1 Notmuch 0.11 (201x-xx-xx)
2 =========================
4 New command-line features
5 -------------------------
9 Hooks have been introduced to notmuch. Hooks are scripts that notmuch
10 invokes before and after certain actions. Initially, "notmuch new"
11 supports "pre-new" and "post-new" hooks that are run before and after
12 importing new messages into the database.
17 Automatic tag query optimization
19 "notmuch tag" now automatically optimizes the user's query to
20 exclude messages whose tags won't change. In the past, we've
21 suggested that people do this by hand; this is no longer necessary.
23 Don't sort messages when creating a dump file
25 This speeds up tag dumps considerably, without any loss of
26 information. To replicate the old behavior of sorted output (for
27 example to compare two dump files), one can use e.g. sort(1).
32 Reduction of memory leaks
34 Two memory leaks when searching and showing messages were identified
35 and fixed in this release.
42 notmuch-show-advance (bound to the spacebar in notmuch-show-mode) had
43 a bug that caused it to always jump to the next message, even if it
44 should have scrolled down to show more of the current message instead.
47 Support "notmuch new" as a notmuch-poll-script
49 It's now possible to use "notmuch new" as a notmuch-poll-script
50 directly. This is also the new default. This allows taking better
51 advantage of the "notmuch new" hooks from emacs without intermediate
54 Improvements in saved search management
56 New saved searches are now appended to the list of saved searches,
57 not inserted in front. It's also possible to define a sort function
58 for displaying saved searches; alphabetical sort is provided.
60 Enable hooks for notmuch-hello-mode and notmuch-hello-refresh
62 Customizable message indentation width
64 notmuch-show-indent-messages-width
66 Customizable thousands separator
68 The new configuration variable is notmuch-hello-thousands-separator.
69 The default is now a space instead of a comma.
71 Call notmuch-show instead of notmuch-search when clicking on
74 New function notmuch-show-advance
76 This new function advances through just the current thread, and is
77 less invasive than notmuch-show-advance-and-archive. It can easily
80 (define-key notmuch-show-mode-map " " 'notmuch-show-advance)
82 Various performance improvements.
87 The tool contrib/notmuch-deliver helps with initial delivery and
88 tagging of mail (replacing running notmuch new).
91 Notmuch 0.10.2 (2011-12-04)
92 ===========================
97 Fix crash in python bindings.
99 The python bindings did not call g_type_init, which caused crashes
100 for some, but not all users.
102 Notmuch 0.10.1 (2011-11-25)
103 ===========================
110 Argument processing changes in 0.10 introduced a bug where "notmuch
111 --help" crashed while "notmuch help" worked fine. This is fixed in
114 Notmuch 0.10 (2011-11-23)
115 =========================
117 New build and testing features
118 ------------------------------
120 Emacs tests are now done in dtach. This means that dtach is now
121 needed to run the notmuch test suite, at least until the checking for
122 prerequisites is improved.
124 Full test coverage of the stashing feature in Emacs.
126 New command-line features
127 -------------------------
129 Add "notmuch restore --accumulate" option
131 The --accumulate switch causes the union of the existing and new tags to be
132 applied, instead of replacing each message's tags as they are read in from
135 Add search terms to "notmuch dump"
137 The dump command now takes an optional search term much like notmuch
138 search/show/tag. The output file argument of dump is deprecated in
139 favour of using stdout.
141 Add "notmuch search" --offset and --limit options
143 The search command now takes options --offset=[-]N and --limit=N to limit
144 the number of results shown.
146 Add "notmuch count --output" option
148 The count command is now capable of counting threads in addition to
149 messages. This is selected using the new --output=(threads|messages) option.
151 New emacs UI features
152 ---------------------
154 Add tab-completion for notmuch-search and notmuch-search-filter
156 These functions now support completion tags for query parts
157 starting with "tag:".
159 Turn "id:MSG-ID" links into buttons associated with notmuch searches
161 Text of the form "id:MSG-ID" in mails is now a clickable button that
162 opens a notmuch search for the given message id.
164 Add keybinding ('c I') for stashing Message-ID's without an id: prefix
166 Reduces manual labour when stashing them for use outside notmuch.
168 Do not query on notmuch-search exit
170 It is harmless to kill the external notmuch process, so the user
171 is no longer interrogated when they interrupt a search.
176 Emacs now constructs large search buffers more efficiently
178 Search avoids opening and parsing message files
180 We now store more information in the database so search no longer
181 has to open every message file to get basic headers. This can
182 improve search speed by as much as 10X, but taking advantage of this
183 requires a database rebuild:
185 notmuch dump > notmuch.dump
186 # Backup, then remove notmuch database ($MAIL/.notmuch)
188 notmuch restore notmuch.dump
190 New collection of add-on tools
191 ------------------------------
193 The source directory "contrib" contains tools built on notmuch. These
194 tools are not part of notmuch, and you should check their individual
195 licenses. Feel free to report problems with them to the notmuch
198 nmbug - share tags with a given prefix
200 nmbug helps maintain a git repo containing all tags with a given
201 prefix (by default "notmuch::"). Tags can be shared by commiting
202 them to git in one location and restoring in another.
204 Notmuch 0.9 (2011-10-01)
205 ========================
207 New, general features
208 ---------------------
210 Correct handling of interruptions during "notmuch new"
212 "notmuch new" now operates as a series of small, self-consistent
213 transactions, so it can correctly resume after an interruption or
214 crash. Previously, interruption could lose existing tags, fail to
215 detect messages on resume, or leave the database in a state
216 temporarily or permanently inconsistent with the mail store.
223 notmuch_database_begin_atomic and notmuch_database_end_atomic allow
224 multiple database operations to be performed atomically.
226 notmuch_database_find_message_by_filename does exactly what it says.
