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 Add tab-completion for notmuch-search and notmuch-search-filter
41 These functions now support completion tags for query parts
47 Emacs now constructs large search buffers more efficiently
49 Search avoids opening and parsing message files
51 We now store more information in the database so search no longer
52 has to open every message file to get basic headers. This can
53 improve search speed by as much as 10X, but taking advantage of this
54 requires a database rebuild:
56 notmuch dump > notmuch.dump
57 # Backup, then remove notmuch database ($MAIL/.notmuch)
59 notmuch restore notmuch.dump
61 New collection of add-on tools
62 ------------------------------
64 The source directory "contrib" contains tools built on notmuch. These
65 tools are not part of notmuch, and you should check their individual
66 licenses. Feel free to report problems with them to the notmuch
69 nmbug - share tags with a given prefix
71 nmbug helps maintain a git repo containing all tags with a given
72 prefix (by default "notmuch::"). Tags can be shared by commiting
73 them to git in one location and restoring in another.
75 Notmuch 0.9 (2011-10-01)
76 ========================
81 Correct handling of interruptions during "notmuch new"
83 "notmuch new" now operates as a series of small, self-consistent
84 transactions, so it can correctly resume after an interruption or
85 crash. Previously, interruption could lose existing tags, fail to
86 detect messages on resume, or leave the database in a state
87 temporarily or permanently inconsistent with the mail store.
94 notmuch_database_begin_atomic and notmuch_database_end_atomic allow
95 multiple database operations to be performed atomically.
97 notmuch_database_find_message_by_filename does exactly what it says.
101 notmuch_database_find_message (and n_d_f_m_by_filename) now return
102 a status indicator and uses an output parameter for the
103 message. This change required changing the SONAME of libnotmuch to
106 Python bindings changes
107 -----------------------
109 - Re-encode python unicode objects to utf-8 before passing back to
111 - Support Database().begin_atomic()/end_atomic()
112 - Support Database().find_message_by_filename()
113 NB! This needs a db opened in READ-WRITE mode currently, or it will crash
114 the python process. The is a limitation (=bug) of the underlying libnotmuch.
115 - Fixes where we would not throw NotmuchErrors when we should (Justus Winter)
116 - Update for n_d_find_message* API changes (see above).
118 Ruby bindings changes
119 ---------------------
121 - Wrap new library functions notmuch_database_{begin,end}_atomic.
122 - Add new exception Notmuch::UnbalancedAtomicError.
123 - Rename destroy to destroy! according to Ruby naming conventions.
124 - Update for n_d_find_message* API changes (see above).
129 * Add gpg callback to crypto sigstatus buttons to retrieve/refresh
131 * Add notmuch-show-refresh-view function (and corresponding binding)
132 to refresh the view of a notmuch-show buffer.
134 Reply formatting cleanup
135 ------------------------
137 "notmuch reply" no longer includes notification that non-leafnode
138 MIME parts are being suppressed.
140 Notmuch 0.8 (2011-09-10)
141 ========================
143 Improved handling of message/rfc822 parts
145 Both in the CLI and the emacs interface. Output of rfc822 parts now
146 includes the primary headers, as well as the body and all subparts.
147 Output of the completely raw rfc822-formatted message, including all
148 headers, is unfortunately not yet supported (but hopefully will be
151 Improved Build system portability
153 Certain parts of the shell script generating notmuch.sym were
154 specific to the GNU versions of sed and nm. The new version should
155 be more portable to e.g. OpenBSD.
157 Documentation update for Ruby bindings
159 Added documentation, typo fixes, and improved support for rdoc.
161 Unicode, iterator, PEP8 changes for python bindings
163 - PEP8 (code formatting) changes for python files.
164 - Remove Tags.__len__ ; see 0.6 release notes for motivation.
165 - Decode headers as UTF8, encode (unicode) database paths as UTF8.
167 Notmuch 0.7 (2011-08-01)
168 ========================
170 Vim interface improvements
171 --------------------------
173 Jason Woofenden provided a number of bug fixes for the Vim interface
175 * fix citation/signature fold lengths
176 * fix cig/cit parsing within multipart/*
177 * fix on-screen instructions for show-signature
178 * fix from list reformatting in search view
179 * fix space key: now archives (did opposite)
181 Uwe Kleine-König contributed
183 * use full path for sendmail/doc fix
184 * fix compose temp file name
186 Python Bindings changes
187 -----------------------
189 Sebastian Spaeth contributed two changes related to unicode and UTF8:
191 * message tags are now explicitly unicode
192 * query string is encoded as a UTF8 byte string
194 Build-System improvments
195 ------------------------
197 Generate notmuch.sym after the relevant object files
199 This fixes a bug in parallel building. Thanks to Thomas Jost for the
202 Notmuch 0.6.1 (2011-07-17)
203 ==========================
208 Re-export Xapian exception typeinfo symbols.
210 It turned out our aggressive symbol hiding caused problems for
211 people running gcc 4.4.5.
213 Notmuch 0.6 (2011-07-01)
214 =======================
215 New, general features
216 ---------------------
217 Folder-based searching
219 Notmuch queries can now include a search term to match the
220 directories in which mail files are stored (within the mail
221 storage). The syntax is as follows:
225 For example, one might use things such as:
231 to match any path containing a directory "spam", "work/todo", or
232 containing a directory starting with "2011-", respectively.
