Notmuch requires either [maildir
flag](http://cr.yp.to/proto/maildir.html) or a "mh"-style
maildirectory to operate on. Basically any setup in which each mail
- is in a file of it's own will work. Here are some generally
+ is in a file of its own will work. Here are some generally
well-regarded mail retrieval tools:
- * [offlineimap](https://github.com/jgoerzen/offlineimap/wiki/) -
+ * [offlineimap](https://github.com/nicolas33/offlineimap/) -
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
* [fetchmail](http://fetchmail.berlios.de/)
- See the [[initial_tagging]] page for more info on intial tagging of messages.
+ See the [[initial_tagging]] page for more info on initial tagging of messages.
-* <span id="print_filenames">**Print only filenames of a search (python bindings)**</span>
+* <span id="python">**Use notmuch from python**</span>
- Notmuch includes python bindings to the notmuch shared library,
- called [cnotmuch](http://pypi.python.org/pypi/cnotmuch). Extensive
- API documentation available.
+ Notmuch includes python bindings to the notmuch shared
+ library. Extensive API documentation [is
+ available](http://notmuch.readthedocs.org/).
The bindings are very simple to use. As an example, given you have
the python bindings installed (or simply set your PYTHONPATH
environment variable to point to the .../bindings/python directory),
- this script will print the filenames of a matching search:
+ this snippet will produce a list of mails matching the given
+ expression:
- #!/usr/bin/env python
- import sys
- import notmuch
- search = " ".join(sys.argv[1:])
- q = notmuch.Database().create_query(search)
- for m in q.search_messages():
- print m.get_filename()
+ >>> import notmuch
+ >>> db = notmuch.Database()
+ >>> query = db.create_query('tag:inbox AND NOT tag:killed')
+ >>> list(query.search_messages()) # doctest:+ELLIPSIS
+ [...]
* <span id="sync_maildir_flags">**Sync notmuch tags and maildir flags**</span>
notmuch **since version 0.5** syncs maildir flags and respective
- tags in both directions. This how to applies only to notmuch
- prior version 0.5:
+ tags in both directions. This part applies only to notmuch prior to
+ version 0.5:
Some IMAP users rely on maildir flags that convey the status "seen",
"replied", "trashed", in order to synchronize the status of their
flag](http://cr.yp.to/proto/maildir.html) is simply a defined part
of their filename). Notmuch will by default happily ignore those
flags and will never modify them either, as there is no built-in
- support for sunchronizing your notmuch tags with your imap maildir
+ support for synchronizing your notmuch tags with your imap maildir
flags (seen, replied, trashed, etc). However there are currently 2
ways in which you can achieve synchronization.
* <span id="print_filenames">**Using notmuch with Mutt**</span>
- Notmuch is a great mail indexing tool than can also be used *in conjunction*
+ Notmuch is a great mail indexing tool that can also be used *in conjunction*
with existing Mail User Agents (MUA) instead of replacing them. The advantage
of such mixed solutions is that users can benefit from notmuch features (such
as full-text search and thread reconstruction) without *having to* change
MUA.
-
+
A popular geek MUA is [the Mutt e-mail client](http://www.mutt.org);
integrating notmuch with Mutt is fairly straightforward. An
[**how to use Notmuch with Mutt**](http://upsilon.cc/~zack/blog/posts/2011/01/how_to_use_Notmuch_with_Mutt/)
out the
[howto](http://upsilon.cc/~zack/blog/posts/2011/01/how_to_use_Notmuch_with_Mutt/)
for more information.
-
+
<small>(Note by the howto author: I've linked the howto from this wiki rather
than splicing it in, in order to avoid duplication of information. If you
think it would be better to have it here, feel free to copy the text
[available](http://git.upsilon.cc/cgi-bin/gitweb.cgi?p=zack-homepage.git;a=history;f=blog/posts/2011/01/how_to_use_Notmuch_with_Mutt.mdwn)
in markdown syntax from the Git repository of my homepage.)</small>
+* <span id="reapply_auto">**Automatically retagging the database (e.g., when upgrading versions)**</span>
+
+ Certain versions of notmuch include new automatic tags (for example, between
+ 0.3 and 0.10, automatic tagging of signed and encrypted messages was added).
+ However, for users running with databases created in older versions of
+ 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
+ $ mv ~/Mail/.notmuch ~/.notmuch.bak
+ $ notmuch new
+ $ notmuch tag -inbox -unread '*'
+ $ notmuch restore --accumulate ~/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
+ ~/out.nm.
+
+* <span id="nbox">**Dealing with mbox and other formats**</span>
+
+ notmuch by itself is unable to handle non-maildir mail archives. One tool
+ to solve this is called mb2md. Assuming an mbox in ~/test.mbox and ones
+ mail archives to be in ~/Mail, an invocation would look like
+
+ $ mb2md -s ~/test.mbox -d ~/Mail/mynewmaildirname
+
+ Note that specifying the paths for -s and -d is necessary. This will create
+ a new maildir in ~/Mail/mynewmaildirname from the mbox at ~/test.mbox.
+
+ Often the formats are more convoluted, however. Many lists provide an
+ almost-but-not-quite-mbox format that mailman produces, as can be seen, for
+ example, [here](http://lists.xapian.org/pipermail/xapian-devel/). These
+ files can be converted with some degree of success to mbox using the script
+ found
+ [here](http://www.hermann-uwe.de/blog/converting-mailman-gzipd-text-archive-files-to-proper-mbox-files),
+ and from mbox to maildir as above.
+
+ However, many of these lists also have a gmane version, which, where it
+ exists, achieves far better results than dealing with the messy mailman
+ output. Using the instructions from [Gmane's
+ site](http://gmane.org/export.php), we can download an mbox file, which we
+ can then convert to maildir using mb2md or other utility.
+
+* <span id="special_tags">**Take advantage of tags that are special to notmuch**</span>
+
+ See [[tags special to notmuch|special-tags]].
projects / notmuch-wiki / blobdiff