5 notmuch - thread-based email index, search, and tagging
10 <b>notmuch</b> <u>command</u> [<u>args</u> ...]
15 Notmuch is a command-line based program for indexing, searching, read-
16 ing, and tagging large collections of email messages.
18 This page describes how to get started using notmuch from the command
19 line, and gives a brief overview of the commands available. For more
20 information on e.g. <b>notmuch</b> <b>show</b> consult the <a href='../notmuch-show-1/'>notmuch-show</a>(1) man page,
21 also accessible via <b>notmuch</b> <b>help</b> <b>show</b>
23 The quickest way to get started with Notmuch is to simply invoke the
24 <b>notmuch</b> command with no arguments, which will interactively guide you
25 through the process of indexing your mail.
30 While the command-line program <b>notmuch</b> provides powerful functionality,
31 it does not provide the most convenient interface for that functional-
32 ity. More sophisticated interfaces are expected to be built on top of
33 either the command-line interface, or more likely, on top of the not-
34 much library interface. See http://notmuchmail.org for more about
35 alternate interfaces to notmuch. The emacs-based interface to notmuch
36 (available under <b>emacs/</b> in the Notmuch source distribution) is probably
37 the most widely used at this time.
42 <h3> SETUP</h3>
44 The <b>notmuch</b> <b>setup</b> command is used to configure Notmuch for first use,
45 (or to reconfigure it later).
47 The setup command will prompt for your full name, your primary email
48 address, any alternate email addresses you use, and the directory con-
49 taining your email archives. Your answers will be written to a configu-
50 ration file in ${NOTMUCH_CONFIG} (if set) or ${HOME}/.notmuch-config .
51 This configuration file will be created with descriptive comments, mak-
52 ing it easy to edit by hand later to change the configuration. Or you
53 can run <b>notmuch</b> <b>setup</b> again to change the configuration.
55 The mail directory you specify can contain any number of sub-directo-
56 ries and should primarily contain only files with individual email mes-
57 sages (eg. maildir or mh archives are perfect). If there are other,
58 non-email files (such as indexes maintained by other email programs)
59 then notmuch will do its best to detect those and ignore them.
61 Mail storage that uses mbox format, (where one mbox file contains many
62 messages), will not work with notmuch. If that's how your mail is cur-
63 rently stored, it is recommended you first convert it to maildir format
64 with a utility such as mb2md before running <b>notmuch</b> <b>setup</b> <b>.</b>
66 Invoking <b>notmuch</b> with no command argument will run <b>setup</b> if the setup
67 command has not previously been completed.
70 <h3> OTHER COMMANDS</h3>
72 Several of the notmuch commands accept search terms with a common syn-
73 tax. See notmuch-search-terms(7) for more details on the supported syn-
76 The <b>search</b>, <b>show</b> and <b>count</b> commands are used to query the email
79 The <b>reply</b> command is useful for preparing a template for an email
82 The <b>tag</b> command is the only command available for manipulating database
85 The <b>dump</b> and <b>restore</b> commands can be used to create a textual dump of
86 email tags for backup purposes, and to restore from that dump.
88 The <b>config</b> command can be used to get or set settings int the notmuch
94 The following environment variables can be used to control the behavior
97 <b>NOTMUCH</b>_<b>CONFIG</b>
98 Specifies the location of the notmuch configuration file. Not-
99 much will use ${HOME}/.notmuch-config if this variable is not
105 <a href='../notmuch-config-1/'>notmuch-config</a>(1), <a href='../notmuch-count-1/'>notmuch-count</a>(1), <a href='../notmuch-dump-1/'>notmuch-dump</a>(1), <a href='../notmuch-hooks-5/'>notmuch-hooks</a>(5),
106 <a href='../notmuch-new-1/'>notmuch-new</a>(1), <a href='../notmuch-reply-1/'>notmuch-reply</a>(1), <a href='../notmuch-restore-1/'>notmuch-restore</a>(1), <a href='../notmuch-search-1/'>notmuch-</a>
107 <a href='../notmuch-search-1/'>search</a>(1), <a href='../notmuch-search-terms-7/'>notmuch-search-terms</a>(7), <a href='../notmuch-show-1/'>notmuch-show</a>(1), <a href='../notmuch-tag-1/'>notmuch-tag</a>(1)
109 The notmuch website: <b>http://notmuchmail.org</b>
114 Feel free to send questions, comments, or kudos to the notmuch mailing
115 list <notmuch@notmuchmail.org> . Subscription is not required before
116 posting, but is available from the notmuchmail.org website.
118 Real-time interaction with the Notmuch community is available via IRC
119 (server: irc.freenode.net, channel: #notmuch).
122 <h2>Notmuch 0.14</h2>