1 Notmuch 0.10 (2011-xx-xx)
2 =========================
4 New build and testing features
5 ------------------------------
7 Emacs tests are now done in dtach. This means that dtach is now
8 needed to run the notmuch test suite, at least until the checking for
9 prerequisites is improved.
11 New command-line features
12 -------------------------
14 Add "notmuch restore --accumulate" option
16 The --accumulate switch causes the union of the existing and new tags to be
17 applied, instead of replacing each message's tags as they are read in from
20 Add search terms to "notmuch dump"
22 The dump command now takes an optional search term much like notmuch
23 search/show/tag. The output file argument of dump is deprecated in
24 favour of using stdout.
29 Search avoids opening and parsing message files
31 We now store more information in the database so search no longer
32 has to open every message file to get basic headers. This can
33 improve search speed by as much as 10X, but taking advantage of this
34 requires a database rebuild:
36 notmuch dump > notmuch.dump
37 # Backup, then remove notmuch database ($MAIL/.notmuch)
39 notmuch restore notmuch.dump
41 Notmuch 0.9 (2011-10-01)
42 ========================
47 Correct handling of interruptions during "notmuch new"
49 "notmuch new" now operates as a series of small, self-consistent
50 transactions, so it can correctly resume after an interruption or
51 crash. Previously, interruption could lose existing tags, fail to
52 detect messages on resume, or leave the database in a state
53 temporarily or permanently inconsistent with the mail store.
60 notmuch_database_begin_atomic and notmuch_database_end_atomic allow
61 multiple database operations to be performed atomically.
63 notmuch_database_find_message_by_filename does exactly what it says.
67 notmuch_database_find_message (and n_d_f_m_by_filename) now return
68 a status indicator and uses an output parameter for the
69 message. This change required changing the SONAME of libnotmuch to
72 Python bindings changes
73 -----------------------
75 - Re-encode python unicode objects to utf-8 before passing back to
77 - Support Database().begin_atomic()/end_atomic()
78 - Support Database().find_message_by_filename()
79 NB! This needs a db opened in READ-WRITE mode currently, or it will crash
80 the python process. The is a limitation (=bug) of the underlying libnotmuch.
81 - Fixes where we would not throw NotmuchErrors when we should (Justus Winter)
82 - Update for n_d_find_message* API changes (see above).
87 - Wrap new library functions notmuch_database_{begin,end}_atomic.
88 - Add new exception Notmuch::UnbalancedAtomicError.
89 - Rename destroy to destroy! according to Ruby naming conventions.
90 - Update for n_d_find_message* API changes (see above).
95 * Add gpg callback to crypto sigstatus buttons to retrieve/refresh
97 * Add notmuch-show-refresh-view function (and corresponding binding)
98 to refresh the view of a notmuch-show buffer.
100 Reply formatting cleanup
101 ------------------------
103 "notmuch reply" no longer includes notification that non-leafnode
104 MIME parts are being suppressed.
106 Notmuch 0.8 (2011-09-10)
107 ========================
109 Improved handling of message/rfc822 parts
111 Both in the CLI and the emacs interface. Output of rfc822 parts now
112 includes the primary headers, as well as the body and all subparts.
113 Output of the completely raw rfc822-formatted message, including all
114 headers, is unfortunately not yet supported (but hopefully will be
117 Improved Build system portability
119 Certain parts of the shell script generating notmuch.sym were
120 specific to the GNU versions of sed and nm. The new version should
121 be more portable to e.g. OpenBSD.
123 Documentation update for Ruby bindings
125 Added documentation, typo fixes, and improved support for rdoc.
127 Unicode, iterator, PEP8 changes for python bindings
129 - PEP8 (code formatting) changes for python files.
130 - Remove Tags.__len__ ; see 0.6 release notes for motivation.
131 - Decode headers as UTF8, encode (unicode) database paths as UTF8.
133 Notmuch 0.7 (2011-08-01)
134 ========================
136 Vim interface improvements
137 --------------------------
139 Jason Woofenden provided a number of bug fixes for the Vim interface
141 * fix citation/signature fold lengths
142 * fix cig/cit parsing within multipart/*
143 * fix on-screen instructions for show-signature
144 * fix from list reformatting in search view
145 * fix space key: now archives (did opposite)
147 Uwe Kleine-König contributed
149 * use full path for sendmail/doc fix
150 * fix compose temp file name
152 Python Bindings changes
153 -----------------------
155 Sebastian Spaeth contributed two changes related to unicode and UTF8:
157 * message tags are now explicitly unicode
158 * query string is encoded as a UTF8 byte string
160 Build-System improvments
161 ------------------------
163 Generate notmuch.sym after the relevant object files
165 This fixes a bug in parallel building. Thanks to Thomas Jost for the
168 Notmuch 0.6.1 (2011-07-17)
169 ==========================
174 Re-export Xapian exception typeinfo symbols.
176 It turned out our aggressive symbol hiding caused problems for
177 people running gcc 4.4.5.
179 Notmuch 0.6 (2011-07-01)
180 =======================
181 New, general features
182 ---------------------
183 Folder-based searching
185 Notmuch queries can now include a search term to match the
186 directories in which mail files are stored (within the mail
187 storage). The syntax is as follows:
191 For example, one might use things such as:
197 to match any path containing a directory "spam", "work/todo", or
198 containing a directory starting with "2011-", respectively.
