[notmuch] Using notmuch from Ruby, Python, et al.

[Carl Worth]

On Wed, 25 Nov 2009 08:16:54 -0800, Scott Robinson <scott at quadhome.com> wrote:
> I'm hoping this thread will provide a guide for my efforts.
> 
> I'm writing a web frontend for notmuch in Ruby. But, the output from the
> notmuch command-line is ambiguous. Therefore, I've started two branches
> experimenting with different ways of providing hooks.

Hi Scott, welcome to notmuch!

A web frontend sounds very interesting, and I'll look forward to see
what you come up with here.

> Which of these approaches are likely to be pulled upstream?

Both, in fact!

> == Shared Library
> 
> I have modified the build to output a shared library. It's a small change
> relying on libtool.

We definitely want to have a shared library at some point. To some
extent, publishing a shared library commits us to maintaining API/ABI
for that library, and that's something I'm not willing to commit to
at this point, (since we're still seeing a fair amount of churn in the
interface).

But then again, we're also not even putting out a tar-file release yet
either, so I think it's easy to say that we're not "publishing" anything
yet and the API is all still subject to change.

> However, the archives indicate Carl dislikes libtool?

I've been maintaining a mainstream library (cairo) for several years
that uses libtool in its build system. So I know what that's like and I
definitely don't like it.

I haven't yet tried maintaining a library without using libtool, but I'm
optimistic that it will be much less painful, so that's what I'd like to
do for now.

> == JSON output
> 
> I added a --output=(text|json) option to "search" and "show." Then, emit json
> results appropriately.
> 
> To accomplish this, I used the cJSON library sans parsing logic.
> 
> However, I saw discussion about providing a --format option?

Obviously the exact name isn't that important and is easy to change. But
yes, this kind of thing looks very interesting.

> Q: Why are my replies five sentences or less?
> A: http://five.sentenc.es/

I guess I lose (or you do since you're the one receiving it). I count
this as sentence number 13 in my reply. :-)

-Carl