lei-overview(7)

1LEI-OVERVIEW(7)            public-inbox user manual            LEI-OVERVIEW(7)
2
3
4

NAME

6       lei - an overview of lei
7

DESCRIPTION

9       lei(1) is a local email interface for public-inbox and personal mail.
10       This document provides some basic examples.
11

LEI STORE

13       lei has writable local storage based on public-inbox-v2-format(5).
14       Commands will automatically initialize the store behind the scenes if
15       needed, but you can call lei-init(1) directly if you want to use a
16       store location other than the default "$XDG_DATA_HOME/lei/store".
17
18       The lei-import(1) command provides the primary interface for importing
19       messages into the local storage.  In addition, other commands, such as
20       lei-q(1) and lei-blob(1), use the local store to memoize messages from
21       remotes.
22
23   EXAMPLES
24       $ lei import mboxrd:t.mbox.gz
25           Import the messages from a gzipped mboxrd into the local storage.
26
27       $ lei blob 59ec517f9
28           Show message with the git blob OID of 59ec517f9.  If a message with
29           that OID isn't found, check if the current git repository has the
30           blob, trying to reconstruct it from a message if needed.
31
32       $ lei blob 59ec517f9 | lei tag -F eml +kw:flagged +L:next
33           Set the "flagged" keyword and "next" label on the message with the
34           blob OID of 59ec517f9.
35

EXTERNALS

37       In addition to the above store, lei can make read-only queries to
38       "externals": inboxes and external indices.  An external can be
39       registered by passing a URL or local path to lei-add-external(1).  For
40       existing local paths, the external needs to be indexed with
41       public-inbox-index(1) (in the case of a regular inbox) or
42       public-inbox-extindex(1) (in the case of an external index).
43

SYNCHRONIZATION

45       lei currently has primitive mail synchronization abilities; see
46       lei-mail-sync-overview(7) for more details.
47
48   EXAMPLES
49       $ lei add-external https://public-inbox.org/meta/
50           Add a remote external for public-inbox's inbox.
51
52       $ lei add-external --mirror https://public-inbox.org/meta/ path
53           Clone <https://public-inbox.org/meta/> to "path", index it with
54           public-inbox-index(1), and add it as a local external.
55

SEARCHING

57       The lei-q(1) command searches the local store and externals.  The
58       search prefixes match those available via public-inbox-httpd(1).
59
60   EXAMPLES
61       $ lei q s:lei s:skeleton
62           Search for messages whose subject includes "lei" and "skeleton".
63
64       $ lei q -t s:lei s:skeleton
65           Do the same, but also report unmatched messages that are in the
66           same thread as a matched message.
67
68       $ lei q -t -o /tmp/mdir --mua=mutt s:lei s:skeleton
69           Write results to a Maildir at "mdir".  Mutt will be invoked to open
70           mfolder ("mutt -f %f") while results are being fetched and written.
71
72       $ lei q kw:flagged L:next
73           Search for all flagged messages that also have a "next" label.
74
75       $ lei p2q HEAD | lei q -tt -o /tmp/mdir
76           Search for messages that have post-image git blob IDs that match
77           those of the current repository's HEAD commit, writing them to the
78           Maildir directory "mdir" and flagging the messages that were an
79           exact match.
80
81       $ git show -s HEAD | lei lcat
82           Display a local message for the public-inbox link contained in a
83           commit message.
84
85       $ lei q -f text m:MESSAGE-ID | lei rediff -U5
86           Feed a message containing a diff to lei-rediff(1) to regenerate its
87           diff with five context lines.  Unless "--git-dir" is specified,
88           this requires the current working directory to be within the
89           associated code repository.
90

PERFORMANCE NOTES

92       Inline::C is required, lei runs as a background daemon to reduce
93       startup costs and can provide real-time kqueue(2)/inotify(7) Maildir
94       monitoring.  IO::KQueue (p5-IO-KQueue on FreeBSD) and Linux::Inotify2
95       (liblinux-inotify2-perl and perl-Linux-Inotify2 in .deb and .rpm-based
96       distros, respectively) are recommended.
97
98       Socket::MsgHdr is optional (libsocket-msghdr-perl in Debian), and
99       further improves startup performance.  Its effect is most felt when
100       using shell completion.
101

BASH COMPLETION

103       Preliminary Bash completion for lei is provided in
104       "contrib/completion/".  Contributions adding support for other shells,
105       as well as improvements to the existing Bash completion, are welcome.
106

UPGRADING

108       Since lei runs as a daemon, lei-daemon-kill(1) is required to kill the
109       daemon so it can load new code.  It will be restarted with the next
110       invocation of any lei command.
111

CAVEATS

113       IMAP and NNTP client performance is poor on high-latency connections.
114       It will hopefully be fixed in 2022.
115

CONTACT

117       Feedback welcome via plain-text mail to <mailto:meta@public-inbox.org>
118
119       The mail archives are hosted at <https://public-inbox.org/meta/> and
120       <http://4uok3hntl7oi7b4uf4rtfwefqeexfzil2w6kgk2jn5z2f764irre7byd.onion/meta/>
121

COPYRIGHT

123       Copyright all contributors <mailto:meta@public-inbox.org>
124
125       License: AGPL-3.0+ <https://www.gnu.org/licenses/agpl-3.0.txt>
126