NOTMUCH-DUMP(1)
NAME
notmuch-dump - creates a plain-text dump of the tags of each message
SYNOPSIS
notmuch dump [--format=(sup|batch-tag)] [--] [ --output=<filename> ]
[--] [ <search-term>...]
DESCRIPTION
Dump tags for messages matching the given search terms.
Output is to the given filename, if any, or to stdout.
These tags are the only data in the notmuch database that can't be
recreated from the messages themselves. The output of notmuch dump is
therefore the only critical thing to backup (and much more friendly to
incremental backup than the native database files.)
--format=(sup|batch-tag)
Notmuch restore supports two plain text dump formats, both with one
message-id per line, followed by a list of tags.
sup
The sup dump file format is specifically chosen to be compati-
ble with the format of files produced by sup-dump. So if
you've previously been using sup for mail, then the notmuch
restore command provides you a way to import all of your tags
(or labels as sup calls them). Each line has the following
form
<message-id> ( <tag> ... )
with zero or more tags are separated by spaces. Note that (mal-
formed) message-ids may contain arbitrary non-null characters.
Note also that tags with spaces will not be correctly restored
with this format.
batch-tag
The batch-tag dump format is intended to more robust against
malformed message-ids and tags containing whitespace or non-
ascii(7) characters. Each line has the form
+<encoded-tag> +<encoded-tag> ... -- id:<quoted-message-id>
Tags are hex-encoded by replacing every byte not matching the
regex [A-Za-z0-9@=.,_+-] with %nn where nn is the two digit hex
encoding. The message ID is a valid Xapian query, quoted using
Xapian boolean term quoting rules: if the ID contains white-
space or a close paren or starts with a double quote, it must
be enclosed in double quotes and double quotes inside the ID
must be doubled. The astute reader will notice this is a spe-
cial case of the batch input format for notmuch-tag(1); note
that the single message-id query is mandatory for notmuch-
restore(1).
With no search terms, a dump of all messages in the database will
be generated. A "--" argument instructs notmuch that the remaining
arguments are search terms.
See notmuch-search-terms(7) for details of the supported syntax for
<search-terms>.
SEE ALSO
notmuch(1), notmuch-config(1), notmuch-count(1), notmuch-hooks(5), not-
much-insert(1), notmuch-new(1), notmuch-reply(1), notmuch-restore(1),
notmuch-search(1), notmuch-search-terms(7), notmuch-show(1), notmuch-
tag(1)
Notmuch 0.16