This is the third revision of this series, and I think the first two patches are ready for serious review. Some things to think about with respect to the CLI patches - Should we include a "version" line at the top of the dump? Currently this is unused, but that depends on the format being auto detectable? - Should config info be included by default in the dump output? - Should we restore config info by default? - How about the usual bikeshedding about argument names? I'm loath to spend time on docs until after this. I guess a global question is what do we need this API / feature for. I can think of three things so far - tag aliases [1] - making the location of the mail tree configurable (i.e. allowing mailtree and database to live in different places). - Some things like excludes and maildir synchonization are natural to have in common between all clients. A natural question is why not provide a library API to access .notmuch-config? Having a plain text representation of the configuration (without the extra step of dumping it) is obviously attractive, but - We would need to build some locking / synchronization to prevent various clients and interactive text editors from stomping on each other. This we have for free by using xapian metadata. - We'd also have to provide our own key/value datastructure. - At least for tag aliases, I think there is a second argument that this information part of the users tagging state, and should be backed up as part of the normal dump / restore process. [1]: id:87mvsd7cxr.fsf@zancas.localnet