Bare minimum for batch fetching

Bare minimum for batch fetching

[Harry Putnam]

Experimenting with some different setups for downloading news.
I tried to setup the barest command line for batch fetching like this:

  emacs -batch -q -no-site-file  -l ~/.gnus.el -f gnus-agent-batch 

Where my real file is .gnus and the .gnus.el loaded is just a little
code to tell gnus where its load files are and say (gnus-agentize)

cat .gnus.el
   (add-to-list 'load-path  "/usr/local/gnus/lisp")
   (gnus-agentize)

This is to avoid loading all kinds of requires and other guff found in
site-start.el, .gnus or .emacs

When I run that command, gnus doesn't know about ~/.authinfo found in
~/  and wants to prompt for username and password 
(an authenticating nntpserver), then comes lots of other stuff it
doesn't know about:

   news > emacs -batch -q -no-site-file  -l ~/.gnus.el -f gnus-agent-batch       
   Reading /usr/local/news/.newsrc.eld...
   Reading active file from news via nntp...
   NNTP (news) user name: xxxxxx
   NNTP (reader@news) password: xxxxxx

   NNTP (reader@news) password: .NNTP (reader@news) password: ..NNTP
   (reader@news) password: ...NNTP (reader@news) password: ....NNTP
   (reader@news) password: .....NNTP (reader@news) password:
   ......NNTP (reader@news) password: .......NNTP (reader@news)
   password: ........Cannot read partial active file from nntp server.

   Opening nntp server on news...
   Opening nntp server on news...done
   No new newsgroups
   Checking new news...
   Opening nndoc server on gnus-help...
   Opening nndoc server on gnus-help...done
   Opening nndraft server...
   Opening nndraft server...done
   Checking new news...done
(The prompt doesn't come back with out ^c)

And nothing is downloaded.  
Batch fetching works if I load site-start.el .emacs .gnus but I wanted
to avoid loading all that guff and concomitant unexpected problems
from odd things being loaded or not found etc.

I wondered if anyone knows what the bare necessities are to run a
functional batch command?  Maybe load gnus librarires or something?