support for searchable citations (even when hidden)
1111 When portions of overly-long citations are hidden, the contents of
1112 these citations will still be available for emacs' standard
1113 "incremental search" functions. When the search matches any portion
1114 of a hidden citation, the citation will become visible temporarily
1115 to display the search result.
1117 More flexible handling of header visibility
1119 As an answer to complaints from many users, the To, Cc, and Date
1120 headers of messages are no longer hidden by default. For those users
1121 that liked that these were hidden, a new "Notmuch Messages Headers
1122 Visible" option in the customize interface can be set to nil. The
1123 visibility of headers can still be toggled on a per-message basis
1124 with the 'h' keybinding.
1126 For users that don't want to see some subset of those headers, the
1127 new "Notmuch Message Headers" variable can be customized to list
1128 only those headers that should be present in the display of a message.
1130 The Return key now toggles message visibility anywhere
1132 Previously this worked only on the first summary-line of a message.
1134 Customizable formatting of search results
1136 The user can easily customize the order, width, and formatting of
1137 the various fields in a "notmuch search" buffer. See the "Notmuch
1138 Search Result Format" section of the customize interface.
1140 Generate nicer names for search buffers when using a saved search.
1142 Add a notmuch User-Agent header when sending mail from notmuch/emacs.
1144 New keybinding (M-Ret) to open all collapsed messages in a thread.
1148 Provide a new NOTMUCH_SORT_UNSORTED value for queries
1150 This can be somewhat faster when sorting simply isn't desired. For
1151 example when collecting a set of messages that will all be
1152 manipulated identically, (adding a tag, removing a tag, deleting the
1153 messages), then there's no advantage to sorting the messages by
1158 Fix to compile against GMime 2.6
1160 Previously notmuch insisted on being able to find GMime 2.4, (even
1161 though GMime 2.6 would have worked all along).
1163 Fix configure script to accept (and ignore) various standard options.
1165 For example, those that the Gentoo build scripts expect configure to
1166 accept are now all accepted.
1170 A large number of new tests for the many new features.
1172 Better display of output from failed tests.
1174 Now shows failures with diff rather than forcing the user to gaze at
1175 complete actual and expected output looking for deviation.
1177 Notmuch 0.2 (2010-04-16)
1178 ========================
1179 This is the second release of the notmuch mail system, with actual
1180 detailed release notes this time!
1182 This release consists of a number of minor new features that make
1183 notmuch more pleasant to use, and a few fairly major bug fixes.
1185 We didn't quite hit our release target of "about a week" from the 0.1
1186 release, (0.2 is happening 11 days after 0.1), but we hope to do
1187 better for next week. Look forward to some major features coming to
1188 notmuch in subsequent releases.
1194 Better guessing of From: header.
1196 Notmuch now tries harder to guess which configured address should be
1197 used as the From: line in a "notmuch reply". It will examine the
1198 Received: headers if it fails to find any configured address in To:
1199 or Cc:. This allows it to often choose the correct address even when
1200 replying to a message sent to a mailing list, and not directly to a
1203 Make "notmuch count" with no arguments count all messages
1205 Previously, it was hard to construct a search term that was
1206 guaranteed to match all messages.
1208 Provide a new special-case search term of "*" to match all messages.
1210 This can be used in any command accepting a search term, such as
1211 "notmuch search '*'". Note that you'll want to take care that the
1212 shell doesn't expand * against the current files. And note that the
1213 support for "*" is a special case. It's only meaningful as a single
1214 search term and loses its special meaning when combined with any
1217 Automatically detect thread connections even when a parent message is
1220 Previously, if two or more message were received with a common
1221 parent, but that parent was not received, then these messages would
1222 not be recognized as belonging to the same thread. This is now fixed
1223 so that such messages are properly connected in a thread.
1227 Fix potential data loss in "notmuch new" with SIGINT
1229 One code path in "notmuch new" was not properly handling
1230 SIGINT. Previously, this could lead to messages being removed from
1231 the database (and their tags being lost) if the user pressed
1232 Control-C while "notmuch new" was working.
1234 Fix segfault when a message includes a MIME part that is empty.
1236 Fix handling of non-ASCII characters with --format=json
1238 Previously, characters outside the range of 7-bit ASCII were
1239 silently dropped from the JSON output. This led to corrupted display
1240 of utf-8 content in the upcoming notmuch web-based frontends.
1242 Fix headers to be properly decoded in "notmuch reply"
1244 Previously, the user might see:
1246 Subject: Re: =?iso-8859-2?q?Rozlu=E8ka?=
1250 Subject: Re: Rozlučka
1252 The former text is properly encoded to be RFC-compliant SMTP, will
1253 be sent correctly, and will be properly decoded by the
1254 recipient. But the user trying to edit the reply would likely be
1255 unable to read or edit that field in its encoded form.
1257 Emacs client features
1258 ---------------------
1259 Show the last few lines of citations as well as the first few lines.
1261 It's often the case that the last sentence of a citation is what is
1262 being replied to directly, so the last few lines are often much more
1263 important. The number of lines shown at the beginning and end of any
1264 citation can be configured, (notmuch-show-citation-lines-prefix and
1265 notmuch-show-citation-lines-suffix).
1267 The '+' and '-' commands in the search view can now add and remove
1270 Selective bulk tagging is now possible by selecting a region of
1271 threads and then using either the '+' or '-' keybindings. Bulk
1272 tagging is still available for all threads matching the current
1273 search with the '*' binding.
1275 More meaningful buffer names for thread-view buffers.
1277 Notmuch now uses the Subject of the thread as the buffer
1278 name. Previously it was using the thread ID, which is a meaningless
1281 Provide for customized colors of threads in search view based on tags.
1283 See the documentation of notmuch-search-line-faces, (or us "M-x
1284 customize" and browse to the "notmuch" group within "Applications"
1285 and "Mail"), for details on how to configure this colorization.
1287 Build-system features
1288 ---------------------
1289 Add support to properly build libnotmuch on Darwin systems (OS X).
1291 Add support to configure for many standard options.
1293 We include actual support for:
1295 --includedir --mandir --sysconfdir
1297 And accept and silently ignore several more:
1299 --build --infodir --libexecdir --localstatedir
1300 --disable-maintainer-mode --disable-dependency-tracking
1302 Install emacs client in "make install" rather than requiring a
1303 separate "make install-emacs".
1305 Automatically compute versions numbers between releases.
1307 This support uses the git-describe notation, so a version such as
1308 0.1-144-g43cbbfc indicates a version that is 144 commits since the
1309 0.1 release and is available as git commit "43cbbfc".
1311 Add a new "make test" target to run the test suite and actually verify
1314 Notmuch 0.1 (2010-04-05)
1315 ========================
1316 This is the first release of the notmuch mail system.
1318 It includes the libnotmuch library, the notmuch command-line
1319 interface, and an emacs-based interface to notmuch.
1321 Note: Notmuch will work best with Xapian 1.0.18 (or later) or Xapian
1322 1.1.4 (or later). Previous versions of Xapian (whether 1.0 or 1.1) had
1323 a performance bug that made notmuch very slow when modifying
1324 tags. This would cause distracting pauses when reading mail while
1325 notmuch would wait for Xapian when removing the "inbox" and "unread"
1326 tags from messages in a thread.