NAME

       notmuch-dump - creates a plain-text dump of the tags of each message

SYNOPSIS

       notmuch  dump  [--format=(sup|batch-tag)]  [--]  [  --output=<filename>  ] [--] [ <search-
       term>...]

DESCRIPTION

       Dump tags for messages matching the given search terms.

       Output is to the given filename, if any, or to stdout.

       These tags are the only data in the notmuch database that  can't  be  recreated  from  the
       messages  themselves.   The output of notmuch dump is therefore the only critical thing to
       backup (and much more friendly to incremental backup than the native database files.)

       --format=(sup|batch-tag)

           Notmuch restore supports two plain text dump formats, both  with  one  message-id  per
           line, followed by a list of tags.

           sup

               The  sup  dump file format is specifically chosen to be compatible with the format
               of files produced by sup-dump.  So if you've previously been using sup  for  mail,
               then the notmuch restore command provides you a way to import all of your tags (or
               labels as sup calls them).  Each line has the following form

               <message-id> ( <tag> ...  )

               with zero or more tags are separated by spaces. Note that (malformed)  message-ids
               may  contain  arbitrary  non-null characters. Note also that tags with spaces will
               not be correctly restored with this format.

           batch-tag

               The batch-tag dump format is intended to more robust against malformed message-ids
               and tags containing whitespace or non-ascii(7) characters.  Each line has the form

               +<encoded-tag> +<encoded-tag> ... --  id:<quoted-message-id>

               Tags  are  hex-encoded  by  replacing  every  byte  not  matching the regex [A-Za-
               z0-9@=.,_+-] with %nn where nn is the two digit hex encoding.  The message ID is a
               valid  Xapian  query,  quoted  using  Xapian boolean term quoting rules: if the ID
               contains whitespace or a close paren or starts with a double  quote,  it  must  be
               enclosed  in  double  quotes and double quotes inside the ID must be doubled.  The
               astute reader will notice this is a special case of the  batch  input  format  for
               notmuch-tag(1);  note  that  the single message-id query is mandatory for notmuch-
               restore(1).

           With no search terms, a dump of all messages in the database  will  be  generated.   A
           "--" argument instructs notmuch that the remaining arguments are search terms.

           See notmuch-search-terms(7) for details of the supported syntax for <search-terms>.

SEE ALSO

       notmuch(1),   notmuch-config(1),  notmuch-count(1),  notmuch-hooks(5),  notmuch-insert(1),
       notmuch-new(1), notmuch-reply(1), notmuch-restore(1),  notmuch-search(1),  notmuch-search-
       terms(7), notmuch-show(1), notmuch-tag(1)