Re: check mtime of newsrc.eld before saving it

[Ted Zlatanov <tzz@lifelogs.com>]

On Tue, 27 Jan 2015 12:40:40 +1100 Lars Ingebrigtsen <larsi@gnus.org> wrote: 

LI> Ted Zlatanov <tzz@lifelogs.com> writes:
>> I sometimes update my newsrc.eld in a directory shared between multiple
>> machines.  I wanted a way to stop Gnus from overwriting the updated
>> file.

>> +(defcustom gnus-save-newsrc-file-check-timestamp nil
>> +  "Check the modification time of the newsrc.eld file before saving it.

LI> I like it, but I don't think we really need this variable.  Instead the
LI> checking should always be on

OK, I can make that change.  But then I need...

>> +                (error "Couldn't save %s because it was updated" checkfile))))

LI> this should be a `y-or-n-p' instead, I think.  That would make Gnus'
LI> behaviour here be pretty consistent with how Emacs otherwise behaves
LI> when writing data to files.

...a way to merge the on-disk newsrc.eld with the current one, because
currently aborting is the only way to avoid overwriting either side's
marks.

Something that walks all the groups and merges each entry would be
ideal; if the time of last group exit was recorded somewhere in the
marks, then this would be simply a timestamp compare.  Otherwise we may
have to prompt the user for any groups with different marks.  Could the
newsrc.eld format be modified to record this?

This is kind of related to the gnus-sync thing.

Ted