234 This feature is particularly useful for users of delivery-agent
235 software (such as procmail or maildrop) that is filtering mail and
236 delivering it to particular folders, or users of systems such as
237 Gmail that use filesystem directories to indicate message tags.
239 NOTE: Only messages that are newly indexed with this version of
240 notmuch will be searchable with folder: terms. In order to enable
241 this feature for all mail, the entire notmuch index will need to be
244 notmuch dump > notmuch.dump
245 # Backup, then remove notmuch database ($MAIL/.notmuch)
247 notmuch restore notmuch.dump
251 Both the command line interface and the emacs-interface have new
252 support for PGP/MIME, detailed below. Thanks to Daniel Kahn Gillmor
253 and Jameson Graef Rollins for making this happen.
255 New, automatic tags: "signed" and "encrypted"
257 These tags will automatically be applied to messages containing
258 multipart/signed and multipart/encrypted parts.
260 NOTE: Only messages that are newly indexed with this version of
261 notmuch will receive these tags.
263 New command-line features
264 -------------------------
265 Add new "notmuch show --verify" option for signature verification
267 This option instruct notmuch to verify the signature of
268 PGP/MIME-signed parts.
270 Add new "notmuch show --decrypt" and "notmuch reply --decrypt" options
272 This option instructs notmuch to decrypt PGP/MIME-encrypted parts.
273 Note that this feature currently requires gpg-agent and a passphrase entry
274 tool (e.g. pinentry-gtk or pinentry-curses).
276 Proper nesting of multipart parts in "notmuch show" output
278 MIME parts are now display with proper nesting to reflect original
279 MIME hierarchy of a message. This allows clients to correctly
280 analyze the MIME structure, (such as, for example, determining to
281 which parts a signature part applies).
283 Add new "notmuch show --part" option
285 This is a replacement for the older "notmuch part" command, (which
286 is now deprecated—it should still work as always, but is no longer
287 documented). Putting part output under "notmuch show" allows for all
288 of the "notmuch show" options to be applied when extracting a single
289 part, (such as --format=json for extracting a message part with JSON
292 Deprecate "notmuch search-tags", (in favor of "notmuch search --output=tags *")
294 The "notmuch search-tags" sub-command has been redundant since the
295 addition of the --output=tags option to "notmuch search". We now
296 make that more clear by deprecating "notmuch search-tags", (dropping
297 it from the documentation). We do continue to support the old syntax
298 by translating it internally to the new call.
300 Performance improvements
301 ------------------------
302 Faster searches (by doing fewer searches to construct threads)
304 Whenever a user asks for search results as threads, notmuch first
305 performs a search for messages matching the query, then performs
306 additional searches to find other messages in the resulting threads.
308 Removing inefficiencies and redundancies in these secondary searches
309 results in a measured speedups of 1.5x for a typical search.
311 Faster searches (by doing fewer passes to gather message data)
313 Optimizing Xapian data access patterns (using a single pass to get
314 all message-document data rather than a pass for each data type)
315 results in a measured speedup of 1.7x for a typical search.
317 The benefits of this optimization combine with the preceding
318 optimization. With both in place, Austin Clements measured a speedup
319 of 2.5x for a search of all messages in his inbox (was 4.5s, now
320 1.8s). Thanks, Austin!
322 Faster initial indexing
324 More efficient indexing of new messages results in a measured
325 speedup of 1.4x for the initial indexing of 3 GB of mail (1h 14m
326 rather than 1h 46m). Thanks to Austin Clements and Michal Sojka.
328 Make "notmuch new" faster for unchanged directories
330 Optimizing to not do any further examinations of sub-directories
331 when the filesystem indicates that a directory is unchanged from the
332 last "notmuch new" results in measured speedups of 8.5 for the "No
333 new mail" case, (was 0.77s, now 0.09s). Thanks to Karel Zak.
335 New emacs-interface features
336 ----------------------------
338 Support for PGP/MIME (GnuPG)
340 Automatically indicate validity of signatures for multipart/signed
341 messages. Automatically display decrypted content for
342 multipart/encrypted messages. See the emacs variable
343 notmuch-crypto-process-mime for more information. Note that this
344 needs gpg-agent and a pinentry tool just as the command line tools.
345 Also note there is no support SMIME yet.
347 Output of pipe command is now displayed if pipe command fails
349 This is extremely useful in the common use case of piping a patch to
350 "git am". If git fails to cleanly merge the patch the error messages
351 from the failed merge are now clearly displayed to the user, (where
352 previously they were silently hidden from the user).
354 User-selectable From address
356 A user can choose which configured email addresses should be used as
357 the From address whenever composing a new message. To do so, simply
358 press C-u before the command which will open a new message. Emacs
359 will prompt for the from address to use.
361 The user can customize the "Notmuch Identities" setting in the
362 notmuch customize group in order to use addresses other than those in
363 the notmuch configuration file if desired.
365 The user can also choose to always be prompted for the from address
366 when composing a new message (without having to use C-u) by setting
367 the "Notmuch Always Prompt For Sender" option in the notmuch
370 Hiding of repeated subjects in collapsed thread view
372 In notmuch-show mode, if a collapsed message has the same subject as
373 its parent, the subject is not shown.
375 Automatic detection and hiding of original message in top-posted message
377 When a message contains a line looking something like:
379 ----- Original Message -----
381 emacs hides this and all subsequent lines as an "original message",
382 (allowing the user to click or press enter on the "original message"
383 button to display it again). This makes the handling of top-posted
384 citations work much like conventional citations.
