Re: proposing "notmuch purge"

["Antoine Beaupré" <anarcat@orangeseeds.org>]

On 2020-01-14 17:48:34, Ryan Tate wrote:
> Daniel Kahn Gillmor <dkg@fifthhorseman.net> writes:
>> So i'm proposing "notmuch purge", which could be something as simple as
>> the equivalent of:
>>
>>    notmuch search --output=files --format=text0 tag:deleted | \
>>       xargs --null --no-run-if-empty rm && \
>>          notmuch new --no-hooks
>>
>> (credit for the pipeline above goes to anarcat, in Cc; i added the
>> "notmuch new --no-hooks" part, because i would want the items gone from
>> the db as well)
>
> Is there any other notmuch command that results in a change to the state
> of actual mail files, as opposed to the database?

As jrollins said, mail flags can be changed, but that's about it. Email
contents are never modified and files are never removed, by principle,
so far.

> Personally, I would be surprised to learn that the command "notmuch
> purge" deleted actual emails on my filesystem. I would expect any
> notmuch command would only operate on the database. As far as I can tell
> -- and I could be forgetting something! -- the current suite of commands
> simply mutate the database, never the actual files.
>
> What I would expect to happen is that "notmuch purge" removes mails
> tagged "deleted" from the notmuch index. (And perhaps with a flag, like
> say "--rmfiles", would take the step of actually deleting files.)
>
> Of course, I like to think I'd read the manpage of a command involving
> the word "purge" before executing said command :-) But I think I'd be
> surprised when I did, in this case.

That's an excellent point!! If we have one user that has that
misconception and runs the command and destroys email, maybe it's worth
thinking more about ways of preventing such catastrophes! :)

Maybe some --force argument would be useful here? Or would "notmuch
delete" be more obvious to you? Or maybe a confirmation dialog unless
--yes or --force is passed?

> (Thank you to anyone on thread who has helped build notmuch, it has
> helped me enormously.)

Hey that's a nice touch, thanks! (even though I haven't done much on
notmuch)

(pun intended)

(and probably failed)

a.
-- 
La destruction de la société totalitaire marchande n'est pas une affaire
d'opinion. Elle est une nécessité absolue dans un monde que l'on sait
condamné. Puisque le pouvoir est partout, c'est partout et tout le temps
qu'il faut le combattre. - Jean-François Brient, de la servitude moderne