Re: notmuch-search not excluding excluded tags

[Richard Stanton <rhstanton@berkeley.edu>]

In case anyone else is affected by this, the problem I was having was that notmuch-search org links (defined in ol-notmuch.el) were returning results that included spam and trash messages even though I had asked to exclude these. To get around this, redefine org-notmuch-search-open to explicitly pass some additional options to notmuch-search:

(defun org-notmuch-search-open (path _)
  "Follow a notmuch search link specified by PATH."
  (notmuch-search path notmuch-search-oldest-first notmuch-search-hide-excluded))


> On Apr 16, 2024, at 3:53 PM, Richard H. Stanton <rhstanton@berkeley.edu> wrote:
> 
> Actually, I think the code might be working as intended. Calling notmuch-search interactively things work just fine, and in the comments I see the note 
> 
> "When called interactively, this will prompt for a query and use the configured default sort order.”
> 
> This sounds like it deliberately ignores the default settings when the function is called non-interactively, but why…?
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
>> On Apr 16, 2024, at 3:40 PM, Richard H. Stanton <rhstanton@berkeley.edu> wrote:
>> 
>> I used edebug to trace through the execution of notmuch-search in notmuch.el.
>> 
>> At line 1096, we have the code
>> 
>> (let ((proc (notmuch-start-notmuch
>>    "notmuch-search" buffer #'notmuch-search-process-sentinel
>>    "search" "--format=sexp" "--format-version=5"
>>    (if oldest-first
>> "--sort=oldest-first"
>>      "--sort=newest-first")
>>    (if hide-excluded
>> "--exclude=true"
>>      "--exclude=false")
>>    query)))
>> 
>> I think the problem is the line
>> 
>> (If hide-excluded
>> 
>> This is the (optional) argument passed to notmuch-search. If it was not passed, this test fails and “—exclude=false” gets selected. I think we’re testing the wrong variable here. It looks like it should be 
>> 
>> (If  notmuch-search-hide-excluded
>> 
>> instead, since this variable is set to its default value if no argument is passed to notmuch-search.
>> 
>> [Similarly with the preceding test for oldest-first, I think.]
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>>> On Apr 16, 2024, at 3:22 PM, Richard H. Stanton <rhstanton@berkeley.edu> wrote:
>>> 
>>> Running 
>>> 
>>> (notmuch-search "tag:unread" t t)
>>> 
>>> gives the correct results, so it looks like notmuch-search-hide-excluded is not getting set to the correct default value.
>>> 
>>>> On Apr 16, 2024, at 3:15 PM, Richard H. Stanton <rhstanton@berkeley.edu> wrote:
>>>> 
>>>> Oh, wait… It's not working on my office machine either. I’ll start tracing things and see what happens.
>>>> 
>>>> By the way,
>>>> 
>>>> (notmuch-config-get "search.exclude_tags”)
>>>> 
>>>> returns
>>>> 
>>>> "spam
>>>> trash"
>>>> 
>>>> which is what it should be returning.
>>>> 
>>>>> On Apr 16, 2024, at 12:00 PM, Richard H. Stanton <rhstanton@berkeley.edu> wrote:
>>>>> 
>>>>> Thanks, David.
>>>>> 
>>>>> It all seems to be working fine on my work machine! 
>>>>> 
>>>>> I can’t decide if that’s good or bad news… I suspect it’ll take me longer to track down what’s going on than if the behavior were consistent on my two machines.
>>>>> 
>>>>>> On Apr 16, 2024, at 7:23 AM, David Bremner <david@tethera.net> wrote:
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> Richard Stanton <rhstanton@berkeley.edu> writes:
>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> I have spam and trash defined as excluded tags for notmuch searches and when I run (at the command line) the command
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> notmuch search tag:unread
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> I get a list of unread messages that does *not* include unread spam or trash emails. But when I put the following into my *scratch* buffer and execute it:
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> (notmuch-search “tag:unread”)
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> I now get ALL unread messages, including those tagged as spam or trash. Am I missing something?
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> Hi Richard;
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> As for as I know it _should_ work (modulo the curly quotes being invalid
>>>>>> syntax). I don't have any real hypothesis for what is going wrong, but a
>>>>>> few ideas for gather data.
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> 1) As a start, maybe try evaluating
>>>>>> 
>>>>>>   (notmuch-config-get "search.exclude_tags")
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> in emacs and make sure it matches the corresponding
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> notmuch config get search.exclude_tags
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> 2) If possible, run notmuch with a minimal configuration (i.e. just loading
>>>>>> notmuch, no personal configuration or other packages). There is a script
>>>>>> ./devel/try-emacs-mua in the source if you have a self-built notmuch.
>>>>> 
>>>> 
>>> 
>> 
> 
\r