386 New hooks for running code when tags are modified
388 Some users want to perform additional actions whenever a particular
389 tag is added/removed from a message. This could be used to, for
390 example, interface with some external spam-recognition training
391 tool. To facilitate this, two new hooks are added which can be
392 modified in the following settings of the notmuch customize group:
394 Notmuch Before Tag Hook
395 Notmuch After Tag Hook
397 New optional support for hiding some multipart/alternative parts
399 Many emails are sent with redundant content within a
400 multipart/alternative group (such as a text/plain part as well as a
401 text/html part). Users can configure the setting:
403 Notmuch Show All Multipart/Alternative Parts
405 to "off" in the notmuch customize group to have the interface
406 automatically hide some part alternatives (such as text/html
407 parts). This new part hiding is not configured by default yet
408 because there's not yet a simple way to re-display such a hidden
409 part if it is not actually redundant with a displayed part.
411 Better rendering of text/x-vcalendar parts
413 These parts are now displayed in a format suitable for use with the
416 Avoid getting confused by Subject and Author fields with newline characters
418 Replacing all characters with ASCII code less than 32 with a question mark.
420 Cleaner display of From line in email messages (remove double quotes,
421 and drop "name" if it's actually just a repeat of the email address).
423 Vim interface improvements
424 --------------------------
425 Felipe Contreras provided a number of updates for the vim interface:
427 * Using sendmail directly rather than mailx,
428 * Implementing archive in show view
429 * Add support to mark as read in show and search views
430 * Add delete commands
433 Bindings improvements
434 ---------------------
435 Ruby bindings are now much more complete
437 Including QUERY.sort, QUERY.to_s, MESSAGE.maildir_flags_to_tags,
438 MESSAGE.tags_to_maildir_flags, and MESSAGE.get_filenames
440 * Python bindings have been upodated and extended
441 (docs online at http://packages.python.org/notmuch/)
444 - Message().get_filenames(),
445 - Message().tags_to_maildir_flags(),Message().maildir_flags_to_tags()
446 - list(Threads()) and list(Messages) works now
448 - Message().__cmp__() and __hash__()
449 These allow, for example:
452 As well as set arithmetic on Messages():
454 s1, s2= set(msgs1), set(msgs2)
459 - len(Messages()) as it exausted the iterator.
460 Use len(list(Messages())) or
461 Query.count_messages() to get the length.
463 Added initial Go bindings in bindings/go
465 New build-system features
466 -------------------------
467 Added support for building in a directory other than the source directory
469 This can be used with the widely-supported idiom of simply running
470 the configure script from some other directory:
477 Fix to save configure options for future, implicit runs of configure
479 When a user updates the source (such as with "git pull") calling
480 "make" may cause an automatic re-run of the configure script. When
481 this happens, the configure script will automatically be called with
482 the same options the user originally passed in the most-recent
483 manual invocation of configure.
485 New test-suite feature
486 ----------------------
487 Binary for bash for running test suite now located via PATH.
489 The notmuch test suite requires a fairly recent version of bash (>=
490 bash 4). As some systems supply an older version of bash at
491 /bin/bash, the test suite is now updated to search $PATH to locate
492 the bash binary. This allows users of systems with old /bin/bash to
493 simply install bash >= 4 somewhere on $PATH before /bin and then use
496 Support for testing output with a trailing newline.
498 Previously, some tests would fail to notice a difference in the
499 presence/absence of a trailing newline in a program output, (which
500 has led to bugs in the past). Now, carefully-written tests (using
501 test_expect_equal_file rather than test_expect_equal) will detect
502 any change in the presence/absence of a trailing newline. Many tests
503 are updated to take advantage of this.
505 Avoiding accessing user's $HOME while running test suite
507 The test suite now carefully creates its own HOME directory. This
508 allows the test suite to be run with no existing HOME directory, (as
509 some build systems apparently do), and avoids test-suite differences
510 due to configuration files in the users HOME directory.
515 Output *all* files for "notmuch search --output=files"
517 For the cases where multiple files have the same Message ID,
518 previous versions of notmuch would output only one such file. This
519 command is now fixed to correctly output all files.
521 Fixed spurious search results from "overlapped" indexing of addresses
523 This fixed a bug where a search for:
525 to:user@elsewhere.com
527 would incorrectly match a message sent:
529 To: user@example,com, someone@elsewhere.com
531 Fix --output=json when search has no results
533 A bug present since notmuch 0.4 had caused searches with no results
534 to produce an invalid json object. This is now fixed to cleanly
535 return a valid json object representing an empty array "[]" as
538 fix the automatic detection of the From address for "notmuch reply"
539 from the Received headers in some cases.
541 Fix core dump on DragonFlyBSD due to -1 return value from
542 sysconf(_SC_GETPW_R_SIZE_MAX).
544 Cleaned up several memory leaks
546 Eliminated a few, rare segmentation faults and a double-free.
548 Fix libnotmuch library to only export notmuch API functions
550 Previous release of the notmuch library also exported some Xapian
551 C++ exception type symbols. These were never part of the library
552 interface and were never intended to be exported.
554 Emacs-interface bug fixes
555 -------------------------
556 Display any unexpected output or errors from "notmuch search" invocations
558 Previously any misformatted output or trailing error messages were
559 silently ignored. This output is now clearly displayed. This fix was
560 very helpful in identifying and fixing the bug described below.
