Live data from Hacker News

FastMail's Email Search Architecture

blog.fastmail.com

21–30 of 32 posts

Re: FastMail's Email Search Architecture

#22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm always a bit jealous when I see this setup (or mu). But I don't use emacs, and that seems to lead to subpar support and crazy hacks to get something up and working, unfortunately.

But I don't use emacs, Me neither, but mutt-kz had built-in support for notmuch. Not the hacky kind that calls 'notmuch', but it actually links against libnotmuch. http://kzak.redcrew.org/doku.php?id=mutt:start

That looks really neat. You ruined my day (in terms of productivity), but might've given me a nice early Christmas present. Thank you!

Re: FastMail's Email Search Architecture

#24

Fastmail is a great service, however iCloud completely fails with their web client. I have >50k emails, probably closer to 100k and searching simply times out. Never has worked for me. It's sad, really...

Sorry, I don't understand what you mean. iCloud is a service, and FastMail's web client doesn't talk to iCloud, it only talks to FastMail's servers - at least for now.

Re: FastMail's Email Search Architecture

#25
post #3

If you want Xapian search on a local maildir, I highly recommend notmuch[1]. Adding new mail and updating the index can take noticable time, but searching is super fast, it allows easy custom tagging, and search results are better than gmail in my experience. I use it from the emacs notmuch mode. [1] http://notmuchmail.org/

Similarly I use mairix

http://www.rpcurnow.force9.co.uk/mairix/

Re: FastMail's Email Search Architecture

#26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm always a bit jealous when I see this setup (or mu). But I don't use emacs, and that seems to lead to subpar support and crazy hacks to get something up and working, unfortunately.

But I don't use emacs, Me neither, but mutt-kz had built-in support for notmuch. Not the hacky kind that calls 'notmuch', but it actually links against libnotmuch. http://kzak.redcrew.org/doku.php?id=mutt:start

I can second this recommendation. I've used mutt-kz for about two years now as my primary email interface and it's been rock solid.

I came from regular mutt so there was no learning curve, but that shouldn't be too bad either once you get used to those keybindings.

Re: FastMail's Email Search Architecture

#27
post #3

If you want Xapian search on a local maildir, I highly recommend notmuch[1]. Adding new mail and updating the index can take noticable time, but searching is super fast, it allows easy custom tagging, and search results are better than gmail in my experience. I use it from the emacs notmuch mode. [1] http://notmuchmail.org/

I'm always a bit jealous when I see this setup (or mu). But I don't use emacs, and that seems to lead to subpar support and crazy hacks to get something up and working, unfortunately.

There's also Alot, which is a Python frontend for notmuch. I love it, and use it daily. https://github.com/pazz/alot

Re: FastMail's Email Search Architecture

#28
post #23

Apache Solr is best suited for such applications. AOL Mail uses Solr to power search for all users [0]. [0] - http://lucidworks.com/blog/podcast-solr-at-scale-at-aol/

That advice is a bit dated honestly, Solr is fine but the current "best practice" if you will is to use ElasticSearch.

Not saying you can't do it with Solr or that Solr doesn't scale, it does. You'll just have an easier and more fun time doing it with ES.

Couple of related/examples:

http://highscalability.com/blog/2014/1/6/how-hipchat-stores-...

http://exploringelasticsearch.com/github_interview.html

Re: FastMail's Email Search Architecture

#30

Fastmail is a great service, however iCloud completely fails with their web client. I have >50k emails, probably closer to 100k and searching simply times out. Never has worked for me. It's sad, really...

Sorry, I don't understand what you mean. iCloud is a service, and FastMail's web client doesn't talk to iCloud, it only talks to FastMail's servers - at least for now.

I was contrasting the iCloud interface to FastMail, an implication they were connected wasn't intended.
Post reply on HN