200 This feature is particularly useful for users of delivery-agent
201 software (such as procmail or maildrop) that is filtering mail and
202 delivering it to particular folders, or users of systems such as
203 Gmail that use filesystem directories to indicate message tags.
205 NOTE: Only messages that are newly indexed with this version of
206 notmuch will be searchable with folder: terms. In order to enable
207 this feature for all mail, the entire notmuch index will need to be
210 notmuch dump > notmuch.dump
211 # Backup, then remove notmuch database ($MAIL/.notmuch)
213 notmuch restore notmuch.dump
217 Both the command line interface and the emacs-interface have new
218 support for PGP/MIME, detailed below. Thanks to Daniel Kahn Gillmor
219 and Jameson Graef Rollins for making this happen.
221 New, automatic tags: "signed" and "encrypted"
223 These tags will automatically be applied to messages containing
224 multipart/signed and multipart/encrypted parts.
226 NOTE: Only messages that are newly indexed with this version of
227 notmuch will receive these tags.
229 New command-line features
230 -------------------------
231 Add new "notmuch show --verify" option for signature verification
233 This option instruct notmuch to verify the signature of
234 PGP/MIME-signed parts.
236 Add new "notmuch show --decrypt" and "notmuch reply --decrypt" options
238 This option instructs notmuch to decrypt PGP/MIME-encrypted parts.
239 Note that this feature currently requires gpg-agent and a passphrase entry
240 tool (e.g. pinentry-gtk or pinentry-curses).
242 Proper nesting of multipart parts in "notmuch show" output
244 MIME parts are now display with proper nesting to reflect original
245 MIME hierarchy of a message. This allows clients to correctly
246 analyze the MIME structure, (such as, for example, determining to
247 which parts a signature part applies).
249 Add new "notmuch show --part" option
251 This is a replacement for the older "notmuch part" command, (which
252 is now deprecated—it should still work as always, but is no longer
253 documented). Putting part output under "notmuch show" allows for all
254 of the "notmuch show" options to be applied when extracting a single
255 part, (such as --format=json for extracting a message part with JSON
258 Deprecate "notmuch search-tags", (in favor of "notmuch search --output=tags *")
260 The "notmuch search-tags" sub-command has been redundant since the
261 addition of the --output=tags option to "notmuch search". We now
262 make that more clear by deprecating "notmuch search-tags", (dropping
263 it from the documentation). We do continue to support the old syntax
264 by translating it internally to the new call.
266 Performance improvements
267 ------------------------
268 Faster searches (by doing fewer searches to construct threads)
270 Whenever a user asks for search results as threads, notmuch first
271 performs a search for messages matching the query, then performs
272 additional searches to find other messages in the resulting threads.
274 Removing inefficiencies and redundancies in these secondary searches
275 results in a measured speedups of 1.5x for a typical search.
277 Faster searches (by doing fewer passes to gather message data)
279 Optimizing Xapian data access patterns (using a single pass to get
280 all message-document data rather than a pass for each data type)
281 results in a measured speedup of 1.7x for a typical search.
283 The benefits of this optimization combine with the preceding
284 optimization. With both in place, Austin Clements measured a speedup
285 of 2.5x for a search of all messages in his inbox (was 4.5s, now
286 1.8s). Thanks, Austin!
288 Faster initial indexing
290 More efficient indexing of new messages results in a measured
291 speedup of 1.4x for the initial indexing of 3 GB of mail (1h 14m
292 rather than 1h 46m). Thanks to Austin Clements and Michal Sojka.
294 Make "notmuch new" faster for unchanged directories
296 Optimizing to not do any further examinations of sub-directories
297 when the filesystem indicates that a directory is unchanged from the
298 last "notmuch new" results in measured speedups of 8.5 for the "No
299 new mail" case, (was 0.77s, now 0.09s). Thanks to Karel Zak.
301 New emacs-interface features
302 ----------------------------
304 Support for PGP/MIME (GnuPG)
306 Automatically indicate validity of signatures for multipart/signed
307 messages. Automatically display decrypted content for
308 multipart/encrypted messages. See the emacs variable
309 notmuch-crypto-process-mime for more information. Note that this
310 needs gpg-agent and a pinentry tool just as the command line tools.
311 Also note there is no support SMIME yet.
313 Output of pipe command is now displayed if pipe command fails
315 This is extremely useful in the common use case of piping a patch to
316 "git am". If git fails to cleanly merge the patch the error messages
317 from the failed merge are now clearly displayed to the user, (where
318 previously they were silently hidden from the user).
320 User-selectable From address
322 A user can choose which configured email addresses should be used as
323 the From address whenever composing a new message. To do so, simply
324 press C-u before the command which will open a new message. Emacs
325 will prompt for the from address to use.
327 The user can customize the "Notmuch Identities" setting in the
328 notmuch customize group in order to use addresses other than those in
329 the notmuch configuration file if desired.
331 The user can also choose to always be prompted for the from address
332 when composing a new message (without having to use C-u) by setting
333 the "Notmuch Always Prompt For Sender" option in the notmuch
336 Hiding of repeated subjects in collapsed thread view
338 In notmuch-show mode, if a collapsed message has the same subject as
339 its parent, the subject is not shown.
341 Automatic detection and hiding of original message in top-posted message
343 When a message contains a line looking something like:
345 ----- Original Message -----
347 emacs hides this and all subsequent lines as an "original message",
348 (allowing the user to click or press enter on the "original message"
349 button to display it again). This makes the handling of top-posted
350 citations work much like conventional citations.
