mirror of
https://git.notmuchmail.org/git/notmuch
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357aba3ec8
Reviewed-by: Carl Worth <cworth@cworth.org> Keith wrote all the code here against notmuch before notmuch.c was split up into multiple files. So I've pushed the code around in various ways to match the new code structure, but have generally tried to avoid making any changes to the behavior of the code. I did fix one bug---a missing call to g_mime_stream_file_set_owner in show_part which would cause "notmuch show" to go off into the weeds when trying to show multiple messages, (since the first stream would fclose stdout).
293 lines
9.2 KiB
Groff
293 lines
9.2 KiB
Groff
.\" notmuch - Not much of an email program, (just index, search and tagging)
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.\"
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.\" Copyright © 2009 Carl Worth
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.\"
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.\" Notmuch is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
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.\" it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
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.\" the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
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.\" (at your option) any later version.
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.\"
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.\" Notmuch is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
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.\" but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
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.\" MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
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.\" GNU General Public License for more details.
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.\"
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.\" You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
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.\" along with this program. If not, see http://www.gnu.org/licenses/ .
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.\"
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.\" Author: Carl Worth <cworth@cworth.org>
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.TH NOTMUCH 1 2009-10-31 "Notmuch 0.1"
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.SH NAME
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notmuch \- thread-based email index, search, and tagging
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.SH SYNOPSIS
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.B notmuch
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.IR command " [" args " ...]"
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.SH DESCRIPTION
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Notmuch is a command-line based program for indexing, searching,
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reading, and tagging large collections of email messages.
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The quickest way to get started with Notmuch is to simply invoke the
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.B notmuch
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command with no arguments, which will interactively guide you through
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the process of indexing your mail.
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.SH NOTE
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While the command-line program
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.B notmuch
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provides powerful functionality, it does not provide the most
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convenient interface for that functionality. More sophisticated
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interfaces are expected to be built on top of either the command-line
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interface, or more likely, on top of the notmuch library
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interface. See http://notmuchmail.org for more about alternate
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interfaces to notmuch.
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.SH COMMANDS
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All commands need to know where your mail (and the notmuch database)
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are stored. This is ${HOME}/mail by default. An alternate location can
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be specified with the
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.B NOTMUCH_BASE
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environment variable.
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The
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.BR setup " and " new
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commands are used to add new mail messages to the notmuch database.
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.RS 4
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.TP 4
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.B setup
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Interactively sets up notmuch for first use.
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The setup command will prompt for the directory containing your email
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archives, and will then proceed to build a database that indexes the
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mail to allow for fast search of the archive.
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This directory can contain any number of sub-directories and should
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primarily contain only files with indvidual email messages
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(eg. maildir or mh archives are perfect). If there are other,
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non-email files (such as indexes maintained by other email programs)
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then notmuch will do its best to detect those and ignore them.
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Mail storage that uses mbox format, (where one mbox file contains many
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messages), will not work with notmuch. If that's how your mail is
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currently stored, it is recommended you first convert it to maildir
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format with a utility such as mb2md before running
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.BR "notmuch setup" .
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Invoking
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.B notmuch
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with no command argument will run
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.B setup
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if the setup command has not previously been completed.
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.TP
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.B new
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Find and import any new messages to the database.
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The
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.B new
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command scans all sub-directories of the database, adding new messages
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that are found. Each new message will automatically be tagged with
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both the
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.BR inbox and unread
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tags.
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Note:
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.B notmuch new
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will skip any read-only directories, so you can use that to mark
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directories that will not receive any new mail (and make
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.B notmuch new
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faster).
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.RE
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The
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.BR search " and "show
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commands are used to query the email database.
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.RS 4
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.TP 4
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.BR search " <search-term>..."
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Search for messages matching the given search terms, and display as
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results the threads containing the matched messages.
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The output consists of one line per thread, giving a thread ID, the
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date of the oldest matched message in the thread, and the subject from
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that message.
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Currently, in addition to free text (and quoted phrases) which match
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terms appearing anywhere within an email, the following prefixes can
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be used to search specific portions of an email, (where <brackets>
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indicate user-supplied values):
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from:<name-or-address>
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to:<name-or-address>
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subject:<word-or-quoted-phrase>
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tag:<tag>
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id:<message-id>
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thread:<thread-id>
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The from: prefix is used to match the name or address of the sender of
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an email message.
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The to: prefix is used to match the names or addresses of any
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recipient of an email message, (whether To, Cc, or Bcc).
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Any term prefixed with subject: will match only text from
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the subject of an email. Quoted phrases are supported when
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searching with: subject:\"this is a phrase\".
