Hi Carl, dme complained that my python bindings abort with Xapian::DatabaseModifiedException when doing a Database.find_message('id'). But libnotmuch.so terminates before python has even a chance to catch an execption, and I think it boils down to this: http://git.notmuchmail.org/git/notmuch/blob/ec6d78acf12d5c8fe6d10d091adee6516bf48d8a:/lib/database.cc#l276 find_message() which calls: find_doc_ids_for_term() in lib/database.cc which contains: *begin = notmuch->xapian_db->postlist_begin (term); *end = notmuch->xapian_db->postlist_end (term); without doing any catching. According to Olly Betts this can possibly throw such an exception when the Database has been modified. I propose to try..catch this code block and rather than returning VOID it could return NOTMUCH_STATUS_SUCCESS or NOTMUCH_XAPIAN_EXCEPTION. Not sure how "notmuch_database_find_message" would notify the caller of such an exception situation though. The only possible failure value is NULL (which also means did not find such a message). Sebastian