352 New hooks for running code when tags are modified
354 Some users want to perform additional actions whenever a particular
355 tag is added/removed from a message. This could be used to, for
356 example, interface with some external spam-recognition training
357 tool. To facilitate this, two new hooks are added which can be
358 modified in the following settings of the notmuch customize group:
360 Notmuch Before Tag Hook
361 Notmuch After Tag Hook
363 New optional support for hiding some multipart/alternative parts
365 Many emails are sent with redundant content within a
366 multipart/alternative group (such as a text/plain part as well as a
367 text/html part). Users can configure the setting:
369 Notmuch Show All Multipart/Alternative Parts
371 to "off" in the notmuch customize group to have the interface
372 automatically hide some part alternatives (such as text/html
373 parts). This new part hiding is not configured by default yet
374 because there's not yet a simple way to re-display such a hidden
375 part if it is not actually redundant with a displayed part.
377 Better rendering of text/x-vcalendar parts
379 These parts are now displayed in a format suitable for use with the
382 Avoid getting confused by Subject and Author fields with newline characters
384 Replacing all characters with ASCII code less than 32 with a question mark.
386 Cleaner display of From line in email messages (remove double quotes,
387 and drop "name" if it's actually just a repeat of the email address).
389 Vim interface improvements
390 --------------------------
391 Felipe Contreras provided a number of updates for the vim interface:
393 * Using sendmail directly rather than mailx,
394 * Implementing archive in show view
395 * Add support to mark as read in show and search views
396 * Add delete commands
399 Bindings improvements
400 ---------------------
401 Ruby bindings are now much more complete
403 Including QUERY.sort, QUERY.to_s, MESSAGE.maildir_flags_to_tags,
404 MESSAGE.tags_to_maildir_flags, and MESSAGE.get_filenames
406 * Python bindings have been upodated and extended
407 (docs online at http://packages.python.org/notmuch/)
410 - Message().get_filenames(),
411 - Message().tags_to_maildir_flags(),Message().maildir_flags_to_tags()
412 - list(Threads()) and list(Messages) works now
414 - Message().__cmp__() and __hash__()
415 These allow, for example:
418 As well as set arithmetic on Messages():
420 s1, s2= set(msgs1), set(msgs2)
425 - len(Messages()) as it exausted the iterator.
426 Use len(list(Messages())) or
427 Query.count_messages() to get the length.
429 Added initial Go bindings in bindings/go
431 New build-system features
432 -------------------------
433 Added support for building in a directory other than the source directory
435 This can be used with the widely-supported idiom of simply running
436 the configure script from some other directory:
443 Fix to save configure options for future, implicit runs of configure
445 When a user updates the source (such as with "git pull") calling
446 "make" may cause an automatic re-run of the configure script. When
447 this happens, the configure script will automatically be called with
448 the same options the user originally passed in the most-recent
449 manual invocation of configure.
451 New test-suite feature
452 ----------------------
453 Binary for bash for running test suite now located via PATH.
455 The notmuch test suite requires a fairly recent version of bash (>=
456 bash 4). As some systems supply an older version of bash at
457 /bin/bash, the test suite is now updated to search $PATH to locate
458 the bash binary. This allows users of systems with old /bin/bash to
459 simply install bash >= 4 somewhere on $PATH before /bin and then use
462 Support for testing output with a trailing newline.
464 Previously, some tests would fail to notice a difference in the
465 presence/absence of a trailing newline in a program output, (which
466 has led to bugs in the past). Now, carefully-written tests (using
467 test_expect_equal_file rather than test_expect_equal) will detect
468 any change in the presence/absence of a trailing newline. Many tests
469 are updated to take advantage of this.
471 Avoiding accessing user's $HOME while running test suite
473 The test suite now carefully creates its own HOME directory. This
474 allows the test suite to be run with no existing HOME directory, (as
475 some build systems apparently do), and avoids test-suite differences
476 due to configuration files in the users HOME directory.
481 Output *all* files for "notmuch search --output=files"
483 For the cases where multiple files have the same Message ID,
484 previous versions of notmuch would output only one such file. This
485 command is now fixed to correctly output all files.
487 Fixed spurious search results from "overlapped" indexing of addresses
489 This fixed a bug where a search for:
491 to:user@elsewhere.com
493 would incorrectly match a message sent:
495 To: user@example,com, someone@elsewhere.com
497 Fix --output=json when search has no results
499 A bug present since notmuch 0.4 had caused searches with no results
500 to produce an invalid json object. This is now fixed to cleanly
501 return a valid json object representing an empty array "[]" as
504 fix the automatic detection of the From address for "notmuch reply"
505 from the Received headers in some cases.
507 Fix core dump on DragonFlyBSD due to -1 return value from
508 sysconf(_SC_GETPW_R_SIZE_MAX).
510 Cleaned up several memory leaks
512 Eliminated a few, rare segmentation faults and a double-free.
514 Fix libnotmuch library to only export notmuch API functions
516 Previous release of the notmuch library also exported some Xapian
517 C++ exception type symbols. These were never part of the library
518 interface and were never intended to be exported.
520 Emacs-interface bug fixes
521 -------------------------
522 Display any unexpected output or errors from "notmuch search" invocations
524 Previously any misformatted output or trailing error messages were
525 silently ignored. This output is now clearly displayed. This fix was
526 very helpful in identifying and fixing the bug described below.
