From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: from localhost (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by olra.theworths.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 0D39B431FB6 for ; Tue, 3 Apr 2012 16:32:11 -0700 (PDT) X-Virus-Scanned: Debian amavisd-new at olra.theworths.org X-Spam-Flag: NO X-Spam-Score: -2.29 X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-2.29 tagged_above=-999 required=5 tests=[RCVD_IN_DNSWL_MED=-2.3, T_MIME_NO_TEXT=0.01] autolearn=disabled Received: from olra.theworths.org ([127.0.0.1]) by localhost (olra.theworths.org [127.0.0.1]) (amavisd-new, port 10024) with ESMTP id DRGJGk4PeNSh for ; Tue, 3 Apr 2012 16:32:10 -0700 (PDT) Received: from outgoing-mail.its.caltech.edu (outgoing-mail.its.caltech.edu [131.215.239.19]) by olra.theworths.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 62839431FAE for ; Tue, 3 Apr 2012 16:32:10 -0700 (PDT) Received: from earth-doxen.imss.caltech.edu (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by earth-doxen-postvirus (Postfix) with ESMTP id 2194266E0124; Tue, 3 Apr 2012 16:32:10 -0700 (PDT) X-Spam-Scanned: at Caltech-IMSS on earth-doxen by amavisd-new Received: from finestructure.net (gwave-107.ligo.caltech.edu [131.215.114.107]) (Authenticated sender: jrollins) by earth-doxen-submit (Postfix) with ESMTP id 3579266E0179; Tue, 3 Apr 2012 16:32:07 -0700 (PDT) Received: by finestructure.net (Postfix, from userid 1000) id 19E05888; Tue, 3 Apr 2012 16:32:07 -0700 (PDT) From: Jameson Graef Rollins To: Jacek Generowicz , notmuch@notmuchmail.org Subject: Re: Message deletion wisdom In-Reply-To: <0cc49af3-5415-419d-97ef-2bec76117d63@CERNFE22.cern.ch> References: <0cc49af3-5415-419d-97ef-2bec76117d63@CERNFE22.cern.ch> User-Agent: Notmuch/0.12+87~g3c4c85f (http://notmuchmail.org) Emacs/23.3.1 (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu) Date: Tue, 03 Apr 2012 16:32:04 -0700 Message-ID: <87sjgk2xzf.fsf@servo.finestructure.net> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/signed; boundary="=-=-="; micalg=pgp-sha256; protocol="application/pgp-signature" X-BeenThere: notmuch@notmuchmail.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.13 Precedence: list List-Id: "Use and development of the notmuch mail system." List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Tue, 03 Apr 2012 23:32:11 -0000 --=-=-= On Tue, Apr 03 2012, Jacek Generowicz wrote: > Looking through the archives of this list, I see that the topic of > message deletion is, if not controversial, then at least non-trivial. > > + Requests for the provision of message deletion mechanisms have > appeared many times, and that various patches addressing the issue > have been submitted, and (IIUC) some of these are awaiting review > and might possibly make it into an official release in the future. > > + Having the 'deleted' tag cause messages to be deleted is, > apparently, fraught with peril of losing mail. Hi, Jacek. You are right on both of these points. It has indeed been a controversial topic. However, I would say that we have reached a stasis in terms of our response to this issue. I'll try to summarize here. I can say with a very high degree of certainly that notmuch will NEVER gain the capability to actually delete mail files from disk itself. It is too risky for notmuch to be involved in that, and it's too easy to do it outside of notmuch (e.g. "notmuch search --output=files tag:deleted | xargs rm"). This has never really been up for discussion. What *has* generated a lot of discussion is whether or not the emacs interface should by default support key bindings that add a "deleted" tag to messages, and how that tag should be handled. I think we have finally settled on notmuch NOT supporting such a key binding by default, since it's easy enough for users to add the binding themselves if they wish. What we have added (or more accurately "are adding") though (thanks to the work of Austin Clements and Mark Walters) is the ability to exclude messages with a certain tag from search results. This is like an effective deletion, since messages can be completely omitted from search results without having them actually be deleted from disk. This is obviously much safer, and a more generally useful functionality. This functionality is currently in beta, but will be full-featured in the next release. So in summary, if you would like to "delete" messages, you can: * add a key binding to emacs (or your favorite ui) to add a "deleted" tag to messages that you want to delete: (define-key notmuch-show-mode-map "d" (lambda () (interactive) (notmuch-show-tag-message "+deleted"))) * add exclusion for messages with the "deleted" tag: notmuch config set search.exclude_tags deleted * and if you really want them purged from disk, delete them manually with: notmuch search --output=files tag:deleted | xargs -l rm I'll add a page about this to the wiki, since it comes up enough. hth. jamie. --=-=-= Content-Type: application/pgp-signature -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.12 (GNU/Linux) iQIcBAEBCAAGBQJPe4h1AAoJEO00zqvie6q8OSwP/3KUtk0gqmxLnCfWSTLbHCpm 1jhSrJgUa4eo4rHi7tSjVTe0B1dlJArsoAqFmKMCZON3w8KPpdTbnqRUjmNRuqMt qqwLvL3mOjPQ7339tVzjoro0akCaLm6I8IBdox6saZhWy1jownmUexxtlXDPGc46 kl6T6novbemFLLeFsqAa46eiVJZZO9nMPmp2xcNgG1KpJ57ILzad+bjgI1ePZx6w /fPlenG4GELZApKjjqYHfR9HMX7D8EOv4BteOQpNnQNXpGcFxVmW8y4917ZZkMtv +3D4jqghXflO2/KJvGw6TToD65tlWprVfR4PwqJxRxO+FD1fdTxf3S0gNTUl7dOe 2LxJfYa/t0dZayu1QYnIKJr6jqRsIbe/0GwtP2URNCEP30o9irYn06iaSxurklzB tkEfwmcQLNy+71aHjjn7zvlzbT29vp9kLx/zzMvnkMhybsKJmpPTA6Qa1teKiqPs gdBqc2ebh0yLWbnIwwy8WbzwYRmltMyYMYGub8pmJZKrNfommaAbD6I18h7+65uY Szs4pijzO7qsvOuge3URHPZNFsAd2MTFY/gsFPnAwVjATNmyX+KNPNHq+Uil3Jhg +KuhRnDZ2stuMtzY1kg4AyPrSc8fMP4t9a+bZ20BgfzOnFrO7CTUMuv0HeX0Nad7 j++wonmbWQP8uzl7JDr9 =rfb1 -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- --=-=-=--