Date: Fri, 3 Aug 2012 17:04:50 -0400
From: Austin Clements <amdragon@MIT.EDU>
To: Michal Nazarewicz <mina86@mina86.com>
Subject: Re: Inheriting tags from parent
Message-ID: <20120803210450.GH22601@mit.edu>
References: <xa1t6290qc9x.fsf@mina86.com>
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Cc: notmuch@notmuchmail.org
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Quoth Michal Nazarewicz on Aug 03 at  4:29 pm:
> Hello everyone,
> 
> I've just started using notmuch and am wondering if there is a way to
> make message “inherit” some of the tags from messages they are written
> in replay to (or in general are part of the same thread).
> 
> I'm mostly thinking about a “mute” tag which I'd add to messages that
> are completely uninteresting to me.  With the “inheritance” mechanism,
> I'd be able to make notmuch automatically mute all the replays within
> the same thread.

I have a hacky and now ancient patch series that you're welcome to try
porting to a recent notmuch on the inheritable-tags-hack branch at
  http://awakening.csail.mit.edu/git/notmuch.git
One general problem with this approach is dealing with threads whose
messages arrive or are ingested out of order.  I don't think this is
an insurmountable problem, but my patch certainly doesn't handle it
correctly.

There are also several other solutions to "mute" tags around.  For
example, some people use a post-new hook to search for threads that
contain at least one mute tag and then feed these thread IDs back in
to notmuch tag to add the mute tag to everything in the thread.  I
believe this is also the approach used by the afew tagging system for
"killed" threads.