Re: how do I fcc: a nnml folder? and what is gcc? (gnus 5.3)

[Sudish Joseph <sudish@mindspring.com>]

Raja R Harinath <harinath@cs.umn.edu> writes:
> Steven L Baur <steve@miranova.com> writes:
>> What I do is let Gnus process Fcc's as if they were incoming
>> messages.  Put a line like:
>> Fcc: ~/spool/sent.spool

> It's useful, but not safe.  

(push "~/spool/sent.not-nnml-procmail-suffix" nnmail-spool-file)

in conjunction with a fixed Fcc to the same file will do the job
safely, with or w/o procmail.  This is assuming that headers in
outgoing mail contain sufficient info to let you split them
correctly...this is usually true.

[ good stuff on procmail locking deleted ]

> You can craft a lock aware `message-fcc-handler-function', that uses the
> lockfile(1) program that comes with procmail (Also, such a handler
> function won't cause harm on non spool folders either.)  Only then is it
> safe to Fcc: to a mail spool.

The problem with this is the handler runs synchronously...you do not
want to wait for the procmail process running on the way overloaded
mail hub to deliver to the heavily banged upon spool partition and
relinquish the lock under your (possibly NFS-mounted on the mailhub,
eww) $HOME for every message you send.

An asynch variation is to just hand a copy of the message to a
procmail sub-process from the fcc handler.  However, since this
assumes that the message contains sufficient info in the headers to be
split appropriately, it is entirely equivalent to using "Bcc: me" and
loses for the same reasons; using nnmail-spool-file with a fixed Fcc
is better for the same assumptions.

-Sudish "managed not to rant on true asynch delivery, yay" Joseph

PS: How about renaming it to nnmail-spool-files, like vm-spool-files?
Backward compatibility is easy enough.