maildir-utils vs notmuch

[Bastian]

As this topic was touched recently, I got interested in notmuch again
and took some time to look at it.

I used mairix for more than a decade, then switch over to mu some years
ago for some forgotten reason and now notmuch is an interesting thing.

Right now I face a clash of features:

I really love and depend on mu's feature to track mail adresses of all
indexed mails. I use

set query_command="mu cfind --format mutt-ab %s"

as an address book replacement for mutt.

On the other hand, what I really like notmuch for is it's feature to
recontruct the mail thread.

notmuch-mutt -r thread

So far, I could not find a solution where notmuch is able to act as a
address book for mutt or the other way round, where mu is able to
reconstruct a thread. Any ideas from you to achieve the one or the
other?


Many thanks,

[Till Smejkal]

Hi,

I am using notmuch to index my mails for years now and I am very happy with its
performance and functionality.

Post by Bastian
I really love and depend on mu's feature to track mail adresses of all
indexed mails. I use
set query_command="mu cfind --format mutt-ab %s"
as an address book replacement for mutt.

Recent versions of notmuch have 'notmuch address'. This can be used to query for
addresses in all indexed mails. Another possibility is to directly use the notmuch
library to run queries on the indexed mails and write your own script. That's what I
do, since I don't really like the output of 'notmuch address'. If you want, I can
share the code with you.

HTH
Till

[Matthias Apitz]

Post by Till Smejkal
Hi,
I am using notmuch to index my mails for years now and I am very happy with its
performance and functionality.
...

Hi,

I have around 4.2 GByte of mbox mail files:

$ du -sh Mail
4,2G Mail
$ ls Mail | wc -l
1095

can 'notmuch' index this and how big is the database after this?

matthias

[Ben Oliver]

Post by Matthias Apitz

Post by Till Smejkal
Hi,
I am using notmuch to index my mails for years now and I am very happy with its
performance and functionality.
...

Hi,
$ du -sh Mail
4,2G Mail
$ ls Mail | wc -l
1095
can 'notmuch' index this and how big is the database after this?
matthias
--
Public GnuPG key: http://www.unixarea.de/key.pub

I have 4.1 G of mail, over about 120k messages, and my notmuch index is
1.7G.

It does not struggle with it at all.

[Mihai Lazarescu]

Post by Matthias Apitz
$ du -sh Mail
4,2G Mail
$ ls Mail | wc -l
1095
can 'notmuch' index this and how big is the database after this?
matthias

I have 27 GiB emails. notmuch db is around 3 GiB. Hint: run
notmuch compact once in a while. :-)

lbdb http://www.spinnaker.de/lbdb/ can be used to collect sender
addresses (even in real time, from incoming emails) in a db,
which can be queried for autocomplete in mutt.

Best,
Mihai

[Ben Oliver]

Post by Matthias Apitz
$ du -sh Mail
4,2G Mail
$ ls Mail | wc -l
1095
can 'notmuch' index this and how big is the database after this?
matthias

I have 27 GiB emails. notmuch db is around 3 GiB. Hint: run notmuch
compact once in a while. :-)
lbdb http://www.spinnaker.de/lbdb/ can be used to collect sender
addresses (even in real time, from incoming emails) in a db, which can
be queried for autocomplete in mutt.
Best,
Mihai

How big is the lbdb?

[Mihai Lazarescu]

Post by Ben Oliver

Post by Mihai Lazarescu

Post by Matthias Apitz
$ du -sh Mail
4,2G Mail
$ ls Mail | wc -l
1095
can 'notmuch' index this and how big is the database after this?
matthias

I have 27 GiB emails. notmuch db is around 3 GiB. Hint: run
notmuch compact once in a while. :-)
lbdb http://www.spinnaker.de/lbdb/ can be used to collect
sender addresses (even in real time, from incoming emails) in
a db, which can be queried for autocomplete in mutt.
Best,
Mihai

How big is the lbdb?

320 KiB for 5500 clear text entries.

[Gregor Zattler]

Hi Matthias,

Post by Matthias Apitz
$ du -sh Mail
4,2G Mail
$ ls Mail | wc -l
1095
can 'notmuch' index this and how big is the database after this?

notmuch does not work with mbox folders but with single message
per file storage as maildir and mh.


Ciao; Gregor

[Yubin Ruan]

Post by Till Smejkal
Hi,
I am using notmuch to index my mails for years now and I am very happy with its
performance and functionality.

