NAME

       notmuch - thread-based email index, search, and tagging

SYNOPSIS

       notmuch [option ...] command [arg ...]

DESCRIPTION

       Notmuch  is  a  command-line  based  program for indexing, searching, reading, and tagging
       large collections of email messages.

       This page describes how to get started using notmuch from the command line,  and  gives  a
       brief  overview  of  the  commands  available.  For more information on e.g.  notmuch show
       consult the notmuch-show(1) man page, also accessible via notmuch help show

       The quickest way to get started with Notmuch is to simply invoke the notmuch command  with
       no  arguments,  which  will  interactively  guide you through the process of indexing your
       mail.

NOTE

       While the command-line program  notmuch  provides  powerful  functionality,  it  does  not
       provide   the  most  convenient  interface  for  that  functionality.  More  sophisticated
       interfaces are expected to be built on top of either the command-line interface,  or  more
       likely, on top of the notmuch library interface. See http://notmuchmail.org for more about
       alternate interfaces to notmuch. The emacs-based interface  to  notmuch  (available  under
       emacs/ in the Notmuch source distribution) is probably the most widely used at this time.

OPTIONS

       Supported global options for notmuch include

           --help

               Print a synopsis of available commands and exit.

           --version

               Print the installed version of notmuch, and exit.

           --config=FILE

               Specify  the  configuration  file  to  use.  This overrides any configuration file
               specified by ${NOTMUCH_CONFIG}.

COMMANDS

   SETUP
       The notmuch setup command is used to configure Notmuch for first use, (or  to  reconfigure
       it later).

       The  setup  command  will  prompt  for  your  full  name,  your primary email address, any
       alternate email addresses you use, and the directory containing your email archives.  Your
       answers  will  be  written  to  a  configuration  file  in  ${NOTMUCH_CONFIG}  (if set) or
       ${HOME}/.notmuch-config .  This  configuration  file  will  be  created  with  descriptive
       comments, making it easy to edit by hand later to change the configuration. Or you can run
       notmuch setup again to change the configuration.

       The mail directory you specify can  contain  any  number  of  sub-directories  and  should
       primarily  contain  only  files with individual email messages (eg. maildir or mh archives
       are perfect). If there are other, non-email files (such as  indexes  maintained  by  other
       email programs) then notmuch will do its best to detect those and ignore them.

       Mail storage that uses mbox format, (where one mbox file contains many messages), will not
       work with notmuch. If that's how your mail is currently  stored,  it  is  recommended  you
       first  convert  it  to  maildir format with a utility such as mb2md before running notmuch
       setup .

       Invoking notmuch with no command argument will run setup if  the  setup  command  has  not
       previously been completed.

   OTHER COMMANDS
       Several  of  the  notmuch  commands accept search terms with a common syntax. See notmuch-
       search-terms(7) for more details on the supported syntax.

       The search, show and count commands are used to query the email database.

       The reply command is useful for preparing a template for an email reply.

       The tag command is the only command available for manipulating database contents.

       The dump and restore commands can be used to create a  textual  dump  of  email  tags  for
       backup purposes, and to restore from that dump.

       The config command can be used to get or set settings int the notmuch configuration file.

ENVIRONMENT

       The following environment variables can be used to control the behavior of notmuch.

       NOTMUCH_CONFIG
              Specifies  the  location  of  the  notmuch  configuration  file.  Notmuch  will use
              ${HOME}/.notmuch-config if this variable is not set.

       NOTMUCH_TALLOC_REPORT
              Location to write a talloc memory usage report. See  talloc_enable_leak_report_full
              in talloc(3) for more information.

       NOTMUCH_DEBUG_QUERY
              If  set  to  a  non-empty  value, the notmuch library will print (to stderr) Xapian
              queries it constructs.

SEE ALSO

       notmuch-config(1), notmuch-count(1), notmuch-dump(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)

       The notmuch website: http://notmuchmail.org

CONTACT

       Feel  free  to  send  questions,  comments,  or  kudos  to  the   notmuch   mailing   list
       <notmuch@notmuchmail.org>  . Subscription is not required before posting, but is available
       from the notmuchmail.org website.

       Real-time  interaction  with  the  Notmuch  community  is  available  via   IRC   (server:
       irc.freenode.net, channel: #notmuch).