NOTMUCH-DUMP(1)                              notmuch                              NOTMUCH-DUMP(1)



NAME
       notmuch-dump - creates a plain-text dump of the tags of each message

SYNOPSIS
       notmuch dump [--format=(batch-tag|sup)] [--] [--output=<file>] [--] [<search-term> ...]

DESCRIPTION
       Dump tags for messages matching the given search terms.

       Output is to the given filename, if any, or to stdout.

       These tags are the only data in the notmuch database that can't be recreated from the mes‐
       sages themselves. The output of notmuch dump is  therefore  the  only  critical  thing  to
       backup (and much more friendly to incremental backup than the native database files.)

       --gzip Compress the output in a format compatible with gzip(1).

       --format=(sup|batch-tag)
              Notmuch  restore supports two plain text dump formats, both with one message-id per
              line, followed by a list of tags.

              batch-tag
                     The default batch-tag dump format is intended to more  robust  against  mal‐
                     formed  message-ids  and  tags containing whitespace or non-ascii(7) charac‐
                     ters. Each line has the form
                        +<encoded-tag> +<encoded-tag> ... -- id:<quoted-message-id>

                     Tags are  hex-encoded  by  replacing  every  byte  not  matching  the  regex
                     [A-Za-z0-9@=.,_+-] with %nn where nn is the two digit hex encoding. The mes‐
                     sage ID is a valid Xapian query, quoted using Xapian  boolean  term  quoting
                     rules:  if the ID contains whitespace or a close paren or starts with a dou‐
                     ble quote, it must be enclosed in double quotes and double quotes inside the
                     ID  must be doubled. The astute reader will notice this is a special case of
                     the batch input format for notmuch-tag(1); note that the  single  message-id
                     query is mandatory for notmuch-restore(1).

              sup    The  sup  dump  file format is specifically chosen to be compatible with the
                     format of files produced by sup-dump. So if you've previously been using sup
                     for  mail, then the notmuch restore command provides you a way to import all
                     of your tags (or labels as sup calls them). Each line has the following form
                        <message-id> ( <tag> ... )

                     with zero or more tags are separated by spaces. Note that  (malformed)  mes‐
                     sage-ids may contain arbitrary non-null characters. Note also that tags with
                     spaces will not be correctly restored with this format.

              With no search terms, a dump of all messages in the database will be  generated.  A
              "--" argument instructs notmuch that the remaining arguments are search terms.

              See notmuch-search-terms(7) for details of the supported syntax for <search-terms>.

SEE ALSO
       notmuch(1), notmuch-config(1), notmuch-count(1), notmuch-hooks(5), notmuch-insert(1), not‐
       much-new(1),     notmuch-reply(1),     notmuch-restore(1),     notmuch-search(1),     not‐
       much-search-terms(7), notmuch-show(1), notmuch-tag(1)

AUTHOR
       Carl Worth and many others

COPYRIGHT
       2014, Carl Worth and many others




0.18.2                                   October 25, 2014                         NOTMUCH-DUMP(1)