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](http://software.complete.org/software/projects/show/offlineimap) - quite
- useful and widely tested, it also offers a handy hook that
+ * [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
whenever you sync. Point _postsynchook_ to a script that gets run
* [fetchmail](http://fetchmail.berlios.de/)
- See the [initial tagging page](/initial_taggin) 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 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
mail across mail clients (a [maildir
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.
*id:1267450136-31749-1-git-send-email-Sebastian@SSpaeth.de* and can
be viewed as a [source diff in this git
repository](http://github.com/spaetz/notmuch-all-feature/commit/df3b087cefb85e9d16fd17540e348bcb854dd7ee).
+
+* <span id="print_filenames">**Using notmuch with Mutt**</span>
+
+ 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/)
+ has been written by Stefano Zacchiroli, together with some glue code. Check
+ 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
+ here. The howto is
+ [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