Some tips about how to do some useful things with notmuch, and the
various "third party" notmuch utilities.
-* <span id="receive_mail">**Receive mail**</span>
-
- 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](http://software.complete.org/software/projects/show/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
- 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](/initial_taggin) 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>
-
- 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).
+[[!toc levels=2]]
+
+## <span id="receive_mail">**Receive mail**</span>
+
+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 its own will work. Here are some generally
+well-regarded mail retrieval tools:
+
+* [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
+ 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 initial tagging of messages.
+
+## <span id="python">**Use notmuch from python**</span>
+
+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 snippet will produce a list of mails matching the given
+expression:
+
+ >>> 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 (but please consider updating to a more recent version
+of notmuch; in addition to maildir tag syncing, it contains many
+useful new features, and several important bug fixes):
+
+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 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.
+
+[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).
+
+## <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 not seamless, but fairly straightforward.
+There are two principal possibilities, each with its own ups and downs:
+
+* Using mutt-notmuch, which will create a "virtual" maildir folder with
+ search results whenever a search is made. The upside is that you can
+ search all your folders simultanously; the downside is that your
+ modifications in the results listing do not carry over, also having
+ to switch folders comes with some more annoyances.
+
+ 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. 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>
+
+* Using a simple macro that will emulate the "limit" mutt functionality
+ using notmuch.
+
+ See the [**alternative notmuch integration**](http://log.or.cz/?p=228)
+ blog post for instructions and details,
+ or simply put these two macros to your muttrc:
+
+ # 'L' performs a notmuch query, showing only the results
+ macro index L "<enter-command>unset wait_key<enter><shell-escape>read -p 'notmuch query: ' x; echo \$x >~/.cache/mutt_terms<enter><limit>~i \"\`notmuch search --output=messages \$(cat ~/.cache/mutt_terms) | head -n 600 | perl -le '@a=<>;chomp@a;s/\^id:// for@a;$,=\"|\";print@a'\`\"<enter>" "show only messages matching a notmuch pattern"
+ # 'a' shows all messages again (supersedes default <alias> binding)
+ macro index a "<limit>all\n" "show all messages (undo limit)"
+
+ The upside (if you are used to working in the context of a single folder)
+ is that this really does use the limit functionality of mutt
+ and you are still in your original folder.
+ The downside is that this approach has scaling problems
+ and works well only for reasonably specific queries.
+
+
+## <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