1Notmuch - thread-based email index, search and tagging. 2 3Notmuch is a system for indexing, searching, reading, and tagging 4large collections of email messages in maildir or mh format. It uses 5the Xapian library to provide fast, full-text search with a convenient 6search syntax. 7 8Notmuch is free software, released under the GNU General Public 9License version 3 (or later). 10 11Building notmuch 12---------------- 13See the INSTALL file for notes on compiling and installing notmuch. 14 15Running notmuch 16--------------- 17After installing notmuch, start by running "notmuch setup" which will 18interactively prompt for configuration information such as your name, 19email address, and the directory which contains your mail archive to 20be indexed. You can change any answers later by running "notmuch 21setup" again or by editing the .notmuch-config file in your home 22directory. 23 24With notmuch configured you should next run "notmuch new" which will 25index all of your existing mail. This can take a long time, (several 26hours) if you have a lot of email, (hundreds of thousands of 27files). When new mail is delivered to your mail archive in the future, 28you will want to run "notmuch new" again. These runs will be much 29faster as they will only index new messages. 30 31Finally, you can prove to yourself that things are working by running 32some command-line searches such as "notmuch search 33from:someone@example.com" or "notmuch search subject:topic". See 34"notmuch help search-terms" for more details on the available search 35syntax. 36 37The command-line search output is not expected to be particularly 38friendly for day-to-day usage. Instead, it is expected that you will 39use an email interface that builds on the notmuch command-line tool or 40the libnotmuch library. 41 42Notmuch installs a full-featured email interface for use within 43emacs. To use this, first add the following line to your .emacs file: 44 45 (autoload 'notmuch "notmuch" "Notmuch mail" t) 46 47Then, either run "emacs -f notmuch" or execute the command "M-x 48notmuch" from within a running emacs. 49 50If you're interested in a non-emacs-based interface to notmuch, then 51please join the notmuch community. Various other interfaces are 52already in progress, (an interface within vim, a curses interface, 53graphical interfaces based on evolution, and various web-based 54interfaces). The authors of these interfaces would love further 55testing or contribution. See contact information below. 56 57Contacting users and developers 58------------------------------- 59The website for Notmuch is: 60 61 https://notmuchmail.org 62 63The mailing list address for the notmuch community is: 64 65 notmuch@notmuchmail.org 66 67We welcome any sort of questions, comments, kudos, or code there. 68 69Subscription is not required, (but if you do subscribe you'll avoid 70any delay due to moderation). See the website for subscription 71information. 72 73There is also an IRC channel dedicated to talk about using and 74developing notmuch: 75 76 IRC server: irc.libera.chat 77 Channel: #notmuch 78