230 notmuch_database_find_message (and n_d_f_m_by_filename) now return
231 a status indicator and uses an output parameter for the
232 message. This change required changing the SONAME of libnotmuch to
235 Python bindings changes
236 -----------------------
238 - Re-encode python unicode objects to utf-8 before passing back to
240 - Support Database().begin_atomic()/end_atomic()
241 - Support Database().find_message_by_filename()
242 NB! This needs a db opened in READ-WRITE mode currently, or it will crash
243 the python process. The is a limitation (=bug) of the underlying libnotmuch.
244 - Fixes where we would not throw NotmuchErrors when we should (Justus Winter)
245 - Update for n_d_find_message* API changes (see above).
247 Ruby bindings changes
248 ---------------------
250 - Wrap new library functions notmuch_database_{begin,end}_atomic.
251 - Add new exception Notmuch::UnbalancedAtomicError.
252 - Rename destroy to destroy! according to Ruby naming conventions.
253 - Update for n_d_find_message* API changes (see above).
258 * Add gpg callback to crypto sigstatus buttons to retrieve/refresh
260 * Add notmuch-show-refresh-view function (and corresponding binding)
261 to refresh the view of a notmuch-show buffer.
263 Reply formatting cleanup
264 ------------------------
266 "notmuch reply" no longer includes notification that non-leafnode
267 MIME parts are being suppressed.
269 Notmuch 0.8 (2011-09-10)
270 ========================
272 Improved handling of message/rfc822 parts
274 Both in the CLI and the emacs interface. Output of rfc822 parts now
275 includes the primary headers, as well as the body and all subparts.
276 Output of the completely raw rfc822-formatted message, including all
277 headers, is unfortunately not yet supported (but hopefully will be
280 Improved Build system portability
282 Certain parts of the shell script generating notmuch.sym were
283 specific to the GNU versions of sed and nm. The new version should
284 be more portable to e.g. OpenBSD.
286 Documentation update for Ruby bindings
288 Added documentation, typo fixes, and improved support for rdoc.
290 Unicode, iterator, PEP8 changes for python bindings
292 - PEP8 (code formatting) changes for python files.
293 - Remove Tags.__len__ ; see 0.6 release notes for motivation.
294 - Decode headers as UTF8, encode (unicode) database paths as UTF8.
296 Notmuch 0.7 (2011-08-01)
297 ========================
299 Vim interface improvements
300 --------------------------
302 Jason Woofenden provided a number of bug fixes for the Vim interface
304 * fix citation/signature fold lengths
305 * fix cig/cit parsing within multipart/*
306 * fix on-screen instructions for show-signature
307 * fix from list reformatting in search view
308 * fix space key: now archives (did opposite)
310 Uwe Kleine-König contributed
312 * use full path for sendmail/doc fix
313 * fix compose temp file name
315 Python Bindings changes
316 -----------------------
318 Sebastian Spaeth contributed two changes related to unicode and UTF8:
320 * message tags are now explicitly unicode
321 * query string is encoded as a UTF8 byte string
323 Build-System improvements
324 ------------------------
326 Generate notmuch.sym after the relevant object files
328 This fixes a bug in parallel building. Thanks to Thomas Jost for the
331 Notmuch 0.6.1 (2011-07-17)
332 ==========================
337 Re-export Xapian exception typeinfo symbols.
339 It turned out our aggressive symbol hiding caused problems for
340 people running gcc 4.4.5.
342 Notmuch 0.6 (2011-07-01)
343 =======================
344 New, general features
345 ---------------------
346 Folder-based searching
348 Notmuch queries can now include a search term to match the
349 directories in which mail files are stored (within the mail
350 storage). The syntax is as follows:
354 For example, one might use things such as:
360 to match any path containing a directory "spam", "work/todo", or
361 containing a directory starting with "2011-", respectively.
363 This feature is particularly useful for users of delivery-agent
364 software (such as procmail or maildrop) that is filtering mail and
365 delivering it to particular folders, or users of systems such as
366 Gmail that use filesystem directories to indicate message tags.
368 NOTE: Only messages that are newly indexed with this version of
369 notmuch will be searchable with folder: terms. In order to enable
370 this feature for all mail, the entire notmuch index will need to be
373 notmuch dump > notmuch.dump
374 # Backup, then remove notmuch database ($MAIL/.notmuch)
376 notmuch restore notmuch.dump
380 Both the command line interface and the emacs-interface have new
381 support for PGP/MIME, detailed below. Thanks to Daniel Kahn Gillmor
382 and Jameson Graef Rollins for making this happen.
384 New, automatic tags: "signed" and "encrypted"
386 These tags will automatically be applied to messages containing
387 multipart/signed and multipart/encrypted parts.
389 NOTE: Only messages that are newly indexed with this version of
390 notmuch will receive these tags.
392 New command-line features
393 -------------------------
394 Add new "notmuch show --verify" option for signature verification
396 This option instruct notmuch to verify the signature of
397 PGP/MIME-signed parts.
399 Add new "notmuch show --decrypt" and "notmuch reply --decrypt" options
401 This option instructs notmuch to decrypt PGP/MIME-encrypted parts.
402 Note that this feature currently requires gpg-agent and a passphrase entry
403 tool (e.g. pinentry-gtk or pinentry-curses).
405 Proper nesting of multipart parts in "notmuch show" output
407 MIME parts are now display with proper nesting to reflect original
408 MIME hierarchy of a message. This allows clients to correctly
409 analyze the MIME structure, (such as, for example, determining to
410 which parts a signature part applies).
412 Add new "notmuch show --part" option
414 This is a replacement for the older "notmuch part" command, (which
415 is now deprecated—it should still work as always, but is no longer
416 documented). Putting part output under "notmuch show" allows for all
417 of the "notmuch show" options to be applied when extracting a single
418 part, (such as --format=json for extracting a message part with JSON
421 Deprecate "notmuch search-tags", (in favor of "notmuch search --output=tags *")
423 The "notmuch search-tags" sub-command has been redundant since the
424 addition of the --output=tags option to "notmuch search". We now
425 make that more clear by deprecating "notmuch search-tags", (dropping
426 it from the documentation). We do continue to support the old syntax
427 by translating it internally to the new call.
