(auto-)tagging sent messages

[servilio]

On 18 April 2011 16:26, Austin Clements <amdragon at mit.edu> wrote:
> On Sun, Apr 17, 2011 at 2:23 PM, Jameson Graef Rollins
> <jrollins at finestructure.net> wrote:
>> By giving "notmuch new" a path to a message in the store:
>>
>>  notmuch new /path/to/message
>>
>> By feeding "notmuch new" a message on stdin, and then having it write
>> the message to a specified location:
>>
>>  notmuch new /path/to/maildir <message
>>
>> You could then add the ability to add tags at the time of index:
>>
>>  notmuch new +foo +bar /path/to/message

I like more the idea of using a CLI option, e.g.:

notmuch new --tag=foo --tag=bar /path/to/message

> I think passing specific messages or directories to notmuch new would
> enable some nice features; beyond immediate indexing any tagging of
> sent mail, it could be combined with inotify to immediately index any
> new mail

I would add "efficiently", it can be done right now, but it would scan
the whole mail sub-tree everytime.

> However, concurrency and atomicity have to be considered carefully
> with any proposal like this.  For example,
>  notmuch new +foo +bar /path/to/message
> has concurrency hazards: the caller has to store the message before
> invoking notmuch new, but if the machine crashes between these two
> operations, the message will be indexed with default tags on the next
> notmuch new.  Similarly, a chance unrelated invocation of notmuch new
> immediately after the message is stored would result in the new
> message being indexed with default tags.

One solution to both issues would be to add the feature to "notmuch
new" of taking the initial tags from a custom header (e.g.:
X-Notmuchmail-Agent-Initial-Tags), and use
message-ignored-mail-headers[1] to filter this header out the sent
message.

Servilio

[1] http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_mono/message.html#Mail-Headers