search: async background refresh with notmuch revision check#134
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klement wants to merge 2 commits into
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search: async background refresh with notmuch revision check#134klement wants to merge 2 commits into
klement wants to merge 2 commits into
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Use dataChanged for updates and beginRemoveRows for removals instead of beginResetModel/endResetModel, so Qt only repaints the affected row rather than rebuilding the entire view. Eliminates UI stalls on large search results (e.g. 3500 threads). Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.6 <[email protected]>
After each mail sync, check the notmuch database revision via 'notmuch count --lastmod' before doing any work. If the revision is unchanged (no mail arrived), skip all refreshes entirely. When mail does arrive, search panels refresh concurrently in the background via QProcess so the UI thread is never blocked. A _refreshing guard prevents duplicate refreshes; a second call while one is in flight is silently dropped and the in-flight refresh still finalises normally. Tab switches are instant since data is already fresh by the time the user looks. Other panel types (thread, compose) stay on the existing lazy-dirty path and refresh synchronously on next focus. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.6 <[email protected]>
laarmen
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Jun 22, 2026
laarmen
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laarmen
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All in all a good idea but the refresh implementation needs to be more thought out to avoid duplication code.
| self.num_threads = len(self.d) | ||
| if contents: | ||
| # Update in place — no need to rebuild self.threads since | ||
| # thread IDs are stable in notmuch and cannot change. |
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suggestion: add a sanity check
assert len(contents) == 1
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| def refresh_async(self, callback=None) -> None: | ||
| """Refresh the model asynchronously using QProcess. | ||
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| If a refresh is already in progress the call is ignored; the in-flight | ||
| process will still invoke *callback* once it finishes.""" | ||
| if self._process is not None: | ||
| # Already running — attach the new callback so the caller still | ||
| # gets notified when the current process finishes. | ||
| if callback is not None: | ||
| self._process.finished.connect(lambda *_: callback()) | ||
| return | ||
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| logger.info("Beginning async search refresh for '%s'", self.q) | ||
| proc = QProcess() | ||
| self._process = proc | ||
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| def on_finished(exit_code: int, _exit_status) -> None: | ||
| self._process = None | ||
| if exit_code == 0: | ||
| output = bytes(proc.readAllStandardOutput()).decode('utf-8') | ||
| try: | ||
| d = json.loads(output) | ||
| self.error_msg = None | ||
| self.beginResetModel() | ||
| self.d = d | ||
| self.threads = {t['thread']: i for i, t in enumerate(d)} | ||
| self.num_threads = len(d) | ||
| self.endResetModel() | ||
| except Exception as e: | ||
| logger.error("Search '%s': error parsing async result: %s", self.q, e) | ||
| else: | ||
| stderr = bytes(proc.readAllStandardError()).decode('utf-8') | ||
| self.error_msg = f"notmuch: {stderr}" | ||
| logger.error("Search '%s': async refresh failed: %s", self.q, stderr) | ||
| if callback is not None: | ||
| callback() | ||
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| proc.finished.connect(on_finished) | ||
| proc.start('notmuch', ['search', '--format=json', self.q]) |
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issue: this duplicates way too much code
Either make this the only way to do a full refresh, or at least factor out all the common code from both sync and async refreshes into helper methods.
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Summary
QProcessso the UI is never blocked during large mailbox scans.Together these changes make periodic sync refreshes nearly invisible to the user in the common case where no new mail arrived.
Test plan