429 Performance improvements
430 ------------------------
431 Faster searches (by doing fewer searches to construct threads)
433 Whenever a user asks for search results as threads, notmuch first
434 performs a search for messages matching the query, then performs
435 additional searches to find other messages in the resulting threads.
437 Removing inefficiencies and redundancies in these secondary searches
438 results in a measured speedups of 1.5x for a typical search.
440 Faster searches (by doing fewer passes to gather message data)
442 Optimizing Xapian data access patterns (using a single pass to get
443 all message-document data rather than a pass for each data type)
444 results in a measured speedup of 1.7x for a typical search.
446 The benefits of this optimization combine with the preceding
447 optimization. With both in place, Austin Clements measured a speedup
448 of 2.5x for a search of all messages in his inbox (was 4.5s, now
449 1.8s). Thanks, Austin!
451 Faster initial indexing
453 More efficient indexing of new messages results in a measured
454 speedup of 1.4x for the initial indexing of 3 GB of mail (1h 14m
455 rather than 1h 46m). Thanks to Austin Clements and Michal Sojka.
457 Make "notmuch new" faster for unchanged directories
459 Optimizing to not do any further examinations of sub-directories
460 when the filesystem indicates that a directory is unchanged from the
461 last "notmuch new" results in measured speedups of 8.5 for the "No
462 new mail" case, (was 0.77s, now 0.09s). Thanks to Karel Zak.
464 New emacs-interface features
465 ----------------------------
467 Support for PGP/MIME (GnuPG)
469 Automatically indicate validity of signatures for multipart/signed
470 messages. Automatically display decrypted content for
471 multipart/encrypted messages. See the emacs variable
472 notmuch-crypto-process-mime for more information. Note that this
473 needs gpg-agent and a pinentry tool just as the command line tools.
474 Also note there is no support SMIME yet.
476 Output of pipe command is now displayed if pipe command fails
478 This is extremely useful in the common use case of piping a patch to
479 "git am". If git fails to cleanly merge the patch the error messages
480 from the failed merge are now clearly displayed to the user, (where
481 previously they were silently hidden from the user).
483 User-selectable From address
485 A user can choose which configured email addresses should be used as
486 the From address whenever composing a new message. To do so, simply
487 press C-u before the command which will open a new message. Emacs
488 will prompt for the from address to use.
490 The user can customize the "Notmuch Identities" setting in the
491 notmuch customize group in order to use addresses other than those in
492 the notmuch configuration file if desired.
494 The user can also choose to always be prompted for the from address
495 when composing a new message (without having to use C-u) by setting
496 the "Notmuch Always Prompt For Sender" option in the notmuch
499 Hiding of repeated subjects in collapsed thread view
501 In notmuch-show mode, if a collapsed message has the same subject as
502 its parent, the subject is not shown.
504 Automatic detection and hiding of original message in top-posted message
506 When a message contains a line looking something like:
508 ----- Original Message -----
510 emacs hides this and all subsequent lines as an "original message",
511 (allowing the user to click or press enter on the "original message"
512 button to display it again). This makes the handling of top-posted
513 citations work much like conventional citations.
515 New hooks for running code when tags are modified
517 Some users want to perform additional actions whenever a particular
518 tag is added/removed from a message. This could be used to, for
519 example, interface with some external spam-recognition training
520 tool. To facilitate this, two new hooks are added which can be
521 modified in the following settings of the notmuch customize group:
523 Notmuch Before Tag Hook
524 Notmuch After Tag Hook
526 New optional support for hiding some multipart/alternative parts
528 Many emails are sent with redundant content within a
529 multipart/alternative group (such as a text/plain part as well as a
530 text/html part). Users can configure the setting:
532 Notmuch Show All Multipart/Alternative Parts
534 to "off" in the notmuch customize group to have the interface
535 automatically hide some part alternatives (such as text/html
536 parts). This new part hiding is not configured by default yet
537 because there's not yet a simple way to re-display such a hidden
538 part if it is not actually redundant with a displayed part.
540 Better rendering of text/x-vcalendar parts
542 These parts are now displayed in a format suitable for use with the
545 Avoid getting confused by Subject and Author fields with newline characters
547 Replacing all characters with ASCII code less than 32 with a question mark.
549 Cleaner display of From line in email messages (remove double quotes,
550 and drop "name" if it's actually just a repeat of the email address).
552 Vim interface improvements
553 --------------------------
554 Felipe Contreras provided a number of updates for the vim interface:
556 * Using sendmail directly rather than mailx,
557 * Implementing archive in show view
558 * Add support to mark as read in show and search views
559 * Add delete commands
562 Bindings improvements
563 ---------------------
564 Ruby bindings are now much more complete
566 Including QUERY.sort, QUERY.to_s, MESSAGE.maildir_flags_to_tags,
567 MESSAGE.tags_to_maildir_flags, and MESSAGE.get_filenames
569 * Python bindings have been updated and extended
570 (docs online at http://packages.python.org/notmuch/)
573 - Message().get_filenames(),
574 - Message().tags_to_maildir_flags(),Message().maildir_flags_to_tags()
575 - list(Threads()) and list(Messages) works now
577 - Message().__cmp__() and __hash__()
578 These allow, for example:
581 As well as set arithmetic on Messages():
583 s1, s2= set(msgs1), set(msgs2)
588 - len(Messages()) as it exhausted the iterator.
589 Use len(list(Messages())) or
590 Query.count_messages() to get the length.
592 Added initial Go bindings in bindings/go
594 New build-system features
595 -------------------------
596 Added support for building in a directory other than the source directory
598 This can be used with the widely-supported idiom of simply running
599 the configure script from some other directory:
606 Fix to save configure options for future, implicit runs of configure
608 When a user updates the source (such as with "git pull") calling
609 "make" may cause an automatic re-run of the configure script. When
610 this happens, the configure script will automatically be called with
611 the same options the user originally passed in the most-recent
612 manual invocation of configure.
