LEI-OVERVIEW(7)            public-inbox user manual            LEI-OVERVIEW(7)

NAME
       lei - an overview of lei

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

LEI STORE
       lei has writable local storage based on public-inbox-v2-format(5).
       Commands will automatically initialize the store behind the scenes if
       needed, but you can call lei-init(1) directly if you want to use a
       store location other than the default "$XDG_DATA_HOME/lei/store".

       The lei-import(1) command provides the primary interface for importing
       messages into the local storage.  In addition, other commands, such as
       lei-q(1) and lei-blob(1), use the local store to memoize messages from
       remotes.

   EXAMPLES
       $ lei import mboxrd:t.mbox.gz
           Import the messages from a gzipped mboxrd into the local storage.

       $ lei blob 59ec517f9
           Show message with the git blob OID of 59ec517f9.  If a message with
           that OID isn't found, check if the current git repository has the
           blob, trying to reconstruct it from a message if needed.

       $ lei blob 59ec517f9 | lei tag -F eml +kw:flagged +L:next
           Set the "flagged" keyword and "next" label on the message with the
           blob OID of 59ec517f9.

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

SYNCHRONIZATION
       lei currently has primitive mail synchronization abilities; see
       lei-mail-sync-overview(7) for more details.

   EXAMPLES
       $ lei add-external https://public-inbox.org/meta/
           Add a remote external for public-inbox's inbox.

       $ lei add-external --mirror https://public-inbox.org/meta/ path
           Clone <https://public-inbox.org/meta/> to "path", index it with
           public-inbox-index(1), and add it as a local external.

SEARCHING
       The lei-q(1) command searches the local store and externals.  The
       search prefixes match those available via public-inbox-httpd(1).

   EXAMPLES
       $ lei q s:lei s:skeleton
           Search for messages whose subject includes "lei" and "skeleton".

       $ lei q -t s:lei s:skeleton
           Do the same, but also report unmatched messages that are in the
           same thread as a matched message.

       $ lei q -t -o /tmp/mdir --mua=mutt s:lei s:skeleton
           Write results to a Maildir at "mdir".  Mutt will be invoked to open
           mfolder ("mutt -f %f") while results are being fetched and written.

       $ lei q kw:flagged L:next
           Search for all flagged messages that also have a "next" label.

       $ lei p2q HEAD | lei q -tt -o /tmp/mdir
           Search for messages that have post-image git blob IDs that match
           those of the current repository's HEAD commit, writing them to the
           Maildir directory "mdir" and flagging the messages that were an
           exact match.

       $ git show -s HEAD | lei lcat
           Display a local message for the public-inbox link contained in a
           commit message.

       $ lei q -f text m:MESSAGE-ID | lei rediff -U5
           Feed a message containing a diff to lei-rediff(1) to regenerate its
           diff with five context lines.  Unless "--git-dir" is specified,
           this requires the current working directory to be within the
           associated code repository.

PERFORMANCE NOTES
       Inline::C is required, lei runs as a background daemon to reduce
       startup costs and can provide real-time kqueue(2)/inotify(7) Maildir
       monitoring.  IO::KQueue (p5-IO-KQueue on FreeBSD) and Linux::Inotify2
       (liblinux-inotify2-perl and perl-Linux-Inotify2 in .deb and .rpm-based
       distros, respectively) are recommended.

       Socket::MsgHdr is optional (libsocket-msghdr-perl in Debian), and
       further improves startup performance.  Its effect is most felt when
       using shell completion.

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

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

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

CONTACT
       Feedback welcome via plain-text mail to <mailto:meta@public-inbox.org>

       The mail archives are hosted at <https://public-inbox.org/meta/> and
       <http://4uok3hntl7oi7b4uf4rtfwefqeexfzil2w6kgk2jn5z2f764irre7byd.onion/meta/>

COPYRIGHT
       Copyright all contributors <mailto:meta@public-inbox.org>

       License: AGPL-3.0+ <https://www.gnu.org/licenses/agpl-3.0.txt>

SEE ALSO
       lei-mail-sync-overview(7)

public-inbox.git                  1993-10-02                   LEI-OVERVIEW(7)