528 Fix bug where some threads would be missing from large search results
530 When a search returned a "large" number of results, the emacs
531 interface was incorrectly dropping one thread every time the output
532 of the "notmuch search" process spanned the emacs read-buffer. This
535 Avoid re-compression of .gz files (and similar) when saving attachment
537 Emacs was being too clever for its own good and trying to
538 re-compress pre-compressed .gz files when saving such attachments
539 (potentially corrupting the attachment). The emacs interface is
540 fixed to avoid this bug.
542 Fix hiding of a message when a previously-hidden citation is visible
544 Previously the citation would remain visible in this case. This is
545 fixed so that hiding a message hides all parts.
547 Notmuch 0.5 (2010-11-11)
548 ========================
549 New, general features
550 ---------------------
551 Maildir-flag synchronization
553 Notmuch now knows how to synchronize flags in maildir filenames with
554 tags in the notmuch database. The following flag/tag mappings are
563 'S' unread (added when 'S' flag is not present)
565 The synchronization occurs in both directions, (for example, adding
566 the 'S' flag to a file will cause the "unread" tag to be added, and
567 adding the "replied" tag to a message will cause the file to be
568 renamed with an 'R' flag).
570 This synchronization is enabled by default for users of the
571 command-line interface, (though only files in directories named
572 "cur" or "new" will be renamed). It can be disabled by setting the
573 new maildir.synchronize_flags option in the configuration file. For
576 notmuch config set maildir.synchronize_flags false
578 Users upgrading may also want to run "notmuch setup" once (just
579 accept the existing configuration) to get a new, nicely-commented
580 [maildir] section added to the configuration file.
582 For users of the notmuch library, the new synchronization
583 functionality is available with the following two new functions:
585 notmuch_message_maildir_flags_to_tags
586 notmuch_message_tags_to_maildir_flags
588 It is anticipated that future improvements to this support will
589 allow for safe synchronization of the 'T' flag with the "deleted"
590 tag, as well as support for custom flag/tag mappings.
594 Support for querying multiple filenames for a single message
596 It is common for the mailstore to contain multiple files with the
597 same message ID. Previously, notmuch would always hide these
598 duplicate files, (returning a single, arbitrary filename with
599 notmuch_message_get_filename).
601 With this release, library users can access all filenames for a
602 message with the new function:
604 notmuch_message_get_filenames
606 Together with notmuch_filenames_valid, notmuch_filenames_get, and
607 notmuch_filenames_move_to_next it is now possible to iterate over
608 all available filenames for a given message.
610 New command-line features
611 -------------------------
612 New "notmuch show --format=raw" for getting at original email contents
614 This new feature allows for a fully-functional email client to be
615 built on top of the notmuch command-line without needing any direct
616 access to the mail store itself.
618 For example, it's now possible to run "emacs -f notmuch" on a local
619 machine with only ssh access to the mail store/notmuch database. To
620 do this, simply set the notmuch-command variable in emacs to the
621 name of a script containing:
623 ssh user@host notmuch "$@"
625 If the ssh client has enabled connection sharing (ControlMaster
626 option in OpenSSH), the emacs interface can be quite responsive this
631 Fix "notmuch search" to print nothing when nothing matches
633 The 0.4 release had a bug in which:
635 notmuch search <expression-with-no-matches>
637 would produce a single blank line of output, (where previous
638 versions would produce no output. This fix also causes a change in
639 the --format=json output, (which would previously produce "[]" and
640 now produces nothing).
642 Emacs interface improvements
643 ----------------------------
644 Fix to allow pipe ('|') command to work when using notmuch over ssh
646 Fix count of lines in hidden signatures.
648 Omit repeated subject lines in (collapsed) thread display.
650 Display current thread subject in a header line.
652 Provide a "c i" binding to copy a thread ID from the search view.
654 Allow for notmuch-fcc-dirs to have a value of nil.
656 Also, the more complex form of notmuch-fcc-dirs now has a slightly
657 different format. It no longer has a special first-element, fallback
658 string. Instead it's now a list of cons cells where the car of each
659 cell is a regular expression to be matched against the sender
660 address, and the cdr is the name of a folder to use for an FCC. So
661 the old fallback behavior can be achieved by including a final cell
662 of (".*" . "default-fcc-folder").
664 Vim interface improvements
665 --------------------------
666 Felipe Contreras provided a number of updates for the vim interface.
668 These include optimizations, support for newer versions of vim, fixed
669 support for sending mail on modern systems, new commands, and
674 Added initial ruby bindings in bindings/ruby
676 Notmuch 0.4 (2010-11-01)
677 ========================
678 New command-line features
679 -------------------------
680 notmuch search --output=(summary|threads|messages|tags|files)
682 This new option allows for particular items to be returned from
683 notmuch searches. The "summary" option is the default and behaves
684 just as "notmuch search" has historically behaved.
686 The new option values allow for thread IDs, message IDs, lists of
687 tags, and lists of filenames to be returned from searches. It is
688 expected that this new option will be very useful in shell
689 scripts. For example:
691 for file in $(notmuch search --output=files <search-terms>); do
692 <operations-on> "$file"
695 notmuch show --format=mbox <search-specification>
697 This new option allows for the messages matching a search
698 specification to be presented as an mbox. Specifically the "mboxrd"
699 format is used which allows for reversible quoting of lines
700 beginning with "From ". A reader should remove a single '>' from the
701 beginning of all lines beginning with one or more '>' characters
702 followed by the 5 characters "From ".
