Re: nnimap problem solved by removing .agentview and .overview

["Steven E. Harris" <seh@panix.com>]

Simon Josefsson <jas@extundo.com> writes:

> Gnus is supposed the invoke these SEARCH requests every time, upon
> entering the group, to sync all flags, and its list of which articles
> exists.  However, if you only press 'g' and then ask the agent to
> fetch articles, the group might not have been entered, so nnimap
> haven't had any chance of updating the information.

I never ask the agent to download articles explicitly other than by
way of actually selecting an article, which triggers
gnus-select-article-hook to call gnus-agent-fetch-selected-article.

> However, if entering and exiting a group when plugged in doesn't
> notice all articles, there is a bug.

This happens to me pretty much every day.

> I suspect the problem lies in the agent rather than in nnimap, or
> (perhaps even more likely) in interaction between nnimap and the
> agent.

Yes, I never saw this problem with nnimap itself, only with the agent
in the mix.

> Is there a simple recipe for reproducing this?

Here's my workflow:

o At work, start Gnus in plugged mode. Read e-mail all day.

o At the end of the day, by way of an rsync-dependent script, send all
  my changed score files, ~/.newsrc, and ~/.newsrc.eld files to my
  ISP's disk.
  Note that I don't sync the agent directories. My understanding is
  that those are for local cache management. As I want to have a
  different cache at home, I leave it to Gnus to figure out the
  appropriate caching operations.

o At home, again using this rsync script, download updates to my score
  files, ~/.newsrc, and ~/.newsrc.eld.

o Start Gnus in plugged mode. New IMAP messages are visible, but the
  summary buffer in nnimap groups does not manifest messages that
  arrived while I was reading at work.

o Reversing the process, send changed files to my ISP's disk.

o Get to work again the next day, download changed files from my ISP's
  disk.

o Start Gnus in plugged mode. New IMAP messages are visible, but no
  messages that arrived while I was reading at home are visible.


Running gnus-agent-expire-group coaxes Gnus into re-syncing the
message list, though sometimes my marks on newly-discovered messages
get lost in the process.

> I'd even take another step back: Exactly what problem is in the
> design of agent make it incompatible with nnimap?  I believe the
> designs are pretty compatible.

Yes, that's a good question.

> Not many people are working on nnimap.el, nor improving the generic
> backend interface, these days, it seems...

Understood. If the problem lies with the agent, then calling nnimap
"done enough" would be just fine.

-- 
Steven E. Harris