Command Line Usage¶
Ultimately afew is a command line tool. You have to specify an action, and whether to act on all messages, or only on new messages. The actions you can choose from are:
- tag
- run the tag filters. See Initial tagging.
- watch
- continuously monitor the mailbox for new files
- move-mails
- move mail files between maildir folders
- learn=LEARN
- train the category with the messages matching the given query
- update
- update the categories [requires no query]
- update-reference
- update the reference category (takes quite some time) [requires no query]
- classify
- classify each message matching the given query (to test the trained categories)
Initial tagging¶
Basic tagging stuff requires no configuration, just run
$ afew --tag --new
# or to tag *all* messages
$ afew --tag --all
To do this automatically you can add the following hook into your ~/.offlineimaprc:
postsynchook = ionice -c 3 chrt --idle 0 /bin/sh -c "notmuch new && afew --tag --new"
There is a lot more to say about general filter Configuration and the different Filters provided by afew.
Simulation¶
Adding –dry-run to any –tag or –sync-tags action prevents modification of the notmuch db. Add some -vv goodness to see some action.
Move Mode¶
To invoke afew in move mode, provide the –move-mails option on the command line. Move mode will respect –dry-run, so throw in –verbose and watch what effects a real run would have.
In move mode, afew will check all mails (or only recent ones) in the configured maildir folders, deciding whether they should be moved to another folder.
The decision is based on rules defined in your config file. A rule is bound to a source folder and specifies a target folder into which a mail will be moved that is matched by an associated query.
This way you will be able to transfer your sorting principles roughly to the classic folder based maildir structure understood by your traditional mail server. Tag your mails with notmuch, call afew –move-mails in an offlineimap presynchook and enjoy a clean inbox in your webinterface/GUI-client at work.
For information on how to configure rules for move mode, what you can do with it and what you can’t, please refer to Move Mode.
Classify¶
The –learn, –update, –update-references and –classify actions all relate to learning how to filter your email. See the Classification page for details.
Commandline help¶
The full set of options is:
$ afew --help
Usage: afew [options] [--] [query]
Options:
-h, --help show this help message and exit
Actions:
Please specify exactly one action (both update actions can be
specified simultaniously).
-t, --tag run the tag filters
-w, --watch continuously monitor the mailbox for new files
-l LEARN, --learn=LEARN
train the category with the messages matching the
given query
-u, --update update the categories [requires no query]
-U, --update-reference
update the reference category (takes quite some time)
[requires no query]
-c, --classify classify each message matching the given query (to
test the trained categories)
-m, --move-mails move mail files between maildir folders
Query modifiers:
Please specify either --all or --new or a query string. The default
query for the update actions is a random selection of
REFERENCE_SET_SIZE mails from the last REFERENCE_SET_TIMEFRAME days.
-a, --all operate on all messages
-n, --new operate on all new messages
General options:
-C NOTMUCH_CONFIG, --notmuch-config=NOTMUCH_CONFIG
path to the notmuch configuration file [default:
$NOTMUCH_CONFIG or ~/.notmuch-config]
-e ENABLE_FILTERS, --enable-filters=ENABLE_FILTERS
filter classes to use, separated by ',' [default:
filters specified in afew's config]
-d, --dry-run don't change the db [default: False]
-R REFERENCE_SET_SIZE, --reference-set-size=REFERENCE_SET_SIZE
size of the reference set [default: 1000]
-T DAYS, --reference-set-timeframe=DAYS
do not use mails older than DAYS days [default: 30]
-v, --verbose be more verbose, can be given multiple times