Using procmail to set tags

[Jani Nikula]

On Mon, 14 May 2012 19:34:55 -0400, Robert Horn <rjhorn at alum.mit.edu> wrote:
> Is it practical (and has anyone documented) using a procmail setup to
> set initial tags for messages using notmuch?

Can you express your initial tags in terms of notmuch searches? If you
can, I'd use the post-new hook of 'notmuch new' to do the initial
tagging. See http://notmuchmail.org/initial_tagging/ and 'man
notmuch-hooks' for some tips. OTOH, there's no real need for tags based
purely on notmuch searches in the emacs ui, because you can setup
notmuch-saved-searches. But YMMV.

If you can't express your tags in terms of notmuch searches (perhaps
because you want to tag based on List-Id: or some other header notmuch
does not index) you may need to look into notmuch-deliver. It's in the
contrib directory of the notmuch repository:
http://git.notmuchmail.org/git/notmuch/tree/HEAD:/contrib/notmuch-deliver

Tagging anything in notmuch requires that the message has been
delivered, and 'notmuch new' has been run, which might not be practical
within procmail. IIUC notmuch-deliver combines delivery, 'notmuch new',
and tagging. Disclaimer: I haven't used it myself.

> I've just started using emacs-notmuch to read mail, and I'm using a
> system where I have procmail filters to bin mail by category into
> folders.  I can continue this using folder:value for searching, but one
> reason notmuch interests me is the potential to do more.

You can, of course, combine folder searches with other searches, and
include them in notmuch-saved-searces.

HTH,
Jani.

> It's practical for me to assign potentially overlapping tags with a more
> sophisticated procmail setup.  Notmuch tags enable having multiple tags
> on one email.
> 
> I don't know enough about the procmail/notmuch process to see just how
> to make this happen.  I'm hoping that someone has already done something
> similar.
> 
> R Horn
> rjhorn at alum.mit.edu
> 
> _______________________________________________
> notmuch mailing list
> notmuch at notmuchmail.org
> http://notmuchmail.org/mailman/listinfo/notmuch