562 Fix bug where some threads would be missing from large search results
564 When a search returned a "large" number of results, the emacs
565 interface was incorrectly dropping one thread every time the output
566 of the "notmuch search" process spanned the emacs read-buffer. This
569 Avoid re-compression of .gz files (and similar) when saving attachment
571 Emacs was being too clever for its own good and trying to
572 re-compress pre-compressed .gz files when saving such attachments
573 (potentially corrupting the attachment). The emacs interface is
574 fixed to avoid this bug.
576 Fix hiding of a message when a previously-hidden citation is visible
578 Previously the citation would remain visible in this case. This is
579 fixed so that hiding a message hides all parts.
581 Notmuch 0.5 (2010-11-11)
582 ========================
583 New, general features
584 ---------------------
585 Maildir-flag synchronization
587 Notmuch now knows how to synchronize flags in maildir filenames with
588 tags in the notmuch database. The following flag/tag mappings are
597 'S' unread (added when 'S' flag is not present)
599 The synchronization occurs in both directions, (for example, adding
600 the 'S' flag to a file will cause the "unread" tag to be added, and
601 adding the "replied" tag to a message will cause the file to be
602 renamed with an 'R' flag).
604 This synchronization is enabled by default for users of the
605 command-line interface, (though only files in directories named
606 "cur" or "new" will be renamed). It can be disabled by setting the
607 new maildir.synchronize_flags option in the configuration file. For
610 notmuch config set maildir.synchronize_flags false
612 Users upgrading may also want to run "notmuch setup" once (just
613 accept the existing configuration) to get a new, nicely-commented
614 [maildir] section added to the configuration file.
616 For users of the notmuch library, the new synchronization
617 functionality is available with the following two new functions:
619 notmuch_message_maildir_flags_to_tags
620 notmuch_message_tags_to_maildir_flags
622 It is anticipated that future improvements to this support will
623 allow for safe synchronization of the 'T' flag with the "deleted"
624 tag, as well as support for custom flag/tag mappings.
628 Support for querying multiple filenames for a single message
630 It is common for the mailstore to contain multiple files with the
631 same message ID. Previously, notmuch would always hide these
632 duplicate files, (returning a single, arbitrary filename with
633 notmuch_message_get_filename).
635 With this release, library users can access all filenames for a
636 message with the new function:
638 notmuch_message_get_filenames
640 Together with notmuch_filenames_valid, notmuch_filenames_get, and
641 notmuch_filenames_move_to_next it is now possible to iterate over
642 all available filenames for a given message.
644 New command-line features
645 -------------------------
646 New "notmuch show --format=raw" for getting at original email contents
648 This new feature allows for a fully-functional email client to be
649 built on top of the notmuch command-line without needing any direct
650 access to the mail store itself.
652 For example, it's now possible to run "emacs -f notmuch" on a local
653 machine with only ssh access to the mail store/notmuch database. To
654 do this, simply set the notmuch-command variable in emacs to the
655 name of a script containing:
657 ssh user@host notmuch "$@"
659 If the ssh client has enabled connection sharing (ControlMaster
660 option in OpenSSH), the emacs interface can be quite responsive this
665 Fix "notmuch search" to print nothing when nothing matches
667 The 0.4 release had a bug in which:
669 notmuch search <expression-with-no-matches>
671 would produce a single blank line of output, (where previous
672 versions would produce no output. This fix also causes a change in
673 the --format=json output, (which would previously produce "[]" and
674 now produces nothing).
676 Emacs interface improvements
677 ----------------------------
678 Fix to allow pipe ('|') command to work when using notmuch over ssh
680 Fix count of lines in hidden signatures.
682 Omit repeated subject lines in (collapsed) thread display.
684 Display current thread subject in a header line.
686 Provide a "c i" binding to copy a thread ID from the search view.
688 Allow for notmuch-fcc-dirs to have a value of nil.
690 Also, the more complex form of notmuch-fcc-dirs now has a slightly
691 different format. It no longer has a special first-element, fallback
692 string. Instead it's now a list of cons cells where the car of each
693 cell is a regular expression to be matched against the sender
694 address, and the cdr is the name of a folder to use for an FCC. So
695 the old fallback behavior can be achieved by including a final cell
696 of (".*" . "default-fcc-folder").
698 Vim interface improvements
699 --------------------------
700 Felipe Contreras provided a number of updates for the vim interface.
702 These include optimizations, support for newer versions of vim, fixed
703 support for sending mail on modern systems, new commands, and
708 Added initial ruby bindings in bindings/ruby
710 Notmuch 0.4 (2010-11-01)
711 ========================
712 New command-line features
713 -------------------------
714 notmuch search --output=(summary|threads|messages|tags|files)
716 This new option allows for particular items to be returned from
717 notmuch searches. The "summary" option is the default and behaves
718 just as "notmuch search" has historically behaved.
720 The new option values allow for thread IDs, message IDs, lists of
721 tags, and lists of filenames to be returned from searches. It is
722 expected that this new option will be very useful in shell
723 scripts. For example:
725 for file in $(notmuch search --output=files <search-terms>); do
726 <operations-on> "$file"
729 notmuch show --format=mbox <search-specification>
731 This new option allows for the messages matching a search
732 specification to be presented as an mbox. Specifically the "mboxrd"
733 format is used which allows for reversible quoting of lines
734 beginning with "From ". A reader should remove a single '>' from the
735 beginning of all lines beginning with one or more '>' characters
736 followed by the 5 characters "From ".
