TITLE: Using notmuch to search email in Mutt
DATE: 2019-01-05
AUTHOR: John L. Godlee
====================================================================


I found that the inbuilt search facility in my email client, Mutt,
was not all that powerful, or at least I didn't have the
inclination to learn its ways. But I already know how to use
notmuch for indexing and searching email, so I wanted to
incorporate it into my Mutt workflow.

I made sure I had notmuch on my computer:

   brew install notmuch

NeoMutt is meant to come with notmuch support out of the box, so I
didn't need to apply the notmuch-mutt patch. I did use this
mutt-notmuch-py script though, which I included in my $PATH by
adding it to ~/bin.

 [notmuch-mutt]: https://notmuchmail.org/notmuch-mutt/
 [this mutt-notmuch-py script]:
https://github.com/honza/mutt-notmuch-py

Then, I edited my muttrc to include this macro:

   # Search using notmuch
   macro index \\ "<enter-command>unset
wait_key<enter><shell-escape>mutt-notmuch-py
~/.mail/temporary/search<enter><change-folder-readonly>+temporary/se
arch<enter>" "search mail (using notmuch)"

It calls mutt-notmuch-py and puts results based on your query in
~/.mail/temporary/search as a mailbox, then switches to that
temporary mailbox.

I also wanted to make search results appear in my sidebar, to be
visible until I ran the macro again, so I added it to my sidebar
mailbox creation:

   # Notmuch search mailbox
   mailboxes "+--- search --------"
   mailboxes +temporary/search

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