tag:deleted messages immediately deleted ?

tag:deleted messages immediately deleted ?

[Olivier Berger]

Hi.

I used to marl messages for later deletion by adding (in emacs) the
deleted tag, and was able to undo this if necessary by explicitely
searching the tag:deleted messages. A manual trigger of :
 $ notmuch search --output=files "tag:deleted" | xargs -l rm
did the final removal.

I'm now using 0.18.2 (debian jessie) and cannot seem to find a way to
check deleted messages. They seem to be deleted immediately.

Did I miss a change (undocumented ?) ?

Thanks in advance.

Best regards,
-- 
Olivier BERGER 
http://www-public.telecom-sudparis.eu/~berger_o/ - OpenPGP-Id: 2048R/5819D7E8
Ingenieur Recherche - Dept INF
Institut Mines-Telecom, Telecom SudParis, Evry (France)

Re: tag:deleted messages immediately deleted ?

[David Bremner]

Olivier Berger <olivier.berger@telecom-sudparis.eu> writes:

> Hi.
>
> I used to marl messages for later deletion by adding (in emacs) the
> deleted tag, and was able to undo this if necessary by explicitely
> searching the tag:deleted messages. A manual trigger of :
>  $ notmuch search --output=files "tag:deleted" | xargs -l rm
> did the final removal.
>
> I'm now using 0.18.2 (debian jessie) and cannot seem to find a way to
> check deleted messages. They seem to be deleted immediately.
>
> Did I miss a change (undocumented ?) ?

Nope, there was no (intentional) change. That would have been a huge
change from a notmuch point of view.

As a stab in the dark, have you upgraded your database yet? (i.e. run
notmuch new).

d

Re: tag:deleted messages immediately deleted ?

[Olivier Berger]

Hi.

David Bremner <david@tethera.net> writes:

> Olivier Berger <olivier.berger@telecom-sudparis.eu> writes:
>
>> Hi.
>>
>> I used to marl messages for later deletion by adding (in emacs) the
>> deleted tag, and was able to undo this if necessary by explicitely
>> searching the tag:deleted messages. A manual trigger of :
>>  $ notmuch search --output=files "tag:deleted" | xargs -l rm
>> did the final removal.
>>
>> I'm now using 0.18.2 (debian jessie) and cannot seem to find a way to
>> check deleted messages. They seem to be deleted immediately.
>>
>> Did I miss a change (undocumented ?) ?
>
> Nope, there was no (intentional) change. That would have been a huge
> change from a notmuch point of view.
>

Yup.

> As a stab in the dark, have you upgraded your database yet? (i.e. run
> notmuch new).
>

Yes. Many times (I'm reading my mail in emacs after every notmuch new
occuring like every 5 min in average ;-)

Hmmm... Dunno how I could try to investigate more.

I'm using a local dovecot as a mail storage backend, which is in turn
indexed my botmuch... any particular thing related to dovecot flags
handling maybe (i.e. deleted tag being passed to dovecot) ?

Thanks in advance.

Best regards,
-- 
Olivier BERGER 
http://www-public.telecom-sudparis.eu/~berger_o/ - OpenPGP-Id: 2048R/5819D7E8
Ingenieur Recherche - Dept INF
Institut Mines-Telecom, Telecom SudParis, Evry (France)

Re: tag:deleted messages immediately deleted ?

[David Bremner]

Olivier Berger <olivier.berger@telecom-sudparis.eu> writes:
>
> I'm using a local dovecot as a mail storage backend, which is in turn
> indexed my botmuch... any particular thing related to dovecot flags
> handling maybe (i.e. deleted tag being passed to dovecot) ?
>

Nope, we rejected synching the T flag to maildirs for exactly this
reason.  I wonder if you have multiple excluded tags on these messages
somehow.  If you run "notmuch search --exclude=false tag:deleted" do you
get some output? If so, what tags do these messages have?

d

Re: tag:deleted messages immediately deleted ?

[Olivier Berger]

Hi.

David Bremner <david@tethera.net> writes:

> Olivier Berger <olivier.berger@telecom-sudparis.eu> writes:
>>
>> I'm using a local dovecot as a mail storage backend, which is in turn
>> indexed my botmuch... any particular thing related to dovecot flags
>> handling maybe (i.e. deleted tag being passed to dovecot) ?
>>
>
> Nope, we rejected synching the T flag to maildirs for exactly this
> reason.  I wonder if you have multiple excluded tags on these messages
> somehow.  If you run "notmuch search --exclude=false tag:deleted" do you
> get some output? If so, what tags do these messages have?
>

Yes, I get tons of mails (981 of them ;).

Some only seem to have the deleted tag :

 $ notmuch search --exclude=false tag:deleted  | grep '(deleted)' | wc -l
 4

And it seems I can now find some 21 messages by searching for the
tag:deleted query in emacs :-/

I've checked my .notmuch-config and it contains :

 [search]
 exclude_tags=deleted;spam;

So, I've tried and removed the spam tag from the exclude_tags, and
suddenly, the search in emacs responds with the 981... which means that
most of the deleted ones had the spam tag too.


So it means that if one explicitely requests an excluded tag, other
exclude tags still apply. Not sure this is the desirable option : maybe
if one exclusion is waved, then others should too ?

