error: no database path specified

[danielkrajnik]

Trying to run astroid for the first time. Run astroid --new-config and then astroid and got:

[2023-06-03 22:43:42.436051] [0x00007f2f87975580] [info]    welcome to astroid! - 0.16.0
[2023-06-03 22:43:42.461052] [0x00007f2f87975580] [debug]   HOME: /home/<USERNAME>
[2023-06-03 22:43:42.461067] [0x00007f2f87975580] [info]    cf: loading: "/home/<USERNAME>/.config/astroid/config"
[2023-06-03 22:43:42.461343] [0x00007f2f87975580] [info]    cf: version: 11
[2023-06-03 22:43:42.461422] [0x00007f2f87975580] [debug]   cf: check config..
[2023-06-03 22:43:42.461433] [0x00007f2f87975580] [warning] cf: missing values in config have been updated with defaults (old version: 11, new: 11)
[22:43:42] [0x00007f2f87975580] [M] [debug] log: stdout: yes
[22:43:42] [0x00007f2f87975580] [M] [info] log: level: info
[22:43:42] [0x00007f2f87975580] [M] [info] date: init.
[22:43:42] [0x00007f2f87975580] [M] [error] db: failed to open database, please check the manual if everything is set up correctly: db: error: no database path specified
zsh: segmentation fault (core dumped)  astroid

My notmuch database is in ~/mail/.notmuch. Can't find any way to point to it though.

[danielkrajnik]

It turns out that "database.path" is set correctly (it shows when running notmuch config list), but isn't set in .notmuch-config.
Not sure why? I've run once notmuch set --database command, but why would it move everything outside of this file?

[danielkrajnik]

It looks like it's not just database path. All other values set with notmuch setup except for primary email are not in .notmuch-config and trip arsoid...

[danielkrajnik]

Setting these values finally made astroid happy:

[database]
path=<YOUR-PATH>
[search]
exclude_tags=<YOUR-SWORD>
[maildir]
synchronize_flags=<YOUR-SPIRIT>

[gnusupport]

This should be in the documentation because I could not start without finding this.

[jorsn]

@gnusupport I suspect that astroid simply does not look for the notmuch config in the right place. What is your value of astroid.notmuch_config in the astroid configuration? Your true notmuch config file is probably ~/.config/notmuch/default/config or something similar, not ~/.notmuch-config. If the env variable NOTMUCH_CONFIG is unset, astroid defaults to the latter, which is in your config unrelated to notmuch, if my hypothesis is true. Then, the right fix would not to duplicate the notmuch config in a place that notmuch doesn't read, but to point astroid to the right notmuch config, i.e., set astroid.notmuch_config appropriately. This we should perhaps document and/or have a better default location.