News for release 0.38.3

[notmuch-wiki] / getting-started.mdwn

diff --git a/getting-started.mdwn b/getting-started.mdwn
index 1b09352f9673540ce550731ff0bdc6c14a474adc..05de920c5f15521c4c3a52fb15e2562f25132c5f 100644 (file)
--- a/getting-started.mdwn
+++ b/getting-started.mdwn
@@ -8,6 +8,10 @@
 This is your friendly guide and tutorial to getting started with Notmuch. It
 will help you through the first steps of setting up Notmuch.
 
+All Notmuch commands have [manual
+pages](https://notmuchmail.org/doc/latest/). Please refer to them for
+details.
+
 ## Prerequisites
 
 In order to use Notmuch, you will need to have your email messages stored in
@@ -24,15 +28,15 @@ already have messages in this format.
 
 On Linux, the easiest way to install Notmuch is through your distribution's
 package repository. If you're installing Notmuch from a [git
-checkout](http://git.notmuchmail.org/git/notmuch) or a [source
-release](http://notmuchmail.org/releases/), please refer to the
-[INSTALL](http://git.notmuchmail.org/git/notmuch/blob/HEAD:/INSTALL) document.
+checkout](https://git.notmuchmail.org/git/notmuch) or a [source
+release](https://notmuchmail.org/releases/), please refer to the
+[INSTALL](https://git.notmuchmail.org/git/notmuch/blob/HEAD:/INSTALL) document.
 
 ## Configuration
 
 To configure Notmuch, just run
 
-    notmuch
+        notmuch
 
 This will interactively guide you through the setup process, and save the
 configuration to `$HOME/.notmuch-config`. If you'd like to change the
@@ -45,7 +49,7 @@ This step only modifies the configuration file.
 
 Notmuch needs a search database to operate. The next step is to run
 
-    notmuch new
+        notmuch new
 
 to index all your messages in the search database. The database will be stored
 in `.notmuch` directory under your mail store. The database is not a replacement
@@ -61,15 +65,67 @@ Depending on the amount of mail you have the initial indexing process can take a
 long time, so expect that. Also, the resulting database will require roughly the
 same amount of storage space as your current collection of email.
 
-After this step, you can try out the [[Notmuch command-line
-interface|manpages]], or [[Notmuch Emacs interface|notmuch-emacs]].
+After this step, you can try out the [Notmuch command line
+interface](https://notmuchmail.org/doc/latest/man1/notmuch.html), or
+[[Notmuch Emacs interface|notmuch-emacs]].
 
 ## Converting Existing mbox to Maildir
 
+The [`mb2md`](http://batleth.sapienti-sat.org/projects/mb2md/) tool can be used
+to convert existing mbox files to Maildir.
+
+Beware that the source and destination directory options to `mb2md` are relative
+to the user's home directory, not relative to the current working directory.
+
 ## Delivering New Messages
 
+Notmuch itself does not receive messages. There is no IMAP or POP support. You
+will need to set up other tools, such as fetchmail, offlineimap, or mbsync, to
+receive the messages.
+
+There are two ways to deliver and index messages:
+
+* Use an external tool (such as offlineimap or mbsync) to deliver the messages
+  to your mail store, and run `notmuch new` to discover and index the newly
+  delivered messages (and any other changes in the mail store).
+
+* Use an external tool (such as fetchmail) receive the messages, and configure
+  the tool to use `notmuch insert` as a Mail Delivery Agent to deliver the
+  messages to your mail store and index them.
+
 ## Automation Via Hooks
 
-## Backing up and Restoring the Database
+Notmuch supports running [user defined
+hooks](https://notmuchmail.org/doc/latest/man5/notmuch-hooks.html)
+before or after certain commands. Hooks can be arbitrary executable
+programs or scripts. For example, if you always run your mail delivery
+tool first and `notmuch new` after that, you can run the tool from
+Notmuch `pre-new` hook, and simply run `notmuch new` to do both. If
+you always do some tagging after indexing of new messages, you may
+want to set up a `post-new` or `post-insert` hook to do that
+automatically.
+
+## Backing Up and Restoring the Database
+
+The Notmuch database contains a search index of your messages, along with all
+the tags you've added to your messages. The search index can be regenerated by
+indexing the messages again, but the tags will be lost if the database is
+lost. (If you have `maildir.synchronize_flags` configuration option enabled,
+also some of the tags can be regenerated from maildir flags.)
+
+To create a plain-text dump of the tags, run
+
+        notmuch dump --output=dump.txt
+
+To restore the tags from the dump, run
+
+        notmuch restore --input=dump.txt
 
 ## Removing Notmuch
+
+Did not like it after all? All you need to do is remove the database and the
+configuration file. The database is stored in the `.notmuch` directory under
+your mail store. And your mail store is at `notmuch config get database.path`.
+
+You may want to use the `notmuch dump` command to create a backup of any tags
+you've added before removing the database.