738 notmuch config [get|set] <section>.<item> [value ...]
740 The new top-level "config" command allows for any value in the
741 notmuch configuration file to be queried or set to a new value. Both
742 single-valued and multi-valued items are supported, as our any
743 custom items stored in the configuration file.
745 Avoid setting Bcc header in "notmuch reply"
747 We decided that this was a bit heavy-handed as the actual mail
748 user-agent should be responsible for setting any Bcc option. Also,
749 see below for the notmuch/emacs user-agent now setting an Fcc by
750 default rather than Bcc.
754 Add notmuch_query_get_query_string and notmuch_query_get_sort
756 These are simply functions for querying properties of a
757 notmuch_query_t object.
761 Enable Fcc of all sent messages by default (to "sent" directory)
763 All messages sent from the emacs interface will now be saved to the
764 notmuch mail store where they will be incorporated to the database
765 by the next "notmuch new". By default, messages are saved to the
766 "sent" directory at the top-level of the mail store. This directory
767 can be customized by means of the "Notmuch Fcc Dirs" option in the
768 notmuch customize interface.
770 Ability to all open messages in a thread to a pipe
772 Historically, the '|' keybinding allows for piping a single message
773 to an external command. Now, by prefixing this key with a prefix
774 argument, (for example, by pressing "Control-U |"), all open
775 messages in the current thread will be sent to the external command.
777 Optional support for detecting inline patches
779 This hook is disabled by default but can be enabled with a checkbox
780 under "Notmuch Show Insert Text/Plain Hook" in the notmuch customize
781 interface. It allows for inline patches to be detected and treated
782 as if they were attachments, (with context-sensitive highlighting).
784 Automatically tag messages as "replied" when sending a reply
786 Messages replied to within the emacs interface will now be tagged as
787 "replied". This feature can easily be customized to add or remove
788 other tags as well. For example, a user might use a tag of
789 "needs-reply" and can configure this feature to automatically remove
790 that tag when replying. See "Notmuch Message Mark Replied" in the
791 notmuch customize interface.
793 Allow search-result color specifications to overlay each other
795 For example, one tag can specify the background color of matching
796 lines, while another can specify the foreground. With this change,
797 both settings will now be visible simultaneously, (which was not the
798 case in previous releases). See "Notmuch Search Line Faces" in the
799 notmuch customize interface.
801 Make hidden author names still available for incremental search.
803 When there is insufficient space to display all authors of a thread
804 in search results, the names of hidden authors are now still made
805 available to emacs' incremental search commands. As the user
806 searches, matching lines will temporarily expand to show the hidden
809 New binding of Control-TAB (works like TAB in reverse)
811 Many notmuch nodes already use TAB to navigate forward through
812 various items allowing actions, (message headers, email attachments,
813 etc.). The new Control-TAB binding operates similarly but in the
816 New build-system features
817 -------------------------
818 Various portability fixes have been applied
820 These include fixes for build failures on at least Solaris, FreeBSD,
821 and Fedora systems. We're hopeful that the notmuch code base is now
822 more portable than ever before.
824 Arrange for libnotmuch to be found automatically after make install
826 The notmuch build system is now careful to help the user avoid
827 errors of the form "libnotmuch.so could not be found" immediately
828 after installing. This support takes two forms:
830 1. If the library is installed to a system directory,
831 (configured in /etc/ld.so.conf), then "make install" will
832 automatically run ldconfig.
834 2. If the library is installed to a non-system directory, the
835 build system adds a DR_RUNPATH entry to the final binary
836 pointing to the directory to which the library is installed.
838 When this support works, the user should be able to run notmuch
839 immediately after "make install", without any errors trying to find
840 the notmuch library, and without having to manually set environment
841 variables such as LD_LIBRARY_PATH.
843 Check compiler/linker options before using them
845 The configure script now carefully checks that any desired
846 compilation options, (whether for enabling compiler warnings, or for
847 embedding rpath, etc.), are supported. Only supported options are
848 used in the resulting Makefile.
850 New test-suite features
851 -----------------------
852 New modularization of test suite.
854 Thanks to a gracious relicensing of the test-suite infrastructure
855 from the git project, notmuch now has a modular test suite. This
856 provides the ability to run individual sections of the test suite
857 rather than the whole things. It also provides better summary of
858 test results, with support for tests that are expected to fail
859 (BROKEN and FIXED) in addition to PASS and FAIL. Finally, it makes
860 it easy to run the test suite within valgrind (pass --valgrind to
861 notmuch-test or to any sub-script) which has been very useful.
863 New testing of emacs interface.
865 The test suite has been augmented to allow automated testing of the
866 emacs interfaces. So far, this includes basic searches, display of
867 threads, and tag manipulation. This also includes a test that a new
868 message can successfully be sent out through a (dummy) SMTP server
869 and that said message is successfully integrated into the notmuch
870 database via the FCC setting.
874 Fix potential corruption of database when "notmuch new " is interrupted.
876 Previously, an interruption of "notmuch new" would (rarely) result
877 in a corrupt database. The corruption would manifest itself by a
878 persistent error of the form:
880 document ID of 1234 has no thread ID
882 The message-adding code has been carefully audited and reworked to
883 avoid this sort of corruption regardless of when it is interrupted.
