Daniel Kahn Gillmor <dkg@fifthhorseman.net> writes:

> The other concern is our conception of how properties are unset/removed,
> right?
>
> With tags, it's possible to include -blah to remove the tag "blah".  how
> do we remove/clear/overwrite these tags?  what about using +key=val or
> -key=val to set/unset certain key/value combinations, and a value-less
> key= to remove all values matching a given key?
>

msg-id -blah is only possible if using notmuch-tag; notmuch restore takes a
strict subset of the input format for "notmuch tag --batch".

I'm not sure if generic property manipulation from the CLI is mandatory,
or at least I'm not sure it's a blocker for including the feature.
If/when we do decide to support it, I'm not sure if should be wedged
into notmuch-tag, or rather added to a new "notmuch-property"
subcommand.  Such a subcommand could take additional options and/or have
a richer syntax than used in the dump file.

I can imagine initial support with just an API, and some python
bindings. This could already be used by some reference manipulation UI.
The dump-restore support is more part of the backend in my mind, because
we don't want people to think they've backup their data when they
haven't.