Re: searching local mail stores

[Rainer M Krug <Rainer@krugs.de>]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 5248 bytes --]

Eric Abrahamsen <eric@ericabrahamsen.net> writes:

> Alan Schmitt <alan.schmitt@polytechnique.org> writes:
>
>> Hello,
>>
>> (Sorry if you are seeing this as a duplicate. I tried to post it
>> through the gmane group but I'm not seeing it, so here it is again
>> directly to the mailing list.)
>>
>> On 2016-01-03 17:04, Eric Abrahamsen <eric@ericabrahamsen.net> writes:
>>
>>>>> In .gnus I have added:
>>>>>
>>>>>   (nnir-search-engine notmuch)
>>>>>
>>>>> in my mail-method ((nnml "")).
>>>>>
>>>>> I search by going to my email-topic and pressing GG.
>>>>
>>>> What else needs to be setup to use notmuch for search?
>>>>
>>>> (There's some info on setup here for instance:
>>>> http://roland.entierement.nu/blog/2010/09/08/gnus-dovecot-offlineimap-search-a-howto.html
>>>> )
>>>>
>>>> Is that the sort of setup that needs doing first?
>>>
>>> This, but also ‘nnir-notmuch-remove-prefix’. Notmuch knows nothing about
>>> Gnus, it just knows where matching files are on your filesystem. Gnus
>>> only wants to know the filename relative to where it *already knows how
>>> to find the message*. You customize that option in order to match the
>>> two up. The option is basically copied from nnir-namazu-remove-prefix,
>>> which has a more useful docstring...
>>
>> I'm giving this a try, and I'm having a problem: whatever I try, I get
>> an error:
>>
>> gnus-select-newsgroup: Couldn't request group nnir:nnir-m2bn91ihar.fsf:
>> Search produced empty results.
>>
>> If I run the notmuch command on the command line, I see many results.
>> I tried to run edebug on the nnir-run-notmuch function, and it does
>> something strange. It actually populates a temporary buffer with the
>> results I see when running the command line, but then it seems to go
>> through these results discarding all of them.
>>
>> #+begin_src emacs-lisp
>> (while (not (eobp))
>>   (setq filenam (buffer-substring-no-properties (line-beginning-position)
>>                                                 (line-end-position))
>>         artno (file-name-nondirectory filenam)
>>         dirnam (file-name-directory filenam))
>>   (forward-line 1)
>>
>>   ;; don't match directories
>>   (when (string-match article-pattern artno)
>>     (when (not (null dirnam))
>>
>>     ;; maybe limit results to matching groups.
>>       (when (or (not groupspec)
>>             (string-match groupspec dirnam))
>>         (nnir-add-result dirnam artno "" prefix server artlist)))))
>> #+end_src
>>
>> The problem is in the matching of the name of the file (something like
>> "1451911994.M307856P59885.charm-ecran.irisa.fr,S=3270,W=3347:2,S")
>> against the pattern "^[0-9]+$", which fails and the found message is
>> ignored.
>>
>> Is this a bug in this function, or do I need additional configuration?
>>
>> Here are my server settings:
>>
>> (setq gnus-select-method 
>>       '(nnimap 
>>         "zimbra"
>>         (nnimap-shell-program
>>          "~/bin/dovecot_bin/imap -c ~/.dovecotzimbra.rc")
>>         (nnimap-stream shell)
>>         (nnimap-logout-timeout 1.0)
>>         (nnir-search-engine notmuch)
>>         (nnir-notmuch-remove-prefix "/Users/schmitta/.Maildir/zimbra/")))
>>
>> (setq gnus-secondary-select-methods 
>>       '((nnimap 
>>          "local"
>>          (nnimap-address "localhost")
>>          (nnimap-server-port 143)
>>          (nnimap-stream network)
>>          (nnir-search-engine notmuch)
>>          (nnir-notmuch-remove-prefix "/Users/schmitta/.Maildir/local"))
>>         ))
>>
>
> I think the problem is that you can't actually use notmuch with the
> nnimap backend. Earlier in that function, you see that the
> "article-pattern" regexp is different depending on whether you're using
> an nnmaildir backend or not. In fact, if it uses the regexp associated
> with nnmaildir, it looks like your articles would probably match, and
> come out in the results.
>
> I don't really understand the reasoning behind this -- I suppose you
> could alter the function to always use the other regexp, and see if
> anything else breaks.
>
> But I think the idea is: if you're using an IMAP server, you're supposed
> to be letting the server do the searching, and give you the results.
> Searching the filesystem directly is kind of "going behind the server's
> back". I don't actually know if that would cause any real problems, but
> the code is definitely set up with that assumption in mind.

That is exactly why I left GG as it is, and use notmuch search simply by
using the command notmuch-search. You y=could also define a new shortcut
for the function (which I think I did - but I have forgotten the
shortcut. M-x notmuch-search is much easier to remember as I do not
search that often).

>
> Maybe try the FTS dovecot plugin?

I tried, but decided to stick with notmuch as I liked the possibility
to search from the commandline as well. Also, and please correct me if I
am wrong, the FTS plugin only searches in the IMAP folder and not all
folder (as notmuch does) - which is sometimes a disadvantage.

Cheers,

Rainer

>
> Eric
>
>
>

-- 
Rainer M. Krug
email: Rainer<at>krugs<dot>de
PGP: 0x0F52F982

[-- Attachment #2: signature.asc --]
[-- Type: application/pgp-signature, Size: 454 bytes --]