885 Fix failure with extremely long message ID headers.
887 Previously, a message with an extremely long message ID, (say, more
888 than 300 characters), would fail to be added to notmuch, (triggering
889 Xapian exceptions). This has now been fixed.
891 Fix for messages with "charset=unknown-8bit"
893 Previously, messages with this charset would cause notmuch to emit a
894 GMime warning, (which would then trip up emacs or other interfaces
895 parsing the notmuch results).
897 Fix notmuch_query_search_threads function to return NULL on any exception
899 Fix "notmuch search" to return non-zero if notmuch_query_search_threads fails
901 Previously, this command could confusingly report a Xapian
902 exception, yet still return an error code of 0. It now correctly
903 returns a failing error code of 1 in this case.
907 Fix to handle a message with a subject containing, for example "[1234]"
909 Previously, a message subject containing a sequence of digits within
910 square brackets would cause the emacs interface to mis-parse the
911 output of "notmuch search". This would result in the message being
912 mis-displayed and prevent the user from manipulating the message in
915 Fix to correctly handle message IDs containing ".."
917 The emacs interface now properly quotes message IDs to avoid a
918 Xapian bug in which the ".." within a message ID would be
919 misinterpreted as a numeric range specification.
923 The python bindings for notmuch have been updated to work with python3.
925 Debian-specific fixes
926 ---------------------
927 Fix emacs initialization so "M-x notmuch" works for users by default.
929 Now, a new Debian user can immediately run "emacs -f notmuch" after
930 "apt-get install notmuch". Previously, the user would have had to
931 edit the ~/.emacs file to add "(require 'notmuch)" before this would
934 Notmuch 0.3.1 (2010-04-27)
935 ==========================
938 Fix an infinite loop in "notmuch reply"
940 This bug could be triggered by replying to a message where the
941 user's primary email address did not appear in the To: header and
942 the user had not configured any secondary email addresses. The bug
943 was a simple re-use of the same iterator variable in nested loops.
945 Fix a potential SEGV in "notmuch search"
947 This bug could be triggered by an author name ending in a ','.
948 Admittedly - that's almost certainly a spam email, but we never
949 want notmuch to crash.
953 Fix calculations for line wrapping in the primary "notmuch" view.
955 Fix Fcc support to prompt to create a directory if the specified Fcc
956 directory does not exist.
960 Fix build on OpenSolaris (at least) due to missing 'extern "C"' block.
962 Without this, the C++ sources could not find strcasestr and the
963 final linking of notmuch would fail.
965 Notmuch 0.3 (2010-04-27)
966 ========================
967 New command-line features
968 -------------------------
969 User-configurable tags for new messages
971 A new "new.tags" option is available in the configuration file to
972 determine which tags are applied to new messages. Run "notmuch
973 setup" to generate new documentation within ~/.notmuch-config on how
974 to specify this value.
976 Threads search results named based on subjects that match search
978 This means that when new mails arrived to a thread you've previously
979 read, and the new mails have a new subject, you will see that
980 subject in the search results rather than the old subject.
982 Faster operation of "notmuch tag" (avoid unneeded sorting)
984 Since the user just wants to tag all matching messages, we can make
985 things perform a bit faster by avoiding the sort.
987 Even Better guessing of From: header for "notmuch reply"
989 Notmuch now looks at a number of headers when trying to figure out
990 the best From: header to use in a reply. This is helpful if you have
991 several configured email addresses, and you also subscribe to various
992 mailing lists with different addresses, (so that mails you are
993 replying to won't always include your subscribed address in the To:
996 Indication of author names that match a search
998 When notmuch displays threads as the result of a search, it now
999 lists the authors that match the search before listing the other
1000 authors in the thread. It inserts a pipe '|' symbol between the last
1001 matching and first non-matching author. This is especially useful in
1002 a search that includes tag:unread. Now the authors of the unread
1003 messages in the thread are listed first.
1005 New: Python bindings
1006 --------------------
1007 Sebastian Spaeth has contributed his python bindings for the notmuch
1008 library to the central repository. These bindings were previously
1009 known as "cnotmuch" within python but have now been renamed to be
1010 accessible with a simple, and more official-looking "import notmuch".
1012 The bindings have already proven very useful as people proficient in
1013 python have been able to easily develop programs to do notmuch-based
1014 searches for email-address completion, maildir-flag synchronization,
1017 These bindings are available within the bindings/python directory, but
1018 are not yet integrated into the top-level Makefiles, nor the top-level
1019 package-building scripts. Improvements are welcome.
1021 Emacs interface improvements
1022 ----------------------------
1023 An entirely new initial view for notmuch, (friendly yet powerful)
1025 Some of us call the new view "notmuch hello" but you can get at it
1026 by simply calling "emacs -f notmuch". The new view provides a search
1027 bar where new searches can be performed. It also displays a list of
1028 recent searches, along with a button to save any of these, giving it
1029 a new name as a "saved search". Many people find these "saved
1030 searches" one of the most convenient ways of organizing their mail,
1031 (providing all of the features of "folders" in other mail clients,
1032 but without any of the disadvantages).
