NOTMUCH-DUMP(1)

NAME

       notmuch-dump - creates a plain-text dump of the tags of each message

SYNOPSIS

       notmuch  dump  [--format=(sup|batch-tag)]  [--] [ --output=<filename> ]
       [--] [ <search-term>...]

DESCRIPTION

       Dump tags for messages matching the given search terms.

       Output is to the given filename, if any, or to stdout.

       These tags are the only data in the  notmuch  database  that  can't  be
       recreated  from the messages themselves.  The output of notmuch dump is
       therefore the only critical thing to backup (and much more friendly  to
       incremental backup than the native database files.)

       --format=(sup|batch-tag)

           Notmuch restore supports two plain text dump formats, both with one
           message-id per line, followed by a list of tags.

           sup

               The sup dump file format is specifically chosen to be  compati-
               ble  with  the  format  of  files  produced by sup-dump.  So if
               you've previously been using sup for  mail,  then  the  notmuch
               restore  command  provides you a way to import all of your tags
               (or labels as sup calls them).  Each  line  has  the  following
               form

               <message-id> ( <tag> ...  )

               with zero or more tags are separated by spaces. Note that (mal-
               formed) message-ids may contain arbitrary non-null  characters.
               Note  also that tags with spaces will not be correctly restored
               with this format.

           batch-tag

               The batch-tag dump format is intended to  more  robust  against
               malformed  message-ids  and  tags containing whitespace or non-
               ascii(7) characters.  Each line has the form

               +<encoded-tag> +<encoded-tag> ... --  id:<quoted-message-id>

               Tags are hex-encoded by replacing every byte not  matching  the
               regex [A-Za-z0-9@=.,_+-] with %nn where nn is the two digit hex
               encoding.  The message ID is a valid Xapian query, quoted using
               Xapian  boolean  term  quoting rules: if the ID contains white-
               space or a close paren or starts with a double quote,  it  must
               be  enclosed  in  double quotes and double quotes inside the ID
               must be doubled.  The astute reader will notice this is a  spe-
               cial  case  of  the batch input format for notmuch-tag(1); note
               that the single message-id  query  is  mandatory  for  notmuch-
               restore(1).

           With  no  search terms, a dump of all messages in the database will
           be generated.  A "--" argument instructs notmuch that the remaining
           arguments are search terms.

           See notmuch-search-terms(7) for details of the supported syntax for
           <search-terms>.

SEE ALSO

       notmuch(1), notmuch-config(1), notmuch-count(1), notmuch-hooks(5), not-
       much-insert(1),  notmuch-new(1),  notmuch-reply(1), notmuch-restore(1),
       notmuch-search(1), notmuch-search-terms(7),  notmuch-show(1),  notmuch-
       tag(1)

Notmuch 0.16