704 notmuch config [get|set] <section>.<item> [value ...]
706 The new top-level "config" command allows for any value in the
707 notmuch configuration file to be queried or set to a new value. Both
708 single-valued and multi-valued items are supported, as our any
709 custom items stored in the configuration file.
711 Avoid setting Bcc header in "notmuch reply"
713 We decided that this was a bit heavy-handed as the actual mail
714 user-agent should be responsible for setting any Bcc option. Also,
715 see below for the notmuch/emacs user-agent now setting an Fcc by
716 default rather than Bcc.
720 Add notmuch_query_get_query_string and notmuch_query_get_sort
722 These are simply functions for querying properties of a
723 notmuch_query_t object.
727 Enable Fcc of all sent messages by default (to "sent" directory)
729 All messages sent from the emacs interface will now be saved to the
730 notmuch mail store where they will be incorporated to the database
731 by the next "notmuch new". By default, messages are saved to the
732 "sent" directory at the top-level of the mail store. This directory
733 can be customized by means of the "Notmuch Fcc Dirs" option in the
734 notmuch customize interface.
736 Ability to all open messages in a thread to a pipe
738 Historically, the '|' keybinding allows for piping a single message
739 to an external command. Now, by prefixing this key with a prefix
740 argument, (for example, by pressing "Control-U |"), all open
741 messages in the current thread will be sent to the external command.
743 Optional support for detecting inline patches
745 This hook is disabled by default but can be enabled with a checkbox
746 under "Notmuch Show Insert Text/Plain Hook" in the notmuch customize
747 interface. It allows for inline patches to be detected and treated
748 as if they were attachments, (with context-sensitive highlighting).
750 Automatically tag messages as "replied" when sending a reply
752 Messages replied to within the emacs interface will now be tagged as
753 "replied". This feature can easily be customized to add or remove
754 other tags as well. For example, a user might use a tag of
755 "needs-reply" and can configure this feature to automatically remove
756 that tag when replying. See "Notmuch Message Mark Replied" in the
757 notmuch customize interface.
759 Allow search-result color specifications to overlay each other
761 For example, one tag can specify the background color of matching
762 lines, while another can specify the foreground. With this change,
763 both settings will now be visible simultaneously, (which was not the
764 case in previous releases). See "Notmuch Search Line Faces" in the
765 notmuch customize interface.
767 Make hidden author names still available for incremental search.
769 When there is insufficient space to display all authors of a thread
770 in search results, the names of hidden authors are now still made
771 available to emacs' incremental search commands. As the user
772 searches, matching lines will temporarily expand to show the hidden
775 New binding of Control-TAB (works like TAB in reverse)
777 Many notmuch nodes already use TAB to navigate forward through
778 various items allowing actions, (message headers, email attachments,
779 etc.). The new Control-TAB binding operates similarly but in the
782 New build-system features
783 -------------------------
784 Various portability fixes have been applied
786 These include fixes for build failures on at least Solaris, FreeBSD,
787 and Fedora systems. We're hopeful that the notmuch code base is now
788 more portable than ever before.
790 Arrange for libnotmuch to be found automatically after make install
792 The notmuch build system is now careful to help the user avoid
793 errors of the form "libnotmuch.so could not be found" immediately
794 after installing. This support takes two forms:
796 1. If the library is installed to a system directory,
797 (configured in /etc/ld.so.conf), then "make install" will
798 automatically run ldconfig.
800 2. If the library is installed to a non-system directory, the
801 build system adds a DR_RUNPATH entry to the final binary
802 pointing to the directory to which the library is installed.
804 When this support works, the user should be able to run notmuch
805 immediately after "make install", without any errors trying to find
806 the notmuch library, and without having to manually set environment
807 variables such as LD_LIBRARY_PATH.
809 Check compiler/linker options before using them
811 The configure script now carefully checks that any desired
812 compilation options, (whether for enabling compiler warnings, or for
813 embedding rpath, etc.), are supported. Only supported options are
814 used in the resulting Makefile.
816 New test-suite features
817 -----------------------
818 New modularization of test suite.
820 Thanks to a gracious relicensing of the test-suite infrastructure
821 from the git project, notmuch now has a modular test suite. This
822 provides the ability to run individual sections of the test suite
823 rather than the whole things. It also provides better summary of
824 test results, with support for tests that are expected to fail
825 (BROKEN and FIXED) in addition to PASS and FAIL. Finally, it makes
826 it easy to run the test suite within valgrind (pass --valgrind to
827 notmuch-test or to any sub-script) which has been very useful.
829 New testing of emacs interface.
831 The test suite has been augmented to allow automated testing of the
832 emacs interfaces. So far, this includes basic searches, display of
833 threads, and tag manipulation. This also includes a test that a new
834 message can successfully be sent out through a (dummy) SMTP server
835 and that said message is successfully integrated into the notmuch
836 database via the FCC setting.
840 Fix potential corruption of database when "notmuch new " is interrupted.
842 Previously, an interruption of "notmuch new" would (rarely) result
843 in a corrupt database. The corruption would manifest itself by a
844 persistent error of the form:
846 document ID of 1234 has no thread ID
848 The message-adding code has been carefully audited and reworked to
849 avoid this sort of corruption regardless of when it is interrupted.
