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)