X-Git-Url: https://git.cworth.org/git?p=obsolete%2Fnotmuch-wiki;a=blobdiff_plain;f=howto.mdwn;h=f4ef721a00f5016809b555014a300dcf65feb8eb;hp=1d20004ec31a862ce8a4636a5751e2fae08f69a5;hb=280418df96c602eaafdd462eeb90d116f52699fe;hpb=7f97755bd4fe86f1611298054223114a674144a7 diff --git a/howto.mdwn b/howto.mdwn index 1d20004..f4ef721 100644 --- a/howto.mdwn +++ b/howto.mdwn @@ -1,71 +1,130 @@ -[[!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. -* **Receive mail** - - 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](https://github.com/jgoerzen/offlineimap/wiki/) - - 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_tagging) for more info on intial tagging of messages. - -* **Print only filenames of a search (python bindings)** - - 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() - -* **Sync notmuch tags and maildir flags** - - 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]] + +## **Debian squeeze packages outdated** + +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/). + +## **Receive mail** + +Notmuch does not fetch mail for you. For that, you need to use an +external mail syncing utility. Some recommended utilities are listed +below. + +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 + 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. + +## **Sync notmuch tags and maildir flags** + +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. + +## **Use notmuch from python** + +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 +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 + [...] + +## **Using notmuch with Mutt** + +See [[notmuch-mutt]]. + +## **Automatically retagging the database (e.g., when upgrading versions)** + +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 --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. + +## **Dealing with mbox and other formats** + +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. + +## **Take advantage of tags that are special to notmuch** + +See [[tags special to notmuch|special-tags]].