851 Fix failure with extremely long message ID headers.
853 Previously, a message with an extremely long message ID, (say, more
854 than 300 characters), would fail to be added to notmuch, (triggering
855 Xapian exceptions). This has now been fixed.
857 Fix for messages with "charset=unknown-8bit"
859 Previously, messages with this charset would cause notmuch to emit a
860 GMime warning, (which would then trip up emacs or other interfaces
861 parsing the notmuch results).
863 Fix notmuch_query_search_threads function to return NULL on any exception
865 Fix "notmuch search" to return non-zero if notmuch_query_search_threads fails
867 Previously, this command could confusingly report a Xapian
868 exception, yet still return an error code of 0. It now correctly
869 returns a failing error code of 1 in this case.
873 Fix to handle a message with a subject containing, for example "[1234]"
875 Previously, a message subject containing a sequence of digits within
876 square brackets would cause the emacs interface to mis-parse the
877 output of "notmuch search". This would result in the message being
878 mis-displayed and prevent the user from manipulating the message in
881 Fix to correctly handle message IDs containing ".."
883 The emacs interface now properly quotes message IDs to avoid a
884 Xapian bug in which the ".." within a message ID would be
885 misinterpreted as a numeric range specification.
889 The python bindings for notmuch have been updated to work with python3.
891 Debian-specific fixes
892 ---------------------
893 Fix emacs initialization so "M-x notmuch" works for users by default.
895 Now, a new Debian user can immediately run "emacs -f notmuch" after
896 "apt-get install notmuch". Previously, the user would have had to
897 edit the ~/.emacs file to add "(require 'notmuch)" before this would
900 Notmuch 0.3.1 (2010-04-27)
901 ==========================
904 Fix an infinite loop in "notmuch reply"
906 This bug could be triggered by replying to a message where the
907 user's primary email address did not appear in the To: header and
908 the user had not configured any secondary email addresses. The bug
909 was a simple re-use of the same iterator variable in nested loops.
911 Fix a potential SEGV in "notmuch search"
913 This bug could be triggered by an author name ending in a ','.
914 Admittedly - that's almost certainly a spam email, but we never
915 want notmuch to crash.
919 Fix calculations for line wrapping in the primary "notmuch" view.
921 Fix Fcc support to prompt to create a directory if the specified Fcc
922 directory does not exist.
926 Fix build on OpenSolaris (at least) due to missing 'extern "C"' block.
928 Without this, the C++ sources could not find strcasestr and the
929 final linking of notmuch would fail.
931 Notmuch 0.3 (2010-04-27)
932 ========================
933 New command-line features
934 -------------------------
935 User-configurable tags for new messages
937 A new "new.tags" option is available in the configuration file to
938 determine which tags are applied to new messages. Run "notmuch
939 setup" to generate new documentation within ~/.notmuch-config on how
940 to specify this value.
942 Threads search results named based on subjects that match search
944 This means that when new mails arrived to a thread you've previously
945 read, and the new mails have a new subject, you will see that
946 subject in the search results rather than the old subject.
948 Faster operation of "notmuch tag" (avoid unneeded sorting)
950 Since the user just wants to tag all matching messages, we can make
951 things perform a bit faster by avoiding the sort.
953 Even Better guessing of From: header for "notmuch reply"
955 Notmuch now looks at a number of headers when trying to figure out
956 the best From: header to use in a reply. This is helpful if you have
957 several configured email addresses, and you also subscribe to various
958 mailing lists with different addresses, (so that mails you are
959 replying to won't always include your subscribed address in the To:
962 Indication of author names that match a search
964 When notmuch displays threads as the result of a search, it now
965 lists the authors that match the search before listing the other
966 authors in the thread. It inserts a pipe '|' symbol between the last
967 matching and first non-matching author. This is especially useful in
968 a search that includes tag:unread. Now the authors of the unread
969 messages in the thread are listed first.
973 Sebastian Spaeth has contributed his python bindings for the notmuch
974 library to the central repository. These bindings were previously
975 known as "cnotmuch" within python but have now been renamed to be
976 accessible with a simple, and more official-looking "import notmuch".
978 The bindings have already proven very useful as people proficient in
979 python have been able to easily develop programs to do notmuch-based
980 searches for email-address completion, maildir-flag synchronization,
983 These bindings are available within the bindings/python directory, but
984 are not yet integrated into the top-level Makefiles, nor the top-level
985 package-building scripts. Improvements are welcome.
987 Emacs interface improvements
988 ----------------------------
989 An entirely new initial view for notmuch, (friendly yet powerful)
991 Some of us call the new view "notmuch hello" but you can get at it
992 by simply calling "emacs -f notmuch". The new view provides a search
993 bar where new searches can be performed. It also displays a list of
994 recent searches, along with a button to save any of these, giving it
995 a new name as a "saved search". Many people find these "saved
996 searches" one of the most convenient ways of organizing their mail,
997 (providing all of the features of "folders" in other mail clients,
998 but without any of the disadvantages).
