[[!img notmuch-logo.png alt="Notmuch logo" class="left"]] # Notmuch -- The mail indexer ## Why Notmuch? Because dealing with your mail can be so much better. * "Not much mail" is what Notmuch thinks about your email collection. Even if you receive 12000 messages per month or have on the order of millions of messages that you've been saving for decades. Regardless, Notmuch will be able to quickly search all of it. It's just plain not much mail. * "Not much mail" is also what you should have in your inbox at any time. Notmuch gives you what you need, (tags and fast search), so that you can keep your inbox tamed and focus on what really matters in your life, (which is surely not email). * Notmuch is an answer to [Sup](http://sup.rubyforge.org/). Sup is a very good email program written by William Morgan (and others) and is the direct inspiration for Notmuch. Notmuch began as an effort to rewrite performance-critical pieces of Sup in C rather than ruby. From there, it grew into a separate project. One significant contribution Notmuch makes compared to Sup is the separation of the indexer/searcher from the user interface. (Notmuch provides a library interface so that its indexing/searching/tagging features can be integrated into any email program.) * Notmuch is not much of an email program. It doesn't receive messages (no POP or IMAP support). It doesn't send messages (no mail composer, no network code at all). And for what it does do (email search) that work is provided by an external library, [Xapian](http://xapian.org). So if Notmuch provides no user interface and Xapian does all the heavy lifting, then what's left here? Not much. If you've been looking for a fast, global-search and tag-based email reader to use within your text editor or in a terminal, then Notmuch may be exactly what you've been looking for. If you're a developer of an existing email program and would love a good library interface for fast, global search with support for arbitrary tags, then Notmuch also may be exactly what you've been looking for. ## News [[The latest news from notmuch|news]] ## Documentation To get started with notmuch, just run "notmuch" at the command line. The configuration wizard will walk you through initial setup, including specifying the location of your mail store and how to start the initial indexing. After that, come back and checkout our docs: * [[Notmuch manual pages|manpages]] * [[General how-tos|howto]] * [[Searching]] * [[Excluding and deleting messages|excluding]] * [[Initial tagging|Initial_Tagging]] * [[Tips for using notmuch within Emacs|emacstips]] * [[Remote usage|remoteusage]] * [[Performance|performance]] Apart from the wiki, help is available via email and on IRC (see below). Join the mailing list. Read the archives. Ask questions. ## Email clients and front ends Notmuch ships with a powerful set of [[command-line tools|manpages]], an [[email client for Emacs|emacstips]], another [client for vim](http://git.notmuchmail.org/git/notmuch/blob/HEAD:/contrib/notmuch-vim/README), and a [[Mutt integration script|notmuch-mutt]]. There are also many other [[email clients and frontends|frontends]] based on Notmuch. And a few tips about integrating it with [[Mutt|mutttips]] and [[Vim|vimtips]]. ## Screenshots * [[Emacs UI screenshots|screenshots]] ## Obtaining Notmuch [Notmuch source releases](http://notmuchmail.org/releases/) are available as source tar balls. Notmuch is packaged for the following distributions: * [Debian](http://packages.debian.org/search?keywords=notmuch) (Please use at least the packages from squeeze-backports, squeeze packages are very outdated!) * [Fedora](https://community.dev.fedoraproject.org/packages/notmuch) * [Gentoo](http://packages.gentoo.org/package/net-mail/notmuch) * [Slackware](http://slackbuilds.org/repository/13.37/office/notmuch/) * [Ubuntu](http://packages.ubuntu.com/search?keywords=notmuch) ## Development and Contributing All of the code for Notmuch is available as [free software](http://www.fsf.org/licensing/essays/free-sw.html) released under the GNU [GPL version 3](http://www.fsf.org/licensing/licenses/gpl.html). The latest versions can be checked out via git with this command: git clone git://notmuchmail.org/git/notmuch You can browse the [Notmuch code history online](http://git.notmuchmail.org/git/notmuch). And finally, you can [subscribe to the `notmuch-commits` list](http://notmuchmail.org/mailman/listinfo/notmuch-commits) to watch every commit made to notmuch and the notmuchmail.org web site. We have a [buildbot](http://buildbot.notmuchmail.org/grid) (here's its [configuration](https://github.com/tomprince/buildbot-configs/tree/notmuch)). Contributions, such as patches, to Notmuch are most welcome. Please refer to the [[guide to contributing|contributing]]. ## Bug and patch tracking The tagging and filtering features of notmuch make it quite suitable for use as a bug- and patch-tracker. We are currently experimenting with using it for this purpose for notmuch development, using a utility called [[nmbug]]. The status of bugs and current patches can also be followed [online](http://nmbug.tethera.net/status). Bug reports should be sent to the Notmuch mailing list notmuch@notmuchmail.org. ## Contact: Email & IRC Comments? Please feel free to email the notmuch mailing list: notmuch@notmuchmail.org (subscription is not required, but you can also subscribe to the [notmuch mailing list](http://notmuchmail.org/mailman/listinfo/notmuch)). You can also browse the [online list archives](http://notmuchmail.org/pipermail/notmuch/), read them as a [web forum (nabble)](http://notmuch.198994.n3.nabble.com/), or download an [mbox file](http://notmuchmail.org/archives/notmuch.mbox) of the entire mailing-list. The `mb2md` utility can be used to convert the archives to maildir format which is convenient for reading the archives within notmuch itself. If you prefer real-time chat, there is often someone on the [#notmuch](irc://chat.freenode.net/#notmuch)@irc.freenode.net IRC channel. ## Feature ideas If you have a feature idea/request, please send it to the [mailing list](http://notmuchmail.org/mailman/listinfo/notmuch). You don't have to be subscribed to send, although there might be a delay for non-subscribers. ## Website This wiki is maintained using [ikiwiki](http://ikiwiki.info). Here are [[instructions on how to edit the wiki|wikiwriteaccess]].