1034 Finally, this view can also optionally display all of the tags that
1035 exist in the database, along with a count for each tag, and a custom
1036 search of messages with that tag that's simply a click (or keypress)
1039 Note: For users that liked the original mode of "emacs -f notmuch"
1040 immediately displaying a particular search result, we
1041 recommend instead running something like:
1043 emacs --eval '(notmuch search "tag:inbox" t)'
1045 The "t" means to sort the messages in an "oldest first" order,
1046 (as notmuch would do previously by default). You can also
1047 leave that off to have your search results in "newest first"
1050 Full-featured "customize" support for configuring notmuch
1052 Notmuch now plugs in well to the emacs "customize" mode to make it
1053 much simpler to find things about the notmuch interface that can be
1054 tweaked by the user.
1056 You can get to this mode by starting at the main "Customize" menu in
1057 emacs, then browsing through "Applications", "Mail", and
1058 "Notmuch". Or you can go straight to "M-x customize-group"
1061 Once you're at the customize screen, you'll see a list of documented
1062 options that can be manipulated along with checkboxes, drop-down
1063 selectors, and text-entry boxes for configuring the various
1066 Support for doing tab-completion of email addresses
1068 This support currently relies on an external program,
1069 (notmuch-addresses), that is not yet shipped with notmuch
1070 itself. But multiple, suitable implementations of this program have
1071 already been written that generate address completions by doing
1072 notmuch searches of your email collection. For example, providing
1073 first those addresses that you have composed messages to in the
1076 One such program (implemented in python with the python bindings to
1077 notmuch) is available via:
1079 git clone http://jkr.acm.jhu.edu/git/notmuch_addresses.git
1081 Install that program as notmuch-addresses on your PATH, and then
1082 hitting TAB on a partial email address or name within the To: or Cc:
1083 line of an email message will provide matching completions.
1085 Support for file-based (Fcc) delivery of sent messages to mail store
1087 This isn't yet enabled by default. To enable this, one will have to
1088 set the "Notmuch Fcc Dirs" setting within the notmuch customize
1089 screen, (see its documentation there for details). We anticipate
1090 making this automatic in a future release.
1092 New 'G' key binding to trigger mail refresh (G == "Get new mail")
1094 The 'G' key works wherever '=' works. Before refreshing the screen
1095 it calls an external program that can be used to poll email servers,
1096 run notmuch new and setup specific tags for the new emails. The
1097 script to be called should be configured with the "Notmuch Poll
1098 Script" setting in the customize interface. This script will
1099 typically invoke "notmuch new" and then perhaps several "notmuch
1102 Implement emacs message display with the JSON output from notmuch.
1104 This is much more robust than the previous implementation, (where
1105 some HTML mails and mail quoting the notmuch code with the delimiter
1106 characters in it would cause the parser to fall over).
1108 Better handling of HTML messages and MIME attachments (inline images!)
1110 Allow for any MIME parts that emacs can display to be displayed
1111 inline. This includes inline viewing of image attachments, (provided
1112 the window is large enough to fit the image at its natural size).
1114 Much more robust handling of HTML messages. Currently both text/plain
1115 and text/html alternates will be rendered next to each other. In a
1116 future release, users will be able to decide to see only one or the
1117 other representation.
1119 Each attachment now has its own button so that attachments can be
1120 saved individually (the 'w' key is still available to save all
1123 Customizable support for tidying of text/plain message content
1125 Many new functions are available for tidying up message
1126 content. These include options such as wrapping long lines,
1127 compressing duplicate blank lines, etc.
1129 Most of these are disabled by default, but can easily be enabled by
1130 clicking the available check boxes under the "Notmuch Show Insert
1131 Text/Plain Hook" within the notmuch customize screen.
1133 New support for searchable citations (even when hidden)
1135 When portions of overly-long citations are hidden, the contents of
1136 these citations will still be available for emacs' standard
1137 "incremental search" functions. When the search matches any portion
1138 of a hidden citation, the citation will become visible temporarily
1139 to display the search result.
1141 More flexible handling of header visibility
1143 As an answer to complaints from many users, the To, Cc, and Date
1144 headers of messages are no longer hidden by default. For those users
1145 that liked that these were hidden, a new "Notmuch Messages Headers
1146 Visible" option in the customize interface can be set to nil. The
1147 visibility of headers can still be toggled on a per-message basis
1148 with the 'h' keybinding.
1150 For users that don't want to see some subset of those headers, the
1151 new "Notmuch Message Headers" variable can be customized to list
1152 only those headers that should be present in the display of a message.
1154 The Return key now toggles message visibility anywhere
1156 Previously this worked only on the first summary-line of a message.
1158 Customizable formatting of search results
1160 The user can easily customize the order, width, and formatting of
1161 the various fields in a "notmuch search" buffer. See the "Notmuch
1162 Search Result Format" section of the customize interface.
1164 Generate nicer names for search buffers when using a saved search.
1166 Add a notmuch User-Agent header when sending mail from notmuch/emacs.
1168 New keybinding (M-Ret) to open all collapsed messages in a thread.
1172 Provide a new NOTMUCH_SORT_UNSORTED value for queries
1174 This can be somewhat faster when sorting simply isn't desired. For
1175 example when collecting a set of messages that will all be
1176 manipulated identically, (adding a tag, removing a tag, deleting the
1177 messages), then there's no advantage to sorting the messages by
1182 Fix to compile against GMime 2.6
1184 Previously notmuch insisted on being able to find GMime 2.4, (even
1185 though GMime 2.6 would have worked all along).
1187 Fix configure script to accept (and ignore) various standard options.
1189 For example, those that the Gentoo build scripts expect configure to
1190 accept are now all accepted.