614 New test-suite feature
615 ----------------------
616 Binary for bash for running test suite now located via PATH.
618 The notmuch test suite requires a fairly recent version of bash (>=
619 bash 4). As some systems supply an older version of bash at
620 /bin/bash, the test suite is now updated to search $PATH to locate
621 the bash binary. This allows users of systems with old /bin/bash to
622 simply install bash >= 4 somewhere on $PATH before /bin and then use
625 Support for testing output with a trailing newline.
627 Previously, some tests would fail to notice a difference in the
628 presence/absence of a trailing newline in a program output, (which
629 has led to bugs in the past). Now, carefully-written tests (using
630 test_expect_equal_file rather than test_expect_equal) will detect
631 any change in the presence/absence of a trailing newline. Many tests
632 are updated to take advantage of this.
634 Avoiding accessing user's $HOME while running test suite
636 The test suite now carefully creates its own HOME directory. This
637 allows the test suite to be run with no existing HOME directory, (as
638 some build systems apparently do), and avoids test-suite differences
639 due to configuration files in the users HOME directory.
644 Output *all* files for "notmuch search --output=files"
646 For the cases where multiple files have the same Message ID,
647 previous versions of notmuch would output only one such file. This
648 command is now fixed to correctly output all files.
650 Fixed spurious search results from "overlapped" indexing of addresses
652 This fixed a bug where a search for:
654 to:user@elsewhere.com
656 would incorrectly match a message sent:
658 To: user@example,com, someone@elsewhere.com
660 Fix --output=json when search has no results
662 A bug present since notmuch 0.4 had caused searches with no results
663 to produce an invalid json object. This is now fixed to cleanly
664 return a valid json object representing an empty array "[]" as
667 fix the automatic detection of the From address for "notmuch reply"
668 from the Received headers in some cases.
670 Fix core dump on DragonFlyBSD due to -1 return value from
671 sysconf(_SC_GETPW_R_SIZE_MAX).
673 Cleaned up several memory leaks
675 Eliminated a few, rare segmentation faults and a double-free.
677 Fix libnotmuch library to only export notmuch API functions
679 Previous release of the notmuch library also exported some Xapian
680 C++ exception type symbols. These were never part of the library
681 interface and were never intended to be exported.
683 Emacs-interface bug fixes
684 -------------------------
685 Display any unexpected output or errors from "notmuch search" invocations
687 Previously any misformatted output or trailing error messages were
688 silently ignored. This output is now clearly displayed. This fix was
689 very helpful in identifying and fixing the bug described below.
691 Fix bug where some threads would be missing from large search results
693 When a search returned a "large" number of results, the emacs
694 interface was incorrectly dropping one thread every time the output
695 of the "notmuch search" process spanned the emacs read-buffer. This
698 Avoid re-compression of .gz files (and similar) when saving attachment
700 Emacs was being too clever for its own good and trying to
701 re-compress pre-compressed .gz files when saving such attachments
702 (potentially corrupting the attachment). The emacs interface is
703 fixed to avoid this bug.
705 Fix hiding of a message when a previously-hidden citation is visible
707 Previously the citation would remain visible in this case. This is
708 fixed so that hiding a message hides all parts.
710 Notmuch 0.5 (2010-11-11)
711 ========================
712 New, general features
713 ---------------------
714 Maildir-flag synchronization
716 Notmuch now knows how to synchronize flags in maildir filenames with
717 tags in the notmuch database. The following flag/tag mappings are
726 'S' unread (added when 'S' flag is not present)
728 The synchronization occurs in both directions, (for example, adding
729 the 'S' flag to a file will cause the "unread" tag to be added, and
730 adding the "replied" tag to a message will cause the file to be
731 renamed with an 'R' flag).
733 This synchronization is enabled by default for users of the
734 command-line interface, (though only files in directories named
735 "cur" or "new" will be renamed). It can be disabled by setting the
736 new maildir.synchronize_flags option in the configuration file. For
739 notmuch config set maildir.synchronize_flags false
741 Users upgrading may also want to run "notmuch setup" once (just
742 accept the existing configuration) to get a new, nicely-commented
743 [maildir] section added to the configuration file.
745 For users of the notmuch library, the new synchronization
746 functionality is available with the following two new functions:
748 notmuch_message_maildir_flags_to_tags
749 notmuch_message_tags_to_maildir_flags
751 It is anticipated that future improvements to this support will
752 allow for safe synchronization of the 'T' flag with the "deleted"
753 tag, as well as support for custom flag/tag mappings.
757 Support for querying multiple filenames for a single message
759 It is common for the mailstore to contain multiple files with the
760 same message ID. Previously, notmuch would always hide these
761 duplicate files, (returning a single, arbitrary filename with
762 notmuch_message_get_filename).
764 With this release, library users can access all filenames for a
765 message with the new function:
767 notmuch_message_get_filenames
769 Together with notmuch_filenames_valid, notmuch_filenames_get, and
770 notmuch_filenames_move_to_next it is now possible to iterate over
771 all available filenames for a given message.
773 New command-line features
774 -------------------------
775 New "notmuch show --format=raw" for getting at original email contents
777 This new feature allows for a fully-functional email client to be
778 built on top of the notmuch command-line without needing any direct
779 access to the mail store itself.
781 For example, it's now possible to run "emacs -f notmuch" on a local
782 machine with only ssh access to the mail store/notmuch database. To
783 do this, simply set the notmuch-command variable in emacs to the
784 name of a script containing:
786 ssh user@host notmuch "$@"
788 If the ssh client has enabled connection sharing (ControlMaster
789 option in OpenSSH), the emacs interface can be quite responsive this
794 Fix "notmuch search" to print nothing when nothing matches
796 The 0.4 release had a bug in which:
798 notmuch search <expression-with-no-matches>
800 would produce a single blank line of output, (where previous
801 versions would produce no output. This fix also causes a change in
802 the --format=json output, (which would previously produce "[]" and
803 now produces nothing).
