On Thu, Feb 07 2013, David Bremner <david@tethera.net> wrote:
> In my experience the environment variable is somewhat dangerous to use
> while testing. If left set to the wrong value, it can lead the loss of
> tag information.

I have never noticed this to be an issue, but if it is variables can be
applied only at run time as well:

NOTMUCH_CONFIG=/path/to/foo notmuch ....

>> In general, I am a strong advocate of keeping the CLI slim.  IMHO,
>> adding more options makes the interface clunkier, and the manual harder
>> to parse, and I'm against adding things that a normal user would likely
>> never use. 
>
> Well, it's are reasonable heuristic, although I might disagree in
> general where the cutoff for "normal use" is, as I do in this case.

My main point is that shoving every possible thing that can be tweaked
into CLI options is imho a bad idea.  Look at gpg.  The interface is
horrible, and the man page is basically impenetrable because it's so
loaded with options that it's impossible to figure out how to do the one
basic operation you're looking for.

But you're right that I'm making a pretty arbitrary distinction.  The
notmuch CLI already includes options to handle output formatting,
etc. that normal users are probably never going to use in their
infrequent use of the CLI.  In that regard an option to point to a
alternate config file doesn't seem that unreasonable.

I just don't want to see notmuch fall into the same UI black hole that
e.g. gpg did.

jamie.