1194 A large number of new tests for the many new features.
1196 Better display of output from failed tests.
1198 Now shows failures with diff rather than forcing the user to gaze at
1199 complete actual and expected output looking for deviation.
1201 Notmuch 0.2 (2010-04-16)
1202 ========================
1203 This is the second release of the notmuch mail system, with actual
1204 detailed release notes this time!
1206 This release consists of a number of minor new features that make
1207 notmuch more pleasant to use, and a few fairly major bug fixes.
1209 We didn't quite hit our release target of "about a week" from the 0.1
1210 release, (0.2 is happening 11 days after 0.1), but we hope to do
1211 better for next week. Look forward to some major features coming to
1212 notmuch in subsequent releases.
1218 Better guessing of From: header.
1220 Notmuch now tries harder to guess which configured address should be
1221 used as the From: line in a "notmuch reply". It will examine the
1222 Received: headers if it fails to find any configured address in To:
1223 or Cc:. This allows it to often choose the correct address even when
1224 replying to a message sent to a mailing list, and not directly to a
1227 Make "notmuch count" with no arguments count all messages
1229 Previously, it was hard to construct a search term that was
1230 guaranteed to match all messages.
1232 Provide a new special-case search term of "*" to match all messages.
1234 This can be used in any command accepting a search term, such as
1235 "notmuch search '*'". Note that you'll want to take care that the
1236 shell doesn't expand * against the current files. And note that the
1237 support for "*" is a special case. It's only meaningful as a single
1238 search term and loses its special meaning when combined with any
1241 Automatically detect thread connections even when a parent message is
1244 Previously, if two or more message were received with a common
1245 parent, but that parent was not received, then these messages would
1246 not be recognized as belonging to the same thread. This is now fixed
1247 so that such messages are properly connected in a thread.
1251 Fix potential data loss in "notmuch new" with SIGINT
1253 One code path in "notmuch new" was not properly handling
1254 SIGINT. Previously, this could lead to messages being removed from
1255 the database (and their tags being lost) if the user pressed
1256 Control-C while "notmuch new" was working.
1258 Fix segfault when a message includes a MIME part that is empty.
1260 Fix handling of non-ASCII characters with --format=json
1262 Previously, characters outside the range of 7-bit ASCII were
1263 silently dropped from the JSON output. This led to corrupted display
1264 of utf-8 content in the upcoming notmuch web-based frontends.
1266 Fix headers to be properly decoded in "notmuch reply"
1268 Previously, the user might see:
1270 Subject: Re: =?iso-8859-2?q?Rozlu=E8ka?=
1274 Subject: Re: Rozlučka
1276 The former text is properly encoded to be RFC-compliant SMTP, will
1277 be sent correctly, and will be properly decoded by the
1278 recipient. But the user trying to edit the reply would likely be
1279 unable to read or edit that field in its encoded form.
1281 Emacs client features
1282 ---------------------
1283 Show the last few lines of citations as well as the first few lines.
1285 It's often the case that the last sentence of a citation is what is
1286 being replied to directly, so the last few lines are often much more
1287 important. The number of lines shown at the beginning and end of any
1288 citation can be configured, (notmuch-show-citation-lines-prefix and
1289 notmuch-show-citation-lines-suffix).
1291 The '+' and '-' commands in the search view can now add and remove
1294 Selective bulk tagging is now possible by selecting a region of
1295 threads and then using either the '+' or '-' keybindings. Bulk
1296 tagging is still available for all threads matching the current
1297 search with the '*' binding.
1299 More meaningful buffer names for thread-view buffers.
1301 Notmuch now uses the Subject of the thread as the buffer
1302 name. Previously it was using the thread ID, which is a meaningless
1305 Provide for customized colors of threads in search view based on tags.
1307 See the documentation of notmuch-search-line-faces, (or us "M-x
1308 customize" and browse to the "notmuch" group within "Applications"
1309 and "Mail"), for details on how to configure this colorization.
1311 Build-system features
1312 ---------------------
1313 Add support to properly build libnotmuch on Darwin systems (OS X).
1315 Add support to configure for many standard options.
1317 We include actual support for:
1319 --includedir --mandir --sysconfdir
1321 And accept and silently ignore several more:
1323 --build --infodir --libexecdir --localstatedir
1324 --disable-maintainer-mode --disable-dependency-tracking
1326 Install emacs client in "make install" rather than requiring a
1327 separate "make install-emacs".
1329 Automatically compute versions numbers between releases.
1331 This support uses the git-describe notation, so a version such as
1332 0.1-144-g43cbbfc indicates a version that is 144 commits since the
1333 0.1 release and is available as git commit "43cbbfc".
1335 Add a new "make test" target to run the test suite and actually verify
1338 Notmuch 0.1 (2010-04-05)
1339 ========================
1340 This is the first release of the notmuch mail system.
1342 It includes the libnotmuch library, the notmuch command-line
1343 interface, and an emacs-based interface to notmuch.
1345 Note: Notmuch will work best with Xapian 1.0.18 (or later) or Xapian
1346 1.1.4 (or later). Previous versions of Xapian (whether 1.0 or 1.1) had
1347 a performance bug that made notmuch very slow when modifying
1348 tags. This would cause distracting pauses when reading mail while
1349 notmuch would wait for Xapian when removing the "inbox" and "unread"
1350 tags from messages in a thread.