[[!toc levels=2]]
+## <span id="debian_packages">**Debian squeeze packages outdated**</span>
+
+The notmuch package(s) in Debian squeeze are very old (version 0.3).
+It's better to start off with an up to date version from
+[backports](http://backports-master.debian.org/).
+
## <span id="receive_mail">**Receive mail**</span>
Notmuch does not fetch mail for you. For that, you need to use an
easy to [[convert mbox to maildir|howto/#mbox]] . The following
utilities support these formats:
-* [offlineimap](https://github.com/nicolas33/offlineimap/) -
+* [offlineimap](http://offlineimap.org/) -
quite useful and widely tested, it also offers a handy hook that
will come in useful a bit later in our setup. Also supports
"presynchook" and "postsynchook" command that will get run
## <span id="sync_maildir_flags">**Sync notmuch tags and maildir flags**</span>
-notmuch has (since version 0.5) the ability to sync IMAP maildir flags
-and respective tags in both directions. This feature is not enabled
-by default, but it is simple to enable it with the 'notmuch config'
-command:
-
- $ notmuch config set maildir.synchronize_flags true
+notmuch has the ability to synchronize maildir flags and respective tags in both
+directions. For more information on maildir flags see the [maildir
+page](http://cr.yp.to/proto/maildir.html), and for the respective tags see your
+notmuch configuration file. This feature is enabled by default, but if you don't
+need it, it is simple to disable it with the 'notmuch config' command:
+ $ notmuch config set maildir.synchronize_flags false
-For more information on maildir flags see the
-[maildir page](http://cr.yp.to/proto/maildir.html).
+The maildir flags may, in turn, be synchronized with IMAP flags by another tool,
+such as offlineimap.
For safety reasons, and because
[[notmuch does not support delete operations|deleting]], notmuch does
notmuch, these tags are missing in pre-existing messages and need to be
added. One way to do this is as follows:
- $ notmuch dump ~/out.nm
+ $ notmuch dump --output=~/out.nm
$ mv ~/Mail/.notmuch ~/.notmuch.bak
$ notmuch new
$ notmuch tag -inbox -unread '*'
- $ notmuch restore --accumulate ~/out.nm
+ $ notmuch restore --accumulate --input=~/out.nm
At this point, one should run a sanity check on the tags, and if everything
has merged correctly, the ~/.notmuch.bak directory is expendable, as is