805 Emacs interface improvements
806 ----------------------------
807 Fix to allow pipe ('|') command to work when using notmuch over ssh
809 Fix count of lines in hidden signatures.
811 Omit repeated subject lines in (collapsed) thread display.
813 Display current thread subject in a header line.
815 Provide a "c i" binding to copy a thread ID from the search view.
817 Allow for notmuch-fcc-dirs to have a value of nil.
819 Also, the more complex form of notmuch-fcc-dirs now has a slightly
820 different format. It no longer has a special first-element, fallback
821 string. Instead it's now a list of cons cells where the car of each
822 cell is a regular expression to be matched against the sender
823 address, and the cdr is the name of a folder to use for an FCC. So
824 the old fallback behavior can be achieved by including a final cell
825 of (".*" . "default-fcc-folder").
827 Vim interface improvements
828 --------------------------
829 Felipe Contreras provided a number of updates for the vim interface.
831 These include optimizations, support for newer versions of vim, fixed
832 support for sending mail on modern systems, new commands, and
837 Added initial ruby bindings in bindings/ruby
839 Notmuch 0.4 (2010-11-01)
840 ========================
841 New command-line features
842 -------------------------
843 notmuch search --output=(summary|threads|messages|tags|files)
845 This new option allows for particular items to be returned from
846 notmuch searches. The "summary" option is the default and behaves
847 just as "notmuch search" has historically behaved.
849 The new option values allow for thread IDs, message IDs, lists of
850 tags, and lists of filenames to be returned from searches. It is
851 expected that this new option will be very useful in shell
852 scripts. For example:
854 for file in $(notmuch search --output=files <search-terms>); do
855 <operations-on> "$file"
858 notmuch show --format=mbox <search-specification>
860 This new option allows for the messages matching a search
861 specification to be presented as an mbox. Specifically the "mboxrd"
862 format is used which allows for reversible quoting of lines
863 beginning with "From ". A reader should remove a single '>' from the
864 beginning of all lines beginning with one or more '>' characters
865 followed by the 5 characters "From ".
867 notmuch config [get|set] <section>.<item> [value ...]
869 The new top-level "config" command allows for any value in the
870 notmuch configuration file to be queried or set to a new value. Both
871 single-valued and multi-valued items are supported, as our any
872 custom items stored in the configuration file.
874 Avoid setting Bcc header in "notmuch reply"
876 We decided that this was a bit heavy-handed as the actual mail
877 user-agent should be responsible for setting any Bcc option. Also,
878 see below for the notmuch/emacs user-agent now setting an Fcc by
879 default rather than Bcc.
883 Add notmuch_query_get_query_string and notmuch_query_get_sort
885 These are simply functions for querying properties of a
886 notmuch_query_t object.
890 Enable Fcc of all sent messages by default (to "sent" directory)
892 All messages sent from the emacs interface will now be saved to the
893 notmuch mail store where they will be incorporated to the database
894 by the next "notmuch new". By default, messages are saved to the
895 "sent" directory at the top-level of the mail store. This directory
896 can be customized by means of the "Notmuch Fcc Dirs" option in the
897 notmuch customize interface.
899 Ability to all open messages in a thread to a pipe
901 Historically, the '|' keybinding allows for piping a single message
902 to an external command. Now, by prefixing this key with a prefix
903 argument, (for example, by pressing "Control-U |"), all open
904 messages in the current thread will be sent to the external command.
906 Optional support for detecting inline patches
908 This hook is disabled by default but can be enabled with a checkbox
909 under "Notmuch Show Insert Text/Plain Hook" in the notmuch customize
910 interface. It allows for inline patches to be detected and treated
911 as if they were attachments, (with context-sensitive highlighting).
913 Automatically tag messages as "replied" when sending a reply
915 Messages replied to within the emacs interface will now be tagged as
916 "replied". This feature can easily be customized to add or remove
917 other tags as well. For example, a user might use a tag of
918 "needs-reply" and can configure this feature to automatically remove
919 that tag when replying. See "Notmuch Message Mark Replied" in the
920 notmuch customize interface.
922 Allow search-result color specifications to overlay each other
924 For example, one tag can specify the background color of matching
925 lines, while another can specify the foreground. With this change,
926 both settings will now be visible simultaneously, (which was not the
927 case in previous releases). See "Notmuch Search Line Faces" in the
928 notmuch customize interface.
930 Make hidden author names still available for incremental search.
932 When there is insufficient space to display all authors of a thread
933 in search results, the names of hidden authors are now still made
934 available to emacs' incremental search commands. As the user
935 searches, matching lines will temporarily expand to show the hidden
938 New binding of Control-TAB (works like TAB in reverse)
940 Many notmuch nodes already use TAB to navigate forward through
941 various items allowing actions, (message headers, email attachments,
942 etc.). The new Control-TAB binding operates similarly but in the
945 New build-system features
946 -------------------------
947 Various portability fixes have been applied
949 These include fixes for build failures on at least Solaris, FreeBSD,
950 and Fedora systems. We're hopeful that the notmuch code base is now
951 more portable than ever before.
953 Arrange for libnotmuch to be found automatically after make install
955 The notmuch build system is now careful to help the user avoid
956 errors of the form "libnotmuch.so could not be found" immediately
957 after installing. This support takes two forms:
959 1. If the library is installed to a system directory,
960 (configured in /etc/ld.so.conf), then "make install" will
961 automatically run ldconfig.
963 2. If the library is installed to a non-system directory, the
964 build system adds a DR_RUNPATH entry to the final binary
965 pointing to the directory to which the library is installed.
967 When this support works, the user should be able to run notmuch
968 immediately after "make install", without any errors trying to find
969 the notmuch library, and without having to manually set environment
970 variables such as LD_LIBRARY_PATH.