What do you think ?

Best regards,
-- 
Olivier BERGER 
http://www-public.telecom-sudparis.eu/~berger_o/ - OpenPGP-Id: 2048R/5819D7E8
Ingenieur Recherche - Dept INF
Institut Mines-Telecom, Telecom SudParis, Evry (France)

Re: tag:deleted messages immediately deleted ?

[David Bremner]

Olivier Berger <olivier.berger@telecom-sudparis.eu> writes:

>
> So, I've tried and removed the spam tag from the exclude_tags, and
> suddenly, the search in emacs responds with the 981... which means that
> most of the deleted ones had the spam tag too.
>
>
> So it means that if one explicitely requests an excluded tag, other
> exclude tags still apply. Not sure this is the desirable option : maybe
> if one exclusion is waved, then others should too ?
>
> What do you think ?

I'm not sure. What you suggest sounds sensible enough. On the other hand
the way it behaves now is precisely as documented; I'm not sure whether
this is because of a design choice or ease of implementation. Maybe Mark
can comment further on that.  I guess there are even people who
like/rely on the current functionality, since there always are ;).

d

Re: tag:deleted messages immediately deleted ?

[Olivier Berger]

David Bremner <david@tethera.net> writes:

> Olivier Berger <olivier.berger@telecom-sudparis.eu> writes:
>
>>
>> So, I've tried and removed the spam tag from the exclude_tags, and
>> suddenly, the search in emacs responds with the 981... which means that
>> most of the deleted ones had the spam tag too.
>>
>>
>> So it means that if one explicitely requests an excluded tag, other
>> exclude tags still apply. Not sure this is the desirable option : maybe
>> if one exclusion is waved, then others should too ?
>>
>> What do you think ?
>
> I'm not sure. What you suggest sounds sensible enough. On the other hand
> the way it behaves now is precisely as documented; I'm not sure whether
> this is because of a design choice or ease of implementation. Maybe Mark
> can comment further on that.  I guess there are even people who
> like/rely on the current functionality, since there always are ;).
>

In any case, there has been a change in the way this worked.

For the moment, I'm using the following saved search :
    (tag:deleted or tag:spam) and tag:deleted
which will display the deleted mails.

FWIW.

Best regards,

-- 
Olivier BERGER 
http://www-public.telecom-sudparis.eu/~berger_o/ - OpenPGP-Id: 2048R/5819D7E8
Ingenieur Recherche - Dept INF
Institut Mines-Telecom, Telecom SudParis, Evry (France)

Re: tag:deleted messages immediately deleted ?

[Mark Walters]

On Fri, 21 Nov 2014, Olivier Berger <olivier.berger@telecom-sudparis.eu> wrote:
> David Bremner <david@tethera.net> writes:
>
>> Olivier Berger <olivier.berger@telecom-sudparis.eu> writes:
>>
>>>
>>> So, I've tried and removed the spam tag from the exclude_tags, and
>>> suddenly, the search in emacs responds with the 981... which means that
>>> most of the deleted ones had the spam tag too.
>>>
>>>
>>> So it means that if one explicitely requests an excluded tag, other
>>> exclude tags still apply. Not sure this is the desirable option : maybe
>>> if one exclusion is waved, then others should too ?
>>>
>>> What do you think ?
>>
>> I'm not sure. What you suggest sounds sensible enough. On the other hand
>> the way it behaves now is precisely as documented; I'm not sure whether
>> this is because of a design choice or ease of implementation. Maybe Mark
>> can comment further on that.  I guess there are even people who
>> like/rely on the current functionality, since there always are ;).

This was definitely a design choice (I think probably by Austin/jrollins) and I
think it makes sense: why would you want to include one include spam
messages when you are searching for deleted messages?

A change would break my setup - not in itself a problem as I setup this
way to make sure I exercised the exclude code. I tag all my notmuch
mailing list mail tag:notmuch and have that as an excluded tag. Then
mailing list results do not clutter up results when I am doing personal
searches.

>>
>
> In any case, there has been a change in the way this worked.

I don't think anyone has touched this code for over two years: git blame
seems to suggest March 2012.

> For the moment, I'm using the following saved search :
>     (tag:deleted or tag:spam) and tag:deleted
> which will display the deleted mails.

I do think it would be nice to have a clear way of turning excludes off
in the emacs frontend. Without a query parser it's not clear what the
best way to do it is: I suggested a hack which allowed --exclude=false
to be passed as part of the search. We could add a toggle to rerun a
search with exclude=false but that doesn't help much for saved searches
or manually entered searches.

Best wishes

Mark

Re: tag:deleted messages immediately deleted ?

[David Bremner]

Olivier Berger <olivier.berger@telecom-sudparis.eu> writes:

>
> In any case, there has been a change in the way this worked.

That's strange, but since it is currently working as we expect, the main
question is whether we should change how excludes work.

>
> For the moment, I'm using the following saved search :
>     (tag:deleted or tag:spam) and tag:deleted
> which will display the deleted mails.

Right. For me it would be less confusing to write

       (tag:deleted and tag:spam) or tag:deleted

I agree that the interaction of excludes makes (either version of ) this
search look a bit strange.