oracular (7) lei-overview.7.gz

Provided by: lei_1.9.0-1_all bug

NAME
       lei - an overview of lei


DESCRIPTION
       lei(1) is a local email interface for public-inbox and personal mail.  This document provides some basic
       examples.


LEI STORE
       lei has writable local storage based on public-inbox-v2-format(5).  Commands will automatically
       initialize the store behind the scenes if needed, but you can call lei-init(1) directly if you want to
       use a store location other than the default "$XDG_DATA_HOME/lei/store".

       The lei-import(1) command provides the primary interface for importing messages into the local storage.
       In addition, other commands, such as lei-q(1) and lei-blob(1), use the local store to memoize messages
       from remotes.

   EXAMPLES
       $ lei import mboxrd:t.mbox.gz
           Import the messages from a gzipped mboxrd into the local storage.

       $ lei blob 59ec517f9
           Show message with the git blob OID of 59ec517f9.  If a message with that OID isn't found, check if
           the current git repository has the blob, trying to reconstruct it from a message if needed.

       $ lei blob 59ec517f9 | lei tag -F eml +kw:flagged +L:next
           Set the "flagged" keyword and "next" label on the message with the blob OID of 59ec517f9.


EXTERNALS
       In addition to the above store, lei can make read-only queries to "externals": inboxes and external
       indices.  An external can be registered by passing a URL or local path to lei-add-external(1).  For
       existing local paths, the external needs to be indexed with public-inbox-index(1) (in the case of a
       regular inbox) or public-inbox-extindex(1) (in the case of an external index).


SYNCHRONIZATION
       lei currently has primitive mail synchronization abilities; see lei-mail-sync-overview(7) for more
       details.

   EXAMPLES
       $ lei add-external https://public-inbox.org/meta/
           Add a remote external for public-inbox's inbox.

       $ lei add-external --mirror https://public-inbox.org/meta/ path
           Clone <https://public-inbox.org/meta/> to "path", index it with public-inbox-index(1), and add it as
           a local external.


SEARCHING
       The lei-q(1) command searches the local store and externals.  The search prefixes match those available
       via public-inbox-httpd(1).

   EXAMPLES
       $ lei q s:lei s:skeleton
           Search for messages whose subject includes "lei" and "skeleton".

       $ lei q -t s:lei s:skeleton
           Do the same, but also report unmatched messages that are in the same thread as a matched message.

       $ lei q -t -o /tmp/mdir --mua=mutt s:lei s:skeleton
           Write results to a Maildir at "mdir".  Mutt will be invoked to open mfolder ("mutt -f %f") while
           results are being fetched and written.

       $ lei q kw:flagged L:next
           Search for all flagged messages that also have a "next" label.

       $ lei p2q HEAD | lei q -tt -o /tmp/mdir
           Search for messages that have post-image git blob IDs that match those of the current repository's
           HEAD commit, writing them to the Maildir directory "mdir" and flagging the messages that were an
           exact match.

       $ git show -s HEAD | lei lcat
           Display a local message for the public-inbox link contained in a commit message.

       $ lei q -f text m:MESSAGE-ID | lei rediff -U5
           Feed a message containing a diff to lei-rediff(1) to regenerate its diff with five context lines.
           Unless "--git-dir" is specified, this requires the current working directory to be within the
           associated code repository.


PERFORMANCE NOTES
       Inline::C is required, lei runs as a background daemon to reduce startup costs and can provide real-time
       kqueue(2)/inotify(7) Maildir monitoring.  IO::KQueue (p5-IO-KQueue on FreeBSD) and Linux::Inotify2
       (liblinux-inotify2-perl and perl-Linux-Inotify2 in .deb and .rpm-based distros, respectively) are
       recommended.

       Socket::MsgHdr is optional (libsocket-msghdr-perl in Debian), and further improves startup performance.
       Its effect is most felt when using shell completion.


BASH COMPLETION
       Preliminary Bash completion for lei is provided in "contrib/completion/".  Contributions adding support
       for other shells, as well as improvements to the existing Bash completion, are welcome.


UPGRADING
       Since lei runs as a daemon, lei-daemon-kill(1) is required to kill the daemon so it can load new code.
       It will be restarted with the next invocation of any lei command.


CAVEATS
       IMAP and NNTP client performance is poor on high-latency connections.  It will hopefully be fixed in
       2022.


CONTACT
       Feedback welcome via plain-text mail to <mailto:meta@public-inbox.org>

       The mail archives are hosted at <https://public-inbox.org/meta/> and
       <http://4uok3hntl7oi7b4uf4rtfwefqeexfzil2w6kgk2jn5z2f764irre7byd.onion/meta/>


       Copyright all contributors <mailto:meta@public-inbox.org>

       License: AGPL-3.0+ <https://www.gnu.org/licenses/agpl-3.0.txt>


SEE ALSO
       lei-mail-sync-overview(7)