Re: how to kill a virtual group

[Eric Abrahamsen <eric@ericabrahamsen.net>]

Emanuel Berg <moasenwood@zoho.eu> writes:

> Eric Abrahamsen wrote:
>
>> Right, I have read the docstring! And it is necessary to
>> keep servers defined in gnus.el separate from servers
>> defined in-Gnus, via the *Server* buffer.
>
> Okay, why?

Because the two kinds of server need to be treated separately. Gnus is
not allowed to overwrite your gnus.el file, so if you want to make a
change to a server defined there, Gnus can't do it via the *Server*
buffer: you have to shut Gnus down, edit gnus.el, and restart.
Conversely, servers defined via the *Server* buffer are saved in
.newsrc.eld, which only Gnus is supposed to touch, so edits should be
made via the *Server* buffer. Gnus needs to know which servers are which.

>> But my `gnus-server-alist' has only ever held the "archive"
>> server, nothing else, so that's obviously not right.
>> For some reason, servers created in the *Server* buffer
>> aren't added to `gnus-server-alist'.
>
> Same here, just the archive.
>
> I didn't know on could create servers in the *Server* buffer,
> even ... when and why do you do that?

Mostly by creating groups on the fly: nndoc groups to import old mail,
nnvirtual groups to combine other groups, nnselect groups for
searching... All of these will create their own server to hold them, and
if the group is persistent the server should be added to
`gnus-server-alist', and later saved in .newsrc.eld.

> Maybe remove the variable then, and create a new to just hold
> the archive stuff, if that isn't available in some
> gnus-archive-* already, and change references
> to that?

No, I think the main problem is that servers created in-Gnus are not
added to `gnus-server-alist'. Gnus has multiple layers of code for
finding servers, so often it works out okay, but in this case it isn't.