Re: nnir and notmuch?

[Eric Abrahamsen <eric@ericabrahamsen.net>]

Rainer M Krug <Rainer@krugs.de> writes:

> <#secure method=pgpmime mode=sign> 
>
> Steinar Bang <sb@dod.no> writes:
>
>>>>>>> Rainer M Krug <Rainer@krugs.de>:
>>
>>> Now that I can search gmane (perfect - love it!) I can't search my
>>> local imap server via notmuch anymore - any suggestions how I can
>>> achieve both via nnir or "G G"?
>>
>> One way would be to replace
>>  (nnimap . imap) in nnir-method-default-engines with
>>  (nnimap . notmuch)
>
> I had
>
> ,----
> |            '(nnimap "Maildir"
> |                       (nnimap-stream shell) (nnimap-shell-program
> |                       "/usr/local/opt/dovecot/libexec/dovecot/imap -o
> |                       mail_location=maildir:$HOME/Maildir")
> |                       (nnir-search-engine 'notmuch)))
> `----
>
> in my gnus file, but it produced an error message.
> I am just trying your suggestion, and I get the following:
>
> ,----
> | notmuch args: search --format=text --output=files hallo
> | Massaging notmuch output...done
> | Search produced empty results.
> | gnus-group-read-ephemeral-group: Couldn't request group: Search produced empty results.
> `----

For a while I ran notmuch and imap configured like this, and got a lot
of the same problems, because I was a bit confused about how all the
bits and pieces interacted. I think the problem is that notmuch returns
its hits based on filesystem paths. These paths don't necessarily match
up with how imap locates its messages, though -- things like mailboxes
transformations and namespaces can mean that imap sees the location of a
message in a way that doesn't jive with the filesystem path.

If you've got multiple Gnus backends in effect, another awkwardness is
that notmuch will probably return all the hits from all backends,
whereas nnir will attempt to filter out anything that doesn't belong to
the group/server from which you initiated the search.

I don't know all the grisly details, or whether it could be made to
work: when I realized what was happening I just stopped using notmuch as
a nnir engine for nnimap messages. Now I have a Frankenstein search
setup, using notmuch-search by itself, and the imap nnir engine, in
parallel. I'm shifting over to using nnir only, and will eventually get
rid of notmuch.

Not very helpful, I know, but I think there are fundamental
incompatibilities in specifying notmuch as a nnir engine for imap
servers.

Eric