A problem and a suggestion

A problem and a suggestion

[Stephen Paul Weber]

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So, the webpage says I can post to the list without subscribing, but the
mailing list software seems to have other ideas.

Anyway.  I installed notmuch a few days ago (0.1), ran the setup, ran
notmuch new and i said it found 30000+ files, but no new mail?  No searches
return any results.  What am I doing wrong?

How does notmuch determine which mail is "new" anyway?  I gather by other
threads on the list archives that editing a message does not make it "new"?
So notmuch just gets whatever the first version of the message contents it
sees is?  And if the file gets renamed (by mutt for example, when marked as
read) the filename stored by notmuch would then be wrong?

I'd also like to suggest that notmuch index the Keywords header, since that
is a header meant exactly for being indexed by search engines and for
searching on.  I use it quite a bit.  This would be especially useful if
notmuch re-indexed a message when I edit this header.

Actually, how hard would it be to allow notmuch to be configured to index
any custom header?

- -- 
Stephen Paul Weber, @singpolyma
See <http://singpolyma.net> for how I prefer to be contacted
edition right joseph
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Re: A problem and a suggestion

[Michal Sojka]

On Fri, 06 Aug 2010, Stephen Paul Weber wrote:
> Anyway.  I installed notmuch a few days ago (0.1), ran the setup, ran
> notmuch new and i said it found 30000+ files, but no new mail?  No searches
> return any results.  What am I doing wrong?

Hi Stephen,

I guess you have your mails in a wrong fomrat. Do you see "Note:
Ignoring non-mail file" messages during notmuch new? You may also try
notmuch new --verbose.

> How does notmuch determine which mail is "new" anyway? 

New is a message found on your disk with a message-id not stored in
notmuch database.

> I gather by other threads on the list archives that editing a message
> does not make it "new"? So notmuch just gets whatever the first
> version of the message contents it sees is? And if the file gets
> renamed (by mutt for example, when marked as read) the filename stored
> by notmuch would then be wrong?

Yes. AFAIK notmuch assumes that messages are immutable and when you edit
the message, notmuch doesn't re-index it. Notmuch new code is able to
detect renames so if you rename the file, the filename in the database
is wrong only until you run notmuch new again.

> I'd also like to suggest that notmuch index the Keywords header, since that
> is a header meant exactly for being indexed by search engines and for
> searching on.  I use it quite a bit.

This is an often requested feature - everyone has its favorite header
which he wants to index. Indexing custom headers is planned for some
future release, but no code has appeared yet.

> This would be especially useful if notmuch re-indexed a message when I
> edit this header.

I'm not sure how hard it would be to implement this and what would be
the performance implications. You should store modification time of a
message in the database and re-index the file when the mtime on disk in
newer than in the database.
> 
> Actually, how hard would it be to allow notmuch to be configured to index
> any custom header?

Not much :-)

-Michal

Re: A problem and a suggestion

[Stephen Paul Weber]

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Somebody claiming to be Michal Sojka wrote:
> On Fri, 06 Aug 2010, Stephen Paul Weber wrote:
> > Anyway.  I installed notmuch a few days ago (0.1), ran the setup, ran
> > notmuch new and i said it found 30000+ files, but no new mail?  No searches
> > return any results.  What am I doing wrong?
> 
> I guess you have your mails in a wrong fomrat. Do you see "Note:
> Ignoring non-mail file" messages during notmuch new? You may also try
> notmuch new --verbose.

Hmm.  I'm pointing it at a maildir.  I deleted the .notmuch folder in the
maildir and ran notmuch new --verbose with the following result:

$ notmuch new --verbose
Found 33065 total files (that's not much mail).
No new mail.

and searches turn up no results.

> > I gather by other threads on the list archives that editing a message
> > does not make it "new"? So notmuch just gets whatever the first
> > version of the message contents it sees is? And if the file gets
> > renamed (by mutt for example, when marked as read) the filename stored
> > by notmuch would then be wrong?
> 
> Yes. AFAIK notmuch assumes that messages are immutable and when you edit
> the message, notmuch doesn't re-index it.

Ok, so edited headers are ignored.

> Notmuch new code is able to
> detect renames so if you rename the file, the filename in the database
> is wrong only until you run notmuch new again.

Oh, cool.  Good.

> > This would be especially useful if notmuch re-indexed a message when I
> > edit this header.
> 
> I'm not sure how hard it would be to implement this and what would be
> the performance implications. You should store modification time of a
> message in the database and re-index the file when the mtime on disk in
> newer than in the database.

Right.  An mtime-based solution would make sense to me.  That should (I
would think) have minor performance implications unless you edit a lot of
your mail often.

- -- 
Stephen Paul Weber, @singpolyma
See <http://singpolyma.net> for how I prefer to be contacted
edition right joseph
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