972 Check compiler/linker options before using them
974 The configure script now carefully checks that any desired
975 compilation options, (whether for enabling compiler warnings, or for
976 embedding rpath, etc.), are supported. Only supported options are
977 used in the resulting Makefile.
979 New test-suite features
980 -----------------------
981 New modularization of test suite.
983 Thanks to a gracious relicensing of the test-suite infrastructure
984 from the git project, notmuch now has a modular test suite. This
985 provides the ability to run individual sections of the test suite
986 rather than the whole things. It also provides better summary of
987 test results, with support for tests that are expected to fail
988 (BROKEN and FIXED) in addition to PASS and FAIL. Finally, it makes
989 it easy to run the test suite within valgrind (pass --valgrind to
990 notmuch-test or to any sub-script) which has been very useful.
992 New testing of emacs interface.
994 The test suite has been augmented to allow automated testing of the
995 emacs interfaces. So far, this includes basic searches, display of
996 threads, and tag manipulation. This also includes a test that a new
997 message can successfully be sent out through a (dummy) SMTP server
998 and that said message is successfully integrated into the notmuch
999 database via the FCC setting.
1003 Fix potential corruption of database when "notmuch new " is interrupted.
1005 Previously, an interruption of "notmuch new" would (rarely) result
1006 in a corrupt database. The corruption would manifest itself by a
1007 persistent error of the form:
1009 document ID of 1234 has no thread ID
1011 The message-adding code has been carefully audited and reworked to
1012 avoid this sort of corruption regardless of when it is interrupted.
1014 Fix failure with extremely long message ID headers.
1016 Previously, a message with an extremely long message ID, (say, more
1017 than 300 characters), would fail to be added to notmuch, (triggering
1018 Xapian exceptions). This has now been fixed.
1020 Fix for messages with "charset=unknown-8bit"
1022 Previously, messages with this charset would cause notmuch to emit a
1023 GMime warning, (which would then trip up emacs or other interfaces
1024 parsing the notmuch results).
1026 Fix notmuch_query_search_threads function to return NULL on any exception
1028 Fix "notmuch search" to return non-zero if notmuch_query_search_threads fails
1030 Previously, this command could confusingly report a Xapian
1031 exception, yet still return an error code of 0. It now correctly
1032 returns a failing error code of 1 in this case.
1036 Fix to handle a message with a subject containing, for example "[1234]"
1038 Previously, a message subject containing a sequence of digits within
1039 square brackets would cause the emacs interface to mis-parse the
1040 output of "notmuch search". This would result in the message being
1041 mis-displayed and prevent the user from manipulating the message in
1042 the emacs interface.
1044 Fix to correctly handle message IDs containing ".."
1046 The emacs interface now properly quotes message IDs to avoid a
1047 Xapian bug in which the ".." within a message ID would be
1048 misinterpreted as a numeric range specification.
1050 Python-binding fixes
1051 --------------------
1052 The python bindings for notmuch have been updated to work with python3.
1054 Debian-specific fixes
1055 ---------------------
1056 Fix emacs initialization so "M-x notmuch" works for users by default.
1058 Now, a new Debian user can immediately run "emacs -f notmuch" after
1059 "apt-get install notmuch". Previously, the user would have had to
1060 edit the ~/.emacs file to add "(require 'notmuch)" before this would
1063 Notmuch 0.3.1 (2010-04-27)
1064 ==========================
1067 Fix an infinite loop in "notmuch reply"
1069 This bug could be triggered by replying to a message where the
1070 user's primary email address did not appear in the To: header and
1071 the user had not configured any secondary email addresses. The bug
1072 was a simple re-use of the same iterator variable in nested loops.
1074 Fix a potential SEGV in "notmuch search"
1076 This bug could be triggered by an author name ending in a ','.
1077 Admittedly - that's almost certainly a spam email, but we never
1078 want notmuch to crash.
1082 Fix calculations for line wrapping in the primary "notmuch" view.
1084 Fix Fcc support to prompt to create a directory if the specified Fcc
1085 directory does not exist.
1089 Fix build on OpenSolaris (at least) due to missing 'extern "C"' block.
1091 Without this, the C++ sources could not find strcasestr and the
1092 final linking of notmuch would fail.
1094 Notmuch 0.3 (2010-04-27)
1095 ========================
1096 New command-line features
1097 -------------------------
1098 User-configurable tags for new messages
1100 A new "new.tags" option is available in the configuration file to
1101 determine which tags are applied to new messages. Run "notmuch
1102 setup" to generate new documentation within ~/.notmuch-config on how
1103 to specify this value.
1105 Threads search results named based on subjects that match search
1107 This means that when new mails arrived to a thread you've previously
1108 read, and the new mails have a new subject, you will see that
1109 subject in the search results rather than the old subject.
1111 Faster operation of "notmuch tag" (avoid unneeded sorting)
1113 Since the user just wants to tag all matching messages, we can make
1114 things perform a bit faster by avoiding the sort.
1116 Even Better guessing of From: header for "notmuch reply"
1118 Notmuch now looks at a number of headers when trying to figure out
1119 the best From: header to use in a reply. This is helpful if you have
1120 several configured email addresses, and you also subscribe to various
1121 mailing lists with different addresses, (so that mails you are
1122 replying to won't always include your subscribed address in the To:
1125 Indication of author names that match a search
1127 When notmuch displays threads as the result of a search, it now
1128 lists the authors that match the search before listing the other
1129 authors in the thread. It inserts a pipe '|' symbol between the last
1130 matching and first non-matching author. This is especially useful in
1131 a search that includes tag:unread. Now the authors of the unread
1132 messages in the thread are listed first.
1134 New: Python bindings
1135 --------------------
1136 Sebastian Spaeth has contributed his python bindings for the notmuch
1137 library to the central repository. These bindings were previously
1138 known as "cnotmuch" within python but have now been renamed to be
1139 accessible with a simple, and more official-looking "import notmuch".
