-[[!img notmuch-logo.png alt="Notmuch logo" class="left"]]
-#How to...
+# How to...
Some tips about how to do some useful things with notmuch, and the
various "third party" notmuch utilities.
[[!toc levels=2]]
+## <span id="debian_packages">**Debian squeeze packages outdated**</span>
+
+The notmuch package(s) in Debian squeeze are very old (version 0.3).
+It's better to start off with an up to date version from
+[backports](http://backports-master.debian.org/).
+
## <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:
+Notmuch does not fetch mail for you. For that, you need to use an
+external mail syncing utility. Some recommended utilities are listed
+below.
-* [offlineimap](https://github.com/nicolas33/offlineimap/) -
+Notmuch requires that every individual message be in it's own file.
+The well-supported [maildir](http://cr.yp.to/proto/maildir.html) or
+"mh"-style storage formats are compatible with notmuch. Basically any
+setup in which each mail is in a file of its own will work. The older
+mbox mail store formats is not supported, but fortunately it is very
+easy to [[convert mbox to maildir|howto/#mbox]] . The following
+utilities support these formats:
+
+* [offlineimap](http://offlineimap.org/) -
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
* [fetchmail](http://fetchmail.berlios.de/)
-See the [[initial_tagging]] page for more info on initial tagging of messages.
+See the [[initial_tagging]] page for more info on initial tagging of
+messages.
+
+## <span id="sync_maildir_flags">**Sync notmuch tags and maildir flags**</span>
+
+notmuch has the ability to synchronize maildir flags and respective tags in both
+directions. For more information on maildir flags see the [maildir
+page](http://cr.yp.to/proto/maildir.html), and for the respective tags see your
+notmuch configuration file. This feature is enabled by default, but if you don't
+need it, it is simple to disable it with the 'notmuch config' command:
+
+ $ notmuch config set maildir.synchronize_flags false
+
+The maildir flags may, in turn, be synchronized with IMAP flags by another tool,
+such as offlineimap.
+
+For safety reasons, and because
+[[notmuch does not support delete operations|deleting]], notmuch does
+not sync the "trashed" flag. For discussion on this topic please
+refer to the mailing list.
## <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/).
+Notmuch includes python bindings to the notmuch shared library. Please
+refer to the nice and extensive
+[notmuch python API documentation](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
>>> 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.
-
+See [[notmuch-mutt]].
## <span id="reapply_auto">**Automatically retagging the database (e.g., when upgrading versions)**</span>
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
+ $ notmuch dump --output=~/out.nm
+ $ mv ~/Mail/.notmuch ~/.notmuch.bak
+ $ notmuch new
+ $ notmuch tag -inbox -unread '*'
+ $ notmuch restore --accumulate --input=~/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>
+## <span id="mbox">**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
+ $ 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.
projects / obsolete / notmuch-wiki / blobdiff