1000 Finally, this view can also optionally display all of the tags that
1001 exist in the database, along with a count for each tag, and a custom
1002 search of messages with that tag that's simply a click (or keypress)
1005 Note: For users that liked the original mode of "emacs -f notmuch"
1006 immediately displaying a particular search result, we
1007 recommend instead running something like:
1009 emacs --eval '(notmuch search "tag:inbox" t)'
1011 The "t" means to sort the messages in an "oldest first" order,
1012 (as notmuch would do previously by default). You can also
1013 leave that off to have your search results in "newest first"
1016 Full-featured "customize" support for configuring notmuch
1018 Notmuch now plugs in well to the emacs "customize" mode to make it
1019 much simpler to find things about the notmuch interface that can be
1020 tweaked by the user.
1022 You can get to this mode by starting at the main "Customize" menu in
1023 emacs, then browsing through "Applications", "Mail", and
1024 "Notmuch". Or you can go straight to "M-x customize-group"
1027 Once you're at the customize screen, you'll see a list of documented
1028 options that can be manipulated along with checkboxes, drop-down
1029 selectors, and text-entry boxes for configuring the various
1032 Support for doing tab-completion of email addresses
1034 This support currently relies on an external program,
1035 (notmuch-addresses), that is not yet shipped with notmuch
1036 itself. But multiple, suitable implementations of this program have
1037 already been written that generate address completions by doing
1038 notmuch searches of your email collection. For example, providing
1039 first those addresses that you have composed messages to in the
1042 One such program (implemented in python with the python bindings to
1043 notmuch) is available via:
1045 git clone http://jkr.acm.jhu.edu/git/notmuch_addresses.git
1047 Install that program as notmuch-addresses on your PATH, and then
1048 hitting TAB on a partial email address or name within the To: or Cc:
1049 line of an email message will provide matching completions.
1051 Support for file-based (Fcc) delivery of sent messages to mail store
1053 This isn't yet enabled by default. To enable this, one will have to
1054 set the "Notmuch Fcc Dirs" setting within the notmuch customize
1055 screen, (see its documentation there for details). We anticipate
1056 making this automatic in a future release.
1058 New 'G' key binding to trigger mail refresh (G == "Get new mail")
1060 The 'G' key works wherever '=' works. Before refreshing the screen
1061 it calls an external program that can be used to poll email servers,
1062 run notmuch new and setup specific tags for the new emails. The
1063 script to be called should be configured with the "Notmuch Poll
1064 Script" setting in the customize interface. This script will
1065 typically invoke "notmuch new" and then perhaps several "notmuch
1068 Implement emacs message display with the JSON output from notmuch.
1070 This is much more robust than the previous implementation, (where
1071 some HTML mails and mail quoting the notmuch code with the delimiter
1072 characters in it would cause the parser to fall over).
1074 Better handling of HTML messages and MIME attachments (inline images!)
1076 Allow for any MIME parts that emacs can display to be displayed
1077 inline. This includes inline viewing of image attachments, (provided
1078 the window is large enough to fit the image at its natural size).
1080 Much more robust handling of HTML messages. Currently both text/plain
1081 and text/html alternates will be rendered next to each other. In a
1082 future release, users will be able to decide to see only one or the
1083 other representation.
1085 Each attachment now has its own button so that attachments can be
1086 saved individually (the 'w' key is still available to save all
1089 Customizable support for tidying of text/plain message content
1091 Many new functions are available for tidying up message
1092 content. These include options such as wrapping long lines,
1093 compressing duplicate blank lines, etc.
1095 Most of these are disabled by default, but can easily be enabled by
1096 clicking the available check boxes under the "Notmuch Show Insert
1097 Text/Plain Hook" within the notmuch customize screen.
1099 New support for searchable citations (even when hidden)
1101 When portions of overly-long citations are hidden, the contents of
1102 these citations will still be available for emacs' standard
1103 "incremental search" functions. When the search matches any portion
1104 of a hidden citation, the citation will become visible temporarily
1105 to display the search result.
1107 More flexible handling of header visibility
1109 As an answer to complaints from many users, the To, Cc, and Date
1110 headers of messages are no longer hidden by default. For those users
1111 that liked that these were hidden, a new "Notmuch Messages Headers
1112 Visible" option in the customize interface can be set to nil. The
1113 visibility of headers can still be toggled on a per-message basis
1114 with the 'h' keybinding.
1116 For users that don't want to see some subset of those headers, the
1117 new "Notmuch Message Headers" variable can be customized to list
1118 only those headers that should be present in the display of a message.
1120 The Return key now toggles message visibility anywhere
1122 Previously this worked only on the first summary-line of a message.
1124 Customizable formatting of search results
1126 The user can easily customize the order, width, and formatting of
1127 the various fields in a "notmuch search" buffer. See the "Notmuch
1128 Search Result Format" section of the customize interface.
1130 Generate nicer names for search buffers when using a saved search.
1132 Add a notmuch User-Agent header when sending mail from notmuch/emacs.
1134 New keybinding (M-Ret) to open all collapsed messages in a thread.
1138 Provide a new NOTMUCH_SORT_UNSORTED value for queries
1140 This can be somewhat faster when sorting simply isn't desired. For
1141 example when collecting a set of messages that will all be
1142 manipulated identically, (adding a tag, removing a tag, deleting the
1143 messages), then there's no advantage to sorting the messages by
1148 Fix to compile against GMime 2.6
1150 Previously notmuch insisted on being able to find GMime 2.4, (even
1151 though GMime 2.6 would have worked all along).
1153 Fix configure script to accept (and ignore) various standard options.
1155 For example, those that the Gentoo build scripts expect configure to
1156 accept are now all accepted.
