NOTMUCH-DUMP(1)

NAME

       notmuch-dump - creates a plain-text dump of the tags of each message

SYNOPSIS

       notmuch dump [--gzip] [--format=(batch-tag|sup)] [--output=<file>] [--]
       [<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.)

       See  notmuch-search-terms(7)  for  details  of the supported syntax for
       <search-terms>. 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.

       Supported options for dump include

          --gzip Compress the output in a format compatible with gzip(1).

          --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.

                 batch-tag
                     The  default  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-mes‐
                        sage-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  whitespace  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 special case  of  the
                     batch input format for notmuch-tag(1); note that the sin‐
                     gle message-id query is mandatory for notmuch-restore(1).

                 sup
                     The sup dump file format is  specifically  chosen  to  be
                     compatible 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
                     (malformed) message-ids may  contain  arbitrary  non-null
                     characters.  Note  also that tags with spaces will not be
                     correctly restored with this format.

          --output=<filename>
                 Write output to given file instead of stdout.

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),   not‐
       much-tag(1)

AUTHOR

       Carl Worth and many others

COPYRIGHT

       2014, Carl Worth and many others

0.20.1