Andy Smith <andy@strugglers.net> writes:

> If I ran "notmuch compact" should I expect any space to be
> reclaimed?

Yes, if the database was built incrementally, you can expect at least
20% savings, in some cases more than 50%. If you just ran notmuch new
with an empty database, there would be less savings (but still some).  I
vaguely remember there is potentially some minor slowdown from the
compacted database, but no-one has complained that is objectionable.

> The manual page says that this builds a new copy of the database and
> then switches them over. Does that imply that I will need nearly the
> same amount of space again to perform the compact, until it finishes
> and the old database is discarded?

Yes.

> The manual page says that the new database is built "in a temporary
> directory". Where is that directory exactly? Is it inside the
> current notmuch database directory or is it in $TMPDIR? I ask
> because it looks like I'll need to make sure that there about 50GiB
> of space available wherever that is.

iirc, in the notmuch database directory; see below

> I'm aware that this procedure is going to take a really really long
> time. If my machine should crash, or the notmuch process runs out of
> memory or something, will my database be left in a functional state?

Yes, the compaction is atomic, within the limits of rename on your file
system (that is why it has to be in the same directory as your existing
database). The original database will be there if something crashes.

> If I have to reindex it, that is going to take even longer, so I
> have to think about how much I want what is probably a very marginal
> amount of space back!

Compaction should be substantially faster than re-indexing.
_______________________________________________
notmuch mailing list -- notmuch@notmuchmail.org
To unsubscribe send an email to notmuch-leave@notmuchmail.org