1141 The bindings have already proven very useful as people proficient in
1142 python have been able to easily develop programs to do notmuch-based
1143 searches for email-address completion, maildir-flag synchronization,
1146 These bindings are available within the bindings/python directory, but
1147 are not yet integrated into the top-level Makefiles, nor the top-level
1148 package-building scripts. Improvements are welcome.
1150 Emacs interface improvements
1151 ----------------------------
1152 An entirely new initial view for notmuch, (friendly yet powerful)
1154 Some of us call the new view "notmuch hello" but you can get at it
1155 by simply calling "emacs -f notmuch". The new view provides a search
1156 bar where new searches can be performed. It also displays a list of
1157 recent searches, along with a button to save any of these, giving it
1158 a new name as a "saved search". Many people find these "saved
1159 searches" one of the most convenient ways of organizing their mail,
1160 (providing all of the features of "folders" in other mail clients,
1161 but without any of the disadvantages).
1163 Finally, this view can also optionally display all of the tags that
1164 exist in the database, along with a count for each tag, and a custom
1165 search of messages with that tag that's simply a click (or keypress)
1168 Note: For users that liked the original mode of "emacs -f notmuch"
1169 immediately displaying a particular search result, we
1170 recommend instead running something like:
1172 emacs --eval '(notmuch search "tag:inbox" t)'
1174 The "t" means to sort the messages in an "oldest first" order,
1175 (as notmuch would do previously by default). You can also
1176 leave that off to have your search results in "newest first"
1179 Full-featured "customize" support for configuring notmuch
1181 Notmuch now plugs in well to the emacs "customize" mode to make it
1182 much simpler to find things about the notmuch interface that can be
1183 tweaked by the user.
1185 You can get to this mode by starting at the main "Customize" menu in
1186 emacs, then browsing through "Applications", "Mail", and
1187 "Notmuch". Or you can go straight to "M-x customize-group"
1190 Once you're at the customize screen, you'll see a list of documented
1191 options that can be manipulated along with checkboxes, drop-down
1192 selectors, and text-entry boxes for configuring the various
1195 Support for doing tab-completion of email addresses
1197 This support currently relies on an external program,
1198 (notmuch-addresses), that is not yet shipped with notmuch
1199 itself. But multiple, suitable implementations of this program have
1200 already been written that generate address completions by doing
1201 notmuch searches of your email collection. For example, providing
1202 first those addresses that you have composed messages to in the
1205 One such program (implemented in python with the python bindings to
1206 notmuch) is available via:
1208 git clone http://jkr.acm.jhu.edu/git/notmuch_addresses.git
1210 Install that program as notmuch-addresses on your PATH, and then
1211 hitting TAB on a partial email address or name within the To: or Cc:
1212 line of an email message will provide matching completions.
1214 Support for file-based (Fcc) delivery of sent messages to mail store
1216 This isn't yet enabled by default. To enable this, one will have to
1217 set the "Notmuch Fcc Dirs" setting within the notmuch customize
1218 screen, (see its documentation there for details). We anticipate
1219 making this automatic in a future release.
1221 New 'G' key binding to trigger mail refresh (G == "Get new mail")
1223 The 'G' key works wherever '=' works. Before refreshing the screen
1224 it calls an external program that can be used to poll email servers,
1225 run notmuch new and setup specific tags for the new emails. The
1226 script to be called should be configured with the "Notmuch Poll
1227 Script" setting in the customize interface. This script will
1228 typically invoke "notmuch new" and then perhaps several "notmuch
1231 Implement emacs message display with the JSON output from notmuch.
1233 This is much more robust than the previous implementation, (where
1234 some HTML mails and mail quoting the notmuch code with the delimiter
1235 characters in it would cause the parser to fall over).
1237 Better handling of HTML messages and MIME attachments (inline images!)
1239 Allow for any MIME parts that emacs can display to be displayed
1240 inline. This includes inline viewing of image attachments, (provided
1241 the window is large enough to fit the image at its natural size).
1243 Much more robust handling of HTML messages. Currently both text/plain
1244 and text/html alternates will be rendered next to each other. In a
1245 future release, users will be able to decide to see only one or the
1246 other representation.
1248 Each attachment now has its own button so that attachments can be
1249 saved individually (the 'w' key is still available to save all
1252 Customizable support for tidying of text/plain message content
1254 Many new functions are available for tidying up message
1255 content. These include options such as wrapping long lines,
1256 compressing duplicate blank lines, etc.
1258 Most of these are disabled by default, but can easily be enabled by
1259 clicking the available check boxes under the "Notmuch Show Insert
1260 Text/Plain Hook" within the notmuch customize screen.
1262 New support for searchable citations (even when hidden)
1264 When portions of overly-long citations are hidden, the contents of
1265 these citations will still be available for emacs' standard
1266 "incremental search" functions. When the search matches any portion
1267 of a hidden citation, the citation will become visible temporarily
1268 to display the search result.
1270 More flexible handling of header visibility
1272 As an answer to complaints from many users, the To, Cc, and Date
1273 headers of messages are no longer hidden by default. For those users
1274 that liked that these were hidden, a new "Notmuch Messages Headers
1275 Visible" option in the customize interface can be set to nil. The
1276 visibility of headers can still be toggled on a per-message basis
1277 with the 'h' keybinding.
1279 For users that don't want to see some subset of those headers, the
1280 new "Notmuch Message Headers" variable can be customized to list
1281 only those headers that should be present in the display of a message.
1283 The Return key now toggles message visibility anywhere
1285 Previously this worked only on the first summary-line of a message.
1287 Customizable formatting of search results
1289 The user can easily customize the order, width, and formatting of
1290 the various fields in a "notmuch search" buffer. See the "Notmuch
1291 Search Result Format" section of the customize interface.
1293 Generate nicer names for search buffers when using a saved search.
1295 Add a notmuch User-Agent header when sending mail from notmuch/emacs.
1297 New keybinding (M-Ret) to open all collapsed messages in a thread.
1301 Provide a new NOTMUCH_SORT_UNSORTED value for queries
1303 This can be somewhat faster when sorting simply isn't desired. For
1304 example when collecting a set of messages that will all be
1305 manipulated identically, (adding a tag, removing a tag, deleting the
1306 messages), then there's no advantage to sorting the messages by
1311 Fix to compile against GMime 2.6
1313 Previously notmuch insisted on being able to find GMime 2.4, (even
1314 though GMime 2.6 would have worked all along).
