Re: I can haz cloud idea

[Lars Ingebrigtsen <larsi@gnus.org>]

I've been gallivanting around a bit, but I've been thinking a bit more
about the cloud thing.

So the original idea would be to have a bundle of files distributed via
IMAP, plus diffs to avoid down/uploading so much stuff.  When stuff
changes in the bundle, Gnus updates the appropriate files.

But then I thought:  This is kinda like a virtual file system.  This
could be implemented along similar lines like Emacs tar support.  That
is: We have an in-memory file system "mounted" at (say) ~/.gnus-cloud,
and whenever you edit ~/.gnus-cloud/News/all.SCORE, you're really just
editing the bundle kept in-memory.  This means that if you start Gnus
with `M-x gnus-cloud', no files would need to be written to local disk.

So you'd typically have a "real" Gnus somewhere that writes stuff out to
real files.  All (or most) of your other Gnus instances would just rely
on the data from the IMAP server.  No local files!

Doesn't that have a clean feeling?

But then, today, I had another thought.

Gnus setup consists of the .newsrc.eld file, and then a bunch of other
files, like ~/.signature and ~/News/*.SCORE.  But...  why?

Why rely on other files for the significant stuff?  We control the
vertical and the horizontal, so why not just rethink this?

The score files, for instance, would more naturally be a structure
stored in .newsrc.eld.  Finding out what score files that match what
group is pretty gross code-wise.  Why not just make that into a nice
alist and put it in the .newsrc.eld file?

The same goes for other obvious stuff like ~/.signature.

Just put it all in .newsrc.eld, and then distribute that via IMAP.

Admittedly, I've had a few Italian beers, but it all seems to make sense
if you do it that way.

-- 
(domestic pets only, the antidote for overdose, milk.)
  http://lars.ingebrigtsen.no  *  Sent from my Rome