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Valid tag values include
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.BR inbox " and " unread
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by default for new messages added by
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.B notmuch new
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as well as any other tag values added manually with
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.BR "notmuch tag" .
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Message ID values are the literal contents of the Message-ID: header
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of email messages, but without the '<', '>' delimiters.
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Thread ID values are generated internally by notmuch but can be seen
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in the first column of output from
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.B notmuch search
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for example.
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In addition to individual terms, multiple terms can be
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combined with Boolean operators (
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.BR and ", " or ", " not
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, etc.). each term in the query will be implicitly connected by a
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logical AND if no explicit operator is provided, (except that terms
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with a common prefix will be implicitly combined with OR until we get
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Xapian defect #402 fixed).
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Parentheses can also be used to control the combination of the Boolean
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operators, but will have to be protected from interpretation by the
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shell, (such as by putting quotation marks around any parenthesized
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expression).
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.TP
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.BR reply " <search-term>..."
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Constructs a reply template for a set of messages.
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See the documentation of
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.B search
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for deatils of the supported syntax of search terms.
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To make replying to email easier,
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.B notmuch reply
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takes an existing set of messages and constructs a suitable mail
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template, taking From: and To: messages and using those for the new
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To: address; copying Cc: addresses, building a suitable new subject
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including Re: at the front, adding the old message IDs to the
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References list and setting the In-Reply-To: field correctly.
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The resulting message template is output to stdout.
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.TP
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.BR show " <search-term>..."
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Shows all messages matching the search terms.
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See the documentation of
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.B search
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for details of the supported syntax of search terms.
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A common use of
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.B notmuch show
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is to display a single thread of email messages. For this, use a
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search term of "thread:<thread-id>" as can be seen in the first
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column of output from the
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.B notmuch search
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command.
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All messages will be displayed in date order. The output format is
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plain-text, with all text-content MIME parts decoded. Various
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components in the output,
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.RB ( message ", " header ", " body ", " attachment ", and MIME " part ),
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will be delimited by easily-parsed markers. Each marker consists of a
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Control-L character (ASCII decimal 12), the name of the marker, and
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then either an opening or closing brace, ('{' or '}'), to either open
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or close the component.
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.RE
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The
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.B tag
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command is the only command available for manipulating database
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contents.
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.RS 4
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.TP 4
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.BR tag " +<tag>|-<tag> [...] [--] <search-term>..."
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Add/remove tags for all messages matching the search terms.
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The search terms are handled exactly as in
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.B "notmuch search"
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so one can use that command first to see what will be modified.
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Tags prefixed by '+' are added while those prefixed by '-' are
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removed. For each message, tag removal is before tag addition.
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The beginning of <search-terms> is recognized by the first
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argument that begins with neither '+' nor '-'. Support for
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an initial search term beginning with '+' or '-' is provided
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by allowing the user to specify a "--" argument to separate
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the tags from the search terms.
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Caution: If you run
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.B "notmuch new"
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between reading a thread with
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.B "notmuch show"
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and removing the "inbox" tag for that thread with
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.B "notmuch tag"
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then you create the possibility of moving some messages from that
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thread out of your inbox without ever reading them. The easiest way to
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avoid this problem is to not run
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.B "notmuch new"
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between reading mail and removing tags.
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.RE
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The
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.BR dump " and " restore
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commands can be used to create a textual dump of email tags for backup
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purposes, and to restore from that dump
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.RS 4
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.TP 4
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.BR dump " [<filename>]"
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Creates a plain-text dump of the tags of each message.
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The output is to the given filename, if any, or to stdout.
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These tags are the only data in the notmuch database that can't be
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recreated from the messages themselves. The output of notmuch dump is
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therefore the only critical thing to backup (and much more friendly to
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incremental backup than the native database files.)
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.TP
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.BR restore " <filename>"
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Restores the tags from the given file (see
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.BR "notmuch dump" "."
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Note: The dump file format is specifically chosen to be
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compatible with the format of files produced by sup-dump.
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So if you've previously been using sup for mail, then the
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.B "notmuch restore"
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command provides you a way to import all of your tags (or labels as
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sup calls them).
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.SH ENVIRONMENT
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.B NOTMUCH_BASE
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Set to the directory which contains the user's mail to be indexed and
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searched by notmuch. Notmuch will create a directory named
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.B .notmuch
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at the toplevel of this directory where it will store its database.
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.SH SEE ALSO
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The emacs-based interface to notmuch (available as
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.B notmuch.el
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in the Notmuch distribution).
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The notmuch website:
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.B http://notmuchmail.org
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