syncing mail by simply syncing the filesystem

[Christoph Groth]

Jesse,

thanks a lot for your ideas.

Jesse Rosenthal <jrosenthal at jhu.edu> writes:

> 1. If your other computers will have a consistent fast internet
> connection (or a sufficient connection to use IMAP) consider remote
> usage, keeping your database on one computer:

They do, most of the time.  But I really like to be able to stay
independent of any servers when I am on the road with occasional and
slow network access.

> 2. You could brute-force it. Include a nm_dump file as one of your
> unison paths, along with your Maildir, then always run:
>
> notmuch dump > nm_dump
> unison
> notmuch restore nm_dump

This might actually be the perfect solution, if notmuch is fast enough
to dump and restore the tags in a few seconds.

Actually, I am a bit confused by why many people seem to be using tags
for named searches.  IMHO tags only make sense when set by hand for some
non-searchable criteria.  For all the rest normal searches (perhaps with
saved search aliases) should be the better solution.

> 2a. Just a thought -- would merging be easier if you used git/hg instead
> of unison? Just make sure to gitignore your notmuch db.

You mean to store nm_dump?  This sounds too complicated without much
benefit.  I'm using git for things where I am interested in the history
of changes which is hardly the case for the tags.