1160 A large number of new tests for the many new features.
1162 Better display of output from failed tests.
1164 Now shows failures with diff rather than forcing the user to gaze at
1165 complete actual and expected output looking for deviation.
1167 Notmuch 0.2 (2010-04-16)
1168 ========================
1169 This is the second release of the notmuch mail system, with actual
1170 detailed release notes this time!
1172 This release consists of a number of minor new features that make
1173 notmuch more pleasant to use, and a few fairly major bug fixes.
1175 We didn't quite hit our release target of "about a week" from the 0.1
1176 release, (0.2 is happening 11 days after 0.1), but we hope to do
1177 better for next week. Look forward to some major features coming to
1178 notmuch in subsequent releases.
1184 Better guessing of From: header.
1186 Notmuch now tries harder to guess which configured address should be
1187 used as the From: line in a "notmuch reply". It will examine the
1188 Received: headers if it fails to find any configured address in To:
1189 or Cc:. This allows it to often choose the correct address even when
1190 replying to a message sent to a mailing list, and not directly to a
1193 Make "notmuch count" with no arguments count all messages
1195 Previously, it was hard to construct a search term that was
1196 guaranteed to match all messages.
1198 Provide a new special-case search term of "*" to match all messages.
1200 This can be used in any command accepting a search term, such as
1201 "notmuch search '*'". Note that you'll want to take care that the
1202 shell doesn't expand * against the current files. And note that the
1203 support for "*" is a special case. It's only meaningful as a single
1204 search term and loses its special meaning when combined with any
1207 Automatically detect thread connections even when a parent message is
1210 Previously, if two or more message were received with a common
1211 parent, but that parent was not received, then these messages would
1212 not be recognized as belonging to the same thread. This is now fixed
1213 so that such messages are properly connected in a thread.
1217 Fix potential data loss in "notmuch new" with SIGINT
1219 One code path in "notmuch new" was not properly handling
1220 SIGINT. Previously, this could lead to messages being removed from
1221 the database (and their tags being lost) if the user pressed
1222 Control-C while "notmuch new" was working.
1224 Fix segfault when a message includes a MIME part that is empty.
1226 Fix handling of non-ASCII characters with --format=json
1228 Previously, characters outside the range of 7-bit ASCII were
1229 silently dropped from the JSON output. This led to corrupted display
1230 of utf-8 content in the upcoming notmuch web-based frontends.
1232 Fix headers to be properly decoded in "notmuch reply"
1234 Previously, the user might see:
1236 Subject: Re: =?iso-8859-2?q?Rozlu=E8ka?=
1240 Subject: Re: Rozlučka
1242 The former text is properly encoded to be RFC-compliant SMTP, will
1243 be sent correctly, and will be properly decoded by the
1244 recipient. But the user trying to edit the reply would likely be
1245 unable to read or edit that field in its encoded form.
1247 Emacs client features
1248 ---------------------
1249 Show the last few lines of citations as well as the first few lines.
1251 It's often the case that the last sentence of a citation is what is
1252 being replied to directly, so the last few lines are often much more
1253 important. The number of lines shown at the beginning and end of any
1254 citation can be configured, (notmuch-show-citation-lines-prefix and
1255 notmuch-show-citation-lines-suffix).
1257 The '+' and '-' commands in the search view can now add and remove
1260 Selective bulk tagging is now possible by selecting a region of
1261 threads and then using either the '+' or '-' keybindings. Bulk
1262 tagging is still available for all threads matching the current
1263 search with the '*' binding.
1265 More meaningful buffer names for thread-view buffers.
1267 Notmuch now uses the Subject of the thread as the buffer
1268 name. Previously it was using the thread ID, which is a meaningless
1271 Provide for customized colors of threads in search view based on tags.
1273 See the documentation of notmuch-search-line-faces, (or us "M-x
1274 customize" and browse to the "notmuch" group within "Applications"
1275 and "Mail"), for details on how to configure this colorization.
1277 Build-system features
1278 ---------------------
1279 Add support to properly build libnotmuch on Darwin systems (OS X).
1281 Add support to configure for many standard options.
1283 We include actual support for:
1285 --includedir --mandir --sysconfdir
1287 And accept and silently ignore several more:
1289 --build --infodir --libexecdir --localstatedir
1290 --disable-maintainer-mode --disable-dependency-tracking
1292 Install emacs client in "make install" rather than requiring a
1293 separate "make install-emacs".
1295 Automatically compute versions numbers between releases.
1297 This support uses the git-describe notation, so a version such as
1298 0.1-144-g43cbbfc indicates a version that is 144 commits since the
1299 0.1 release and is available as git commit "43cbbfc".
1301 Add a new "make test" target to run the test suite and actually verify
1304 Notmuch 0.1 (2010-04-05)
1305 ========================
1306 This is the first release of the notmuch mail system.
1308 It includes the libnotmuch library, the notmuch command-line
1309 interface, and an emacs-based interface to notmuch.
1311 Note: Notmuch will work best with Xapian 1.0.18 (or later) or Xapian
1312 1.1.4 (or later). Previous versions of Xapian (whether 1.0 or 1.1) had
1313 a performance bug that made notmuch very slow when modifying
1314 tags. This would cause distracting pauses when reading mail while
1315 notmuch would wait for Xapian when removing the "inbox" and "unread"
1316 tags from messages in a thread.