David Bremner <david@tethera.net> writes:

> Matt Armstrong <marmstrong@google.com> writes:
>
>
>> To address both, has something like this ever been considered:
>>
>>   notmuch --lock_timeout <seconds> COMMAND ARG...
>>
>> Then frontends like Emacs could lean on retry logic written in C.  If
>> this seems workable, it is something I can try implementing.
>
> notmuch in git master uses xapians lock retry if present (xapian
> 1.3+). Currently there is no timeout, but Olly seemed receptive to the
> idea of adding one, so I'd suggest that's the right place to work on
> improving this. You may find that just having unbounded lock retries
> (i.e. blocking opens) is enough for your issues.

Ah great.  I am still on Xapian 1.2 by way of running a relatively old
Linux distro.  Building a personal version of Xapian as we speak...