Configuring nnir+agent+nnimap for client-side IMAP search

[William Gardella]

Hi all,

My goal is to search mail from IMAP without needing to connect to the
IMAP server.  For now, I'd rather not go to the extreme of setting up a
local IMAP daemon like Dovecot to achieve this. I have already
configured nnimap and the Gnus Agent to use Gnus as an offline
mailreader, and I thought the nnir backend of Gnus looked promising as a
way to add client-side search to this setup.

Following the manual (info "(gnus) Setting up nnir") and the
documentation in nnir.el, I attempted to configure Gnus to work with the
notmuch mail indexer to search my store of emails.

Here's the configuration I tried:

;; Associate `notmuch' with nnimap groups
(setq nnir-method-default-engines
      '((nnimap . notmuch)
        (nntp . gmane)))

;; Attempt to get a useful group name from directory name, as
;; described in `nnir-notmuch-remove-prefix' documentation
(setq nnir-notmuch-remove-prefix "/home/grml/News/agent/")

I then configured notmuch and indexed my mail.  Finally, I tried putting
nnir to the test by invoking G G on one of my nnimap groups.

At first, things seemed to be working.  I tried a basic search.  The
minibuffer prompted me that there were 1074 messages matching, and asked
how many I wanted to see.  I hit RET for the default 200 messages.  Then
I got this backtrace.  Any ideas what went wrong here?  I am open to any
and all suggestions.  I am using Gnus v5.13 and Emacs 24.2.1 and notmuch
0.13.2.  The host system is Debian GNU/Linux "Sid".

Debugger entered--Lisp error: (error "Invalid search bound (wrong side of 
point)")
  search-forward("      " 49 move)
  nnheader-parse-nov()
  nnir-retrieve-headers((875 876 877 878 879 880 881 882 883 884 885 886 887 
888 889 890 891 892 893 894 895 896 897 898 899 900 901 902 903 904 905 906 907 
908 909 910 911 912 913 914 915 916 917 918 919 920 921 922 923 924 ...) 
"((query . \"from:davidjohnson\") (unique-id . \"87txqjspau.fsf\"))" 
"nnir-ephemeral" nil)
  gnus-retrieve-headers((875 876 877 878 879 880 881 882 883 884 885 886 887 
888 889 890 891 892 893 894 895 896 897 898 899 900 901 902 903 904 905 906 907 
908 909 910 911 912 913 914 915 916 917 918 919 920 921 922 923 924 ...) 
"nnir:((query . \"from:davidjohnson\") (unique-id . \"87txqjspau.fsf\"))" nil)
  gnus-cache-retrieve-headers((875 876 877 878 879 880 881 882 883 884 885 886 
887 888 889 890 891 892 893 894 895 896 897 898 899 900 901 902 903 904 905 906 
907 908 909 910 911 912 913 914 915 916 917 918 919 920 921 922 923 924 ...) 
"nnir:((query . \"from:davidjohnson\") (unique-id . \"87txqjspau.fsf\"))" nil)
  gnus-retrieve-headers((875 876 877 878 879 880 881 882 883 884 885 886 887 
888 889 890 891 892 893 894 895 896 897 898 899 900 901 902 903 904 905 906 907 
908 909 910 911 912 913 914 915 916 917 918 919 920 921 922 923 924 ...) 
"nnir:((query . \"from:davidjohnson\") (unique-id . \"87txqjspau.fsf\"))" nil)
  gnus-fetch-headers((875 876 877 878 879 880 881 882 883 884 885 886 887 888 
889 890 891 892 893 894 895 896 897 898 899 900 901 902 903 904 905 906 907 908 
909 910 911 912 913 914 915 916 917 918 919 920 921 922 923 924 ...))
  gnus-select-newsgroup("nnir:((query . \"from:davidjohnson\") (unique-id . 
\"87txqjspau.fsf\"))" t nil)
  gnus-summary-read-group-1("nnir:((query . \"from:davidjohnson\") (unique-id . 
\"87txqjspau.fsf\"))" t t nil nil nil)
  gnus-summary-read-group("nnir:((query . \"from:davidjohnson\") (unique-id . 
\"87txqjspau.fsf\"))" t t nil nil nil nil)
  gnus-group-read-group(t t "nnir:((query . \"from:davidjohnson\") (unique-id . 
\"87txqjspau.fsf\"))" nil)
  byte-code("  \306\f\206\n\307\307$*\205\207" 
[gnus-large-ephemeral-newsgroup gnus-fetch-old-ephemeral-headers 
gnus-fetch-old-headers gnus-large-newsgroup number group gnus-group-read-group 
t select-articles] 5)
  gnus-group-read-ephemeral-group("nnir:((query . \"from:davidjohnson\") 
(unique-id . \"87txqjspau.fsf\"))" (nnir "nnir") t (#<buffer *Group*> . group) 
nil)
  gnus-group-make-nnir-group(nil)
  call-interactively(gnus-group-make-nnir-group nil nil)