nnshimbun and No Gnus - all groups downloaded at startup

nnshimbun and No Gnus - all groups downloaded at startup

[Matt Lundin]

Excited by the recent flurry (rather, avalanche) of activity on the
list, I decided to give No Gnus a try. The performance of many backends
has improved dramatically, and I look forward to following future
development. Many thanks, Lars!

I have run into one issue with a third party backend (nnshimbun). When
opening nnshimbun servers at startup, No Gnus attempts to download and
process all the groups for each server, regardless of whether I have
subscribed to the groups or not. For instance, when opening the New York
Times shimbun server, gnus attempts to download all 60+ rss feeds/groups
defined in sb-nytimes.el (part of emacs-w3m), populating my
nnshimbun-directory with a multitude of .marks and .overview files, even
though I have subscribed only to two sb-nytimes groups.

Stable Gnus, by contrast, downloads only the feeds for the groups to
which I am subscribed.

When running No Gnus, my *Messages* buffer indicates that Gnus is
attempting to read/download an active file for the nnshimbun server:

        Reading active file from nytimes via nnshimbun...

This message is not present when running stable Gnus.

I realize that nnshimbun is not an official Gnus backend, so forgive any
impertinence in posing this question on the Gnus list. I do so, however,
in case anyone can provide any ideas as to why this behavior might
changed with recent updates to No Gnus or any tips about settings I
could/should change.

(I'd be happy to follow up with an email the emacs-w3m list, if
necessary.)

Thanks in advance for your help.
Best,
Matt Lundin

Re: nnshimbun and No Gnus - all groups downloaded at startup

[Katsumi Yamaoka]

Matt Lundin wrote:
> I have run into one issue with a third party backend (nnshimbun). When
> opening nnshimbun servers at startup, No Gnus attempts to download and
> process all the groups for each server, regardless of whether I have
> subscribed to the groups or not.

I confirmed the most recent No Gnus runs `gnus-request-scan' for
all groups[1] in a back end, of which the group level of one of
groups is less than or equal to the specified level (default 5),
no matter what the value of the `gnus-read-active-file' variable
is.  This seems to happen for any back end, not only nnshimbun,
is a bug, and should be fixed.  I have no idea now, but would
like to investigate it.  I also confirmed it happens only with
September No Gnus.

Why I haven't noticed this is that I live in this way:

In <b4mpqwrl311.fsf@jpl.org> Katsumi Yamaoka wrote:
> I use the group level 1, 2 and 3 for the mail groups, the interesting
> nntp groups, and the other nntp groups respectively.  Furthermore,
> I use the level 4 for some foreign groups that take time to open.
> I usually start Gnus as `C-u 2 M-x gnus', i.e., I usually read only
> the mail groups and some news groups.  But when I want to read one
> of the level 4 groups, I used to type `l' in the group buffer and
> find it.

In <b4m8w3efadx.fsf@jpl.org> Katsumi Yamaoka wrote:
> `l' shows inactive groups with `*' (not a number) as the number of
> articles.  And I was able to update only some groups one by one
> using `M-g' (gnus-group-get-new-news-this-group).

[1] `gnus-request-scan' is called with the 1st arg `group' nil.

Re: nnshimbun and No Gnus - all groups downloaded at startup

[Katsumi Yamaoka]

Katsumi Yamaoka wrote:
> Matt Lundin wrote:
>> I have run into one issue with a third party backend (nnshimbun). When
>> opening nnshimbun servers at startup, No Gnus attempts to download and
>> process all the groups for each server, regardless of whether I have
>> subscribed to the groups or not.

> I confirmed the most recent No Gnus runs `gnus-request-scan' for
> all groups[1] in a back end, of which the group level of one of
> groups is less than or equal to the specified level (default 5),
> no matter what the value of the `gnus-read-active-file' variable
> is.  This seems to happen for any back end, not only nnshimbun,
> is a bug, and should be fixed.  I have no idea now, but would
> like to investigate it.  I also confirmed it happens only with
> September No Gnus.

I've made `gnus-read-active-for-groups' check only subscribed
groups.  Could you try the latest git repo?

Re: nnshimbun and No Gnus - all groups downloaded at startup

[Matt Lundin]

Katsumi Yamaoka <yamaoka@jpl.org> writes:

> Katsumi Yamaoka wrote:
>> Matt Lundin wrote:
>>> I have run into one issue with a third party backend (nnshimbun). When
>>> opening nnshimbun servers at startup, No Gnus attempts to download and
>>> process all the groups for each server, regardless of whether I have
>>> subscribed to the groups or not.
>
>> I confirmed the most recent No Gnus runs `gnus-request-scan' for
>> all groups[1] in a back end, of which the group level of one of
>> groups is less than or equal to the specified level (default 5),
>> no matter what the value of the `gnus-read-active-file' variable
>> is.  This seems to happen for any back end, not only nnshimbun,
>> is a bug, and should be fixed.  I have no idea now, but would
>> like to investigate it.  I also confirmed it happens only with
>> September No Gnus.
>
> I've made `gnus-read-active-for-groups' check only subscribed
> groups.  Could you try the latest git repo?

It works fine now. Many thanks for the quick fix!

- Matt