In a previous post, I described how I was trying out aerc for email after moving back to a Linux-based primary desktop machine. As a started tinkering with things and subscribing to more email lists, a simple aerc-based setup wasn’t cutting it. I know aerc has notmuch support, but I wanted better thread support and better emacs integration.
When I first set up offlineimap, I was putting everything from each email provider into a separate folder. The next step would be a rule-based filing to put mailing list into separate folders. But putting email into different folders would have been a band-aid. I felt like I needed a full email tagging solution. Searching and threading were must-have features. So it was time to try out notmuch.
The first step would be to set up emacs as an email client. That was pretty straightforward (this hasn’t really been tuned at all):
(setq mail-host-address "mydomain")
(setq user-full-name "My Name")
(setq user-mail-address "mail@mydomain")
(setq send-mail-function 'smtpmail-send-it)
(setq message-send-mail-function 'smtpmail-send-it)
(setq send-mail-function 'smtpmail-send-it
smtpmail-smtp-server "my.smtp.server"
smtpmail-stream-type 'ssl
smtpmail-smtp-service 465)
(defun my-message-mode-setup ()
(setq fill-column 72)
(turn-on-auto-fill))
(add-hook 'message-mode-hook 'my-message-mode-setup)
Then I set up the splash screen for notmuch (after package-install):
(setq notmuch-saved-searches '(
(:name "all"
:query "*"
:sort-order newest-first
:key "a")
(:name "inbox"
:query "tag:inbox and not (tag:list)"
:key "i")
(:name "sent"
:query "tag:from-me"
:sort-order newest-first
:key "s")
(:name "btrfs"
:query "tag:btrfs and tag:inbox")
(:name "rss"
:query "folder:rss and tag:inbox")
(:name "github"
:query "folder:github and tag:inbox")
(:name "notmuch"
:query "tag:notmuch and tag:inbox"
:key "n")
(:name "emacs-devel"
:query "tag:emacs-devel and tag:inbox")
(:name "friend"
:query "tag:friend and tag:inbox"
:sort-order newest-first)
))
Then I needed to have notmuch index my email. Create this script in ~/.config/notmuch/new.sh:
#!/bin/sh
nm=/usr/bin/notmuch
$nm new 2>/dev/null
$nm tag --batch --input=/home/timmy/.config/notmuch/tags.txt
I created this tags.txt file:
+btrfs +list -- linux-btrfs@vger.kernel.org
+emacs-devel +list -- emacs-devel@gnu.org
+notmuch +list -- notmuch@notmuchmail.org
+aerc +list -- ~sircmpwn/aerc@lists.sr.ht
+list -- folder:rss
+list -- folder:github
+to-me -- to:myemailaddress
+from-me -- from:myemailaddress
+patch -- subject:PATCH
My ~/.config/notmuch/config is pretty basic:
[database]
path=/home/timmy/mail
[user]
name=My Name
primary_email=timmy@email1
other_email=timmy@email2;timmy@email3;
[new]
tags=unread;inbox;
ignore=
[search]
exclude_tags=spam;
[maildir]
synchronize_flags=true
I created a user systemd user service to run notmuch on my maildir that was populated by offlineimap:
~/.config/systemd/user/notmuch.service:
[Unit]
Description=Notmuch new
Documentation=man:notmuch(1)
[Service]
Type=oneshot
ExecStart=/home/timmy/.config/notmuch/new.sh
TimeoutStopSec=120
[Install]
WantedBy=default.target
~/.config/systemd/user/notmuch.timer:
[Unit]
Description=Notmuch timer
[Timer]
OnBootSec=1m
OnUnitInactiveSec=5m
[Install]
WantedBy=default.target
Then run systemctl --user daemon-reload && systemctl --user start notmuch.timer && systemctl --user status notmuch.timer to start the
notmuch indexer.
Then start notmuch in GNU/Emacs with M-x notmuch.
This isn’t complete without talking about how I get RSS feeds mixed into my email. Obviously, the end goal is to spend the whole day in GNU/Emacs. Having to open up 20 tabs with your favorite websites or blogs and refresh them occasionally is not ideal. The solution I chose is to write a systemd job scrape rss feeds and inject them into your maildir for notmuch to index. I couldn’t find anything online that I liked so I wrote a quick app in Go to do the job:
Source and install instructions for feed2maildir.
A simple fetchrss.sh might look like this:
#!/bin/sh
fm() {
~/bin/feed2maildir --feed $1 --maildir ~/mail/rss
}
gh() {
~/bin/feed2maildir --feed $1 --maildir ~/mail/github
}
fm "https://www.phoronix.com/rss.php"
fm "https://lwn.net/headlines/rss"
fm "https://timmydouglas.com/post/index.xml"
fm "https://news.ycombinator.com/rss"
gh "https://github.com/microsoft/BPerf/commits/dev.atom"
gh "https://github.com/mmcdole/gofeed/commits/master.atom"
The only major gap I have right now is that my notmuch database isn’t replicated to other machines. I haven’t had the need to solve that problem yet, but when I do, I’ll write another blog entry on it.