Post by Bastian
I really love and depend on mu's feature to track mail adresses of all
indexed mails. I use
set query_command="mu cfind --format mutt-ab %s"
as an address book replacement for mutt.

Recent versions of notmuch have 'notmuch address'. This can be used to query for
addresses in all indexed mails. Another possibility is to directly use the notmuch
library to run queries on the indexed mails and write your own script. That's what I
do, since I don't really like the output of 'notmuch address'. If you want, I can
share the code with you.

Can you make your code public? I would love to give it a try.

Yubin

[Ben Oliver]

Post by Bastian
As this topic was touched recently, I got interested in notmuch again
and took some time to look at it.
I used mairix for more than a decade, then switch over to mu some years
ago for some forgotten reason and now notmuch is an interesting thing.
I really love and depend on mu's feature to track mail adresses of all
indexed mails. I use
set query_command="mu cfind --format mutt-ab %s"
as an address book replacement for mutt.
On the other hand, what I really like notmuch for is it's feature to
recontruct the mail thread.
notmuch-mutt -r thread
So far, I could not find a solution where notmuch is able to act as a
address book for mutt or the other way round, where mu is able to
reconstruct a thread. Any ideas from you to achieve the one or the
other?
Many thanks,
--
Bastian

I haven't had a chance to try it yet but notmuch-abook has been
suggested to me in the past as a solution to reproducing gmail-style
"auto" addressbook derived from a notmuch index.

https://github.com/guyzmo/notmuch-abook

[Till Smejkal]

Post by Till Smejkal
I am using notmuch to index my mails for years now and I am very happy with its
performance and functionality.

Post by Bastian
I really love and depend on mu's feature to track mail adresses of all
indexed mails. I use
set query_command="mu cfind --format mutt-ab %s"
as an address book replacement for mutt.

Recent versions of notmuch have 'notmuch address'. This can be used to query for
addresses in all indexed mails. Another possibility is to directly use the notmuch
library to run queries on the indexed mails and write your own script. That's what I
do, since I don't really like the output of 'notmuch address'. If you want, I can
share the code with you.

I'll try to test both :) So I'll get the latest notmuch version and see
if the address subcommand is enough.
But if you are so kind and could send me your script, I'll also like to
see how you interact with notmuch directly.

[Also replying back to the mutt-user list]

Sure, try both and choose the one that fits your use case. You can find my script
here [1]. It requires the python bindings for libnotmuch. Since I use Arch Linux,
these bindings are shipped with the 'notmuch' package. But you should check your
distribution.

Cheers
Till

[1] https://github.com/l3nkz/mutt-tools/blob/master/mutt_addresses

[Till Smejkal]

Post by Matthias Apitz

Post by Till Smejkal
Hi,
I am using notmuch to index my mails for years now and I am very happy with its
performance and functionality.
...

Hi,
$ du -sh Mail
4,2G Mail
$ ls Mail | wc -l
1095
can 'notmuch' index this and how big is the database after this?

Same here, I have about 5.6 GB of mails (~400k). notmuch can handle them with no
problems at all. The first indexing may take some time (~30mins) but subsequent
indexing takes just a couple of milliseconds on my machine (Core i7 with an SSD and
12GB RAM). I haven't found any other mail indexer that is as fast as notmuch.
However, notmuch *only* works with *maildirs*. If you use the mbox format, notmuch
will not work. See here [1] for more details on what to do.

Cheers
Till

[1] https://notmuchmail.org/howto/

[Till Smejkal]

Post by Yubin Ruan

Post by Till Smejkal
Hi,
I am using notmuch to index my mails for years now and I am very happy with its
performance and functionality.

Post by Bastian
I really love and depend on mu's feature to track mail adresses of all
indexed mails. I use
set query_command="mu cfind --format mutt-ab %s"
as an address book replacement for mutt.

Recent versions of notmuch have 'notmuch address'. This can be used to query for
addresses in all indexed mails. Another possibility is to directly use the notmuch
library to run queries on the indexed mails and write your own script. That's what I
do, since I don't really like the output of 'notmuch address'. If you want, I can
share the code with you.

Can you make your code public? I would love to give it a try.

Sure, you can find the code here [1]. Have fun :)

Cheers
Till

[1] https://github.com/l3nkz/mutt-tools/blob/master/mutt_addresses