1316 Fix configure script to accept (and ignore) various standard options.
1318 For example, those that the Gentoo build scripts expect configure to
1319 accept are now all accepted.
1323 A large number of new tests for the many new features.
1325 Better display of output from failed tests.
1327 Now shows failures with diff rather than forcing the user to gaze at
1328 complete actual and expected output looking for deviation.
1330 Notmuch 0.2 (2010-04-16)
1331 ========================
1332 This is the second release of the notmuch mail system, with actual
1333 detailed release notes this time!
1335 This release consists of a number of minor new features that make
1336 notmuch more pleasant to use, and a few fairly major bug fixes.
1338 We didn't quite hit our release target of "about a week" from the 0.1
1339 release, (0.2 is happening 11 days after 0.1), but we hope to do
1340 better for next week. Look forward to some major features coming to
1341 notmuch in subsequent releases.
1347 Better guessing of From: header.
1349 Notmuch now tries harder to guess which configured address should be
1350 used as the From: line in a "notmuch reply". It will examine the
1351 Received: headers if it fails to find any configured address in To:
1352 or Cc:. This allows it to often choose the correct address even when
1353 replying to a message sent to a mailing list, and not directly to a
1356 Make "notmuch count" with no arguments count all messages
1358 Previously, it was hard to construct a search term that was
1359 guaranteed to match all messages.
1361 Provide a new special-case search term of "*" to match all messages.
1363 This can be used in any command accepting a search term, such as
1364 "notmuch search '*'". Note that you'll want to take care that the
1365 shell doesn't expand * against the current files. And note that the
1366 support for "*" is a special case. It's only meaningful as a single
1367 search term and loses its special meaning when combined with any
1370 Automatically detect thread connections even when a parent message is
1373 Previously, if two or more message were received with a common
1374 parent, but that parent was not received, then these messages would
1375 not be recognized as belonging to the same thread. This is now fixed
1376 so that such messages are properly connected in a thread.
1380 Fix potential data loss in "notmuch new" with SIGINT
1382 One code path in "notmuch new" was not properly handling
1383 SIGINT. Previously, this could lead to messages being removed from
1384 the database (and their tags being lost) if the user pressed
1385 Control-C while "notmuch new" was working.
1387 Fix segfault when a message includes a MIME part that is empty.
1389 Fix handling of non-ASCII characters with --format=json
1391 Previously, characters outside the range of 7-bit ASCII were
1392 silently dropped from the JSON output. This led to corrupted display
1393 of utf-8 content in the upcoming notmuch web-based frontends.
1395 Fix headers to be properly decoded in "notmuch reply"
1397 Previously, the user might see:
1399 Subject: Re: =?iso-8859-2?q?Rozlu=E8ka?=
1403 Subject: Re: Rozlučka
1405 The former text is properly encoded to be RFC-compliant SMTP, will
1406 be sent correctly, and will be properly decoded by the
1407 recipient. But the user trying to edit the reply would likely be
1408 unable to read or edit that field in its encoded form.
1410 Emacs client features
1411 ---------------------
1412 Show the last few lines of citations as well as the first few lines.
1414 It's often the case that the last sentence of a citation is what is
1415 being replied to directly, so the last few lines are often much more
1416 important. The number of lines shown at the beginning and end of any
1417 citation can be configured, (notmuch-show-citation-lines-prefix and
1418 notmuch-show-citation-lines-suffix).
1420 The '+' and '-' commands in the search view can now add and remove
1423 Selective bulk tagging is now possible by selecting a region of
1424 threads and then using either the '+' or '-' keybindings. Bulk
1425 tagging is still available for all threads matching the current
1426 search with the '*' binding.
1428 More meaningful buffer names for thread-view buffers.
1430 Notmuch now uses the Subject of the thread as the buffer
1431 name. Previously it was using the thread ID, which is a meaningless
1434 Provide for customized colors of threads in search view based on tags.
1436 See the documentation of notmuch-search-line-faces, (or us "M-x
1437 customize" and browse to the "notmuch" group within "Applications"
1438 and "Mail"), for details on how to configure this colorization.
1440 Build-system features
1441 ---------------------
1442 Add support to properly build libnotmuch on Darwin systems (OS X).
1444 Add support to configure for many standard options.
1446 We include actual support for:
1448 --includedir --mandir --sysconfdir
1450 And accept and silently ignore several more:
1452 --build --infodir --libexecdir --localstatedir
1453 --disable-maintainer-mode --disable-dependency-tracking
1455 Install emacs client in "make install" rather than requiring a
1456 separate "make install-emacs".
1458 Automatically compute versions numbers between releases.
1460 This support uses the git-describe notation, so a version such as
1461 0.1-144-g43cbbfc indicates a version that is 144 commits since the
1462 0.1 release and is available as git commit "43cbbfc".
1464 Add a new "make test" target to run the test suite and actually verify
1467 Notmuch 0.1 (2010-04-05)
1468 ========================
1469 This is the first release of the notmuch mail system.
1471 It includes the libnotmuch library, the notmuch command-line
1472 interface, and an emacs-based interface to notmuch.
1474 Note: Notmuch will work best with Xapian 1.0.18 (or later) or Xapian
1475 1.1.4 (or later). Previous versions of Xapian (whether 1.0 or 1.1) had
1476 a performance bug that made notmuch very slow when modifying
1477 tags. This would cause distracting pauses when reading mail while
1478 notmuch would wait for Xapian when removing the "inbox" and "unread"
1479 tags from messages in a thread.