NOTMUCH(1)

NAME

       notmuch - thread-based email index, search, and tagging

SYNOPSIS

       notmuch [option ...] command [arg ...]

DESCRIPTION

       Notmuch  is a command-line based program for indexing, searching, read-
       ing, and tagging large collections of email messages.

       This page describes how to get started using notmuch from  the  command
       line,  and  gives  a brief overview of the commands available. For more
       information on e.g.  notmuch show consult the notmuch-show(1) man page,
       also accessible via notmuch help show

       The  quickest  way  to get started with Notmuch is to simply invoke the
       notmuch command with no arguments, which will interactively  guide  you
       through the process of indexing your mail.

NOTE

       While the command-line program notmuch provides powerful functionality,
       it does not provide the most convenient interface for that  functional-
       ity.  More  sophisticated interfaces are expected to be built on top of
       either the command-line interface, or more likely, on top of  the  not-
       much  library  interface.  See  http://notmuchmail.org  for  more about
       alternate interfaces to notmuch. The emacs-based interface  to  notmuch
       (available under emacs/ in the Notmuch source distribution) is probably
       the most widely used at this time.

OPTIONS

       Supported global options for notmuch include

           --help

               Print a synopsis of available commands and exit.

           --version

               Print the installed version of notmuch, and exit.

           --config=FILE

               Specify the configuration file to use. This overrides any  con-
               figuration file specified by ${NOTMUCH_CONFIG}.

COMMANDS

  SETUP

       The  notmuch  setup command is used to configure Notmuch for first use,
       (or to reconfigure it later).

       The setup command will prompt for your full name,  your  primary  email
       address,  any alternate email addresses you use, and the directory con-
       taining your email archives. Your answers will be written to a configu-
       ration  file in ${NOTMUCH_CONFIG} (if set) or ${HOME}/.notmuch-config .
       This configuration file will be created with descriptive comments, mak-
       ing  it  easy to edit by hand later to change the configuration. Or you
       can run notmuch setup again to change the configuration.

       The mail directory you specify can contain any number  of  sub-directo-
       ries and should primarily contain only files with individual email mes-
       sages (eg. maildir or mh archives are perfect).  If  there  are  other,
       non-email  files  (such  as indexes maintained by other email programs)
       then notmuch will do its best to detect those and ignore them.

       Mail storage that uses mbox format, (where one mbox file contains  many
       messages),  will not work with notmuch. If that's how your mail is cur-
       rently stored, it is recommended you first convert it to maildir format
       with a utility such as mb2md before running notmuch setup .

       Invoking  notmuch  with no command argument will run setup if the setup
       command has not previously been completed.

  OTHER COMMANDS

       Several of the notmuch commands accept search terms with a common  syn-
       tax. See notmuch-search-terms(7) for more details on the supported syn-
       tax.

       The search, show and count commands are used to query the  email  data-
       base.

       The  reply  command  is  useful  for  preparing a template for an email
       reply.

       The tag command is the only command available for manipulating database
       contents.

       The  dump  and restore commands can be used to create a textual dump of
       email tags for backup purposes, and to restore from that dump.

       The config command can be used to get or set settings int  the  notmuch
       configuration file.

ENVIRONMENT

       The following environment variables can be used to control the behavior
       of notmuch.

       NOTMUCH_CONFIG
              Specifies the location of the notmuch configuration  file.  Not-
              much  will  use  ${HOME}/.notmuch-config if this variable is not
              set.

       NOTMUCH_TALLOC_REPORT
              Location to  write  a  talloc  memory  usage  report.  See  tal-
              loc_enable_leak_report_full in talloc(3) for more information.

       NOTMUCH_DEBUG_QUERY
              If  set to a non-empty value, the notmuch library will print (to
              stderr) Xapian queries it constructs.

SEE ALSO

       notmuch-config(1), notmuch-count(1), notmuch-dump(1), notmuch-hooks(5),
       notmuch-insert(1),     notmuch-new(1),    notmuch-reply(1),    notmuch-
       restore(1),   notmuch-search(1),   notmuch-search-terms(7),    notmuch-
       show(1), notmuch-tag(1)

       The notmuch website: http://notmuchmail.org

CONTACT

       Feel  free to send questions, comments, or kudos to the notmuch mailing
       list <notmuch@notmuchmail.org> . Subscription is  not  required  before
       posting, but is available from the notmuchmail.org website.

       Real-time  interaction  with the Notmuch community is available via IRC
       (server: irc.freenode.net, channel: #notmuch).

Notmuch 0.16