message about errors in .newsrc.eld on startup

message about errors in .newsrc.eld on startup

[Steinar Bang]

When I start up Gnus, I get the error message
	Error in /home/sb/.newsrc.eld; continue? (yes or no)

When I type "yes" and press RET, everything seems to work normally.
But the message is annoying.  Does anyone have a good trick to trace
it down and fix it manually?

Perhaps we need a .newsrc.eld well formedness/syntax checker?

Thanx!


- Steinar

Re: message about errors in .newsrc.eld on startup

[Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen]

Steinar Bang <sb@dod.no> writes:

> When I start up Gnus, I get the error message
> 	Error in /home/sb/.newsrc.eld; continue? (yes or no)
>
> When I type "yes" and press RET, everything seems to work normally.
> But the message is annoying.  Does anyone have a good trick to trace
> it down and fix it manually?
>
> Perhaps we need a .newsrc.eld well formedness/syntax checker?

Well, that's what you're seeing, basically.  :-)

These errors are usually the result of moving between different
X/Emacs versions that use different read syntaxaei.  The cruft is
usually at the end of the .newsrc.eld file.

-- 
(domestic pets only, the antidote for overdose, milk.)
   larsi@gnus.org * Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen

Re: message about errors in .newsrc.eld on startup

[Steinar Bang]

>>>>> Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen <larsi@gnus.org>:

> Steinar Bang <sb@dod.no> writes:

>> Perhaps we need a .newsrc.eld well formedness/syntax checker?

> Well, that's what you're seeing, basically.  :-)

I was thinking of one that would write the line number of the syntax
error. 

> These errors are usually the result of moving between different
> X/Emacs versions that use different read syntaxaei.  The cruft is
> usually at the end of the .newsrc.eld file.

This happened when Gnus in GNU Emacs was reading a .newsrc.eld written
by XEmacs.  I was about to do a diff between .newsrc.eld saved by
XEmacs and GNU Emacs, when I discovered that the problem had gone away
in a CVS update sometime.

Re: message about errors in .newsrc.eld on startup

[Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen]

Steinar Bang <sb@dod.no> writes:

> I was thinking of one that would write the line number of the syntax
> error. 

Gnus loads the file by doing a `load', and gives you an error message
if the `load' fails.  So Gnus has no knowledge about line numbers at
that point.

But I could write a `gnus-load' that evals form by form and errors
with a line number when we get an error.  I've now done that.

-- 
(domestic pets only, the antidote for overdose, milk.)
   larsi@gnus.org * Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen

Re: message about errors in .newsrc.eld on startup

[Simon Josefsson]

Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen <larsi@gnus.org> writes:

> Steinar Bang <sb@dod.no> writes:
>
>> When I start up Gnus, I get the error message
>> 	Error in /home/sb/.newsrc.eld; continue? (yes or no)
>>
>> When I type "yes" and press RET, everything seems to work normally.
>> But the message is annoying.  Does anyone have a good trick to trace
>> it down and fix it manually?
>>
>> Perhaps we need a .newsrc.eld well formedness/syntax checker?
>
> Well, that's what you're seeing, basically.  :-)
>
> These errors are usually the result of moving between different
> X/Emacs versions that use different read syntaxaei.  The cruft is
> usually at the end of the .newsrc.eld file.

I always need to remove the `(setq gnus-format-specs ...)' line when
moving between emacses nowadays, because it contains byte compiled
stuff.  Has this changed?  Can't this be computed during startup
instead?  I can't spot anything in my .emacs related to this.

Re: message about errors in .newsrc.eld on startup

[Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen]

Simon Josefsson <jas@extundo.com> writes:

> I always need to remove the `(setq gnus-format-specs ...)' line when
> moving between emacses nowadays, because it contains byte compiled
> stuff.  Has this changed?  Can't this be computed during startup
> instead?

It's supposed to speed stuff up -- loading the byte compiler on Gnus
startup seems a bit wasteful.

I thought about adding some error handling around the setting of
`gnus-format-specs' in particular, but that's difficult, since it
errors out while `read'-ing the file...  Hm...

-- 
(domestic pets only, the antidote for overdose, milk.)
   larsi@gnus.org * Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen

Re: message about errors in .newsrc.eld on startup

[Kai Großjohann]

Simon Josefsson <jas@extundo.com> writes:

> