[[!img notmuch-logo.png alt="Notmuch logo" class="left"]]
#How to...
-##<span id="print_filenames">.. print only filenames of a search</span>
+Some tips about how to do some useful things with notmuch, and the
+various "third party" notmuch utilities.
-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:
+* <span id="receive_mail">**Receive mail**</span>
- #!/usr/bin/env python
- import sys
- import notmuch
-
- q = notmuch.Database().create_query(" ".join(sys.argv[1:]))
- for m in q.search_messages(): print m.get_filename()
+ 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
+ well-regarded mail retrieval tools:
+
+ * [offlineimap](https://github.com/jgoerzen/offlineimap/wiki/) -
+ 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
+ on every sync and that will do the automatic updating and tagging
+ of your notmuch database.
+
+ * [mbsync](http://isync.sourceforge.net/)
+
+ * [getmail](http://pyropus.ca/software/getmail/)
+
+ * [fetchmail](http://fetchmail.berlios.de/)
+
+ See the [[initial_tagging]] page for more info on intial tagging of messages.
+
+* <span id="print_filenames">**Print only filenames of a search (python bindings)**</span>
+
+ Notmuch includes python bindings to the notmuch shared library,
+ called [cnotmuch](http://pypi.python.org/pypi/cnotmuch). Extensive
+ API documentation available.
+
+ 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:
+
+ #!/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()
+
+* <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:
+
+ 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
+ flags (seen, replied, trashed, etc). However there are currently 2
+ ways in which you can achieve synchronization.
+
+ [notmuchsync](http://spaetz.github.com/notmuchsync/) is a utility
+ (based on the cnotmuch python bindings) that allows synchronization
+ in either direction, as well as pruning of deleted files.
+
+ The second solution allows for fast maildir flag to notmuch tag
+ synchronization (and only in that direction) requires patching the
+ notmuch source code. The patch has been posted in this mail
+ *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).
projects / notmuch-wiki / blobdiff