How do you synchronize your notmuch tags across multiple machines?

[David Mazieres]

Dan Čermák <dan.cermak at posteo.net> writes:

>> The ideal solution would be to implement an imap server on top of
>> libnotmuch.  If we had that, then you could just use offlineimap and
>> isync through the imap (as opposed to file system) interface, and
>> everything will just work.
>
> Stupid question: how would the tags be synced with your local machines
> in this case? Via muchsync or would one keep the tags on the
> notmuch-imap server?

However you want.  If you run a local imap server and a remote imap
server, then you can just sync between the two imap servers with any
imap synching tool.  But if the two hosts happen to be running imap
servers implemented on top of libnotmuch, then you could use muchsync
which would be faster.

> How about a hacky and not ideal solution: "teach" notmuch to not only
> synchronize the read and deleted tags with the maildir, but all tags?

Unfortunately, there's no standard for how to encode these.  Also,
there's a pretty fundamental design decision in notmuch that it doesn't
edit the mail messages.  Now some imap servers, like dovecot, define
other flags on a per-maildir basis, but it only works up to a certain
number of flags, and you'd have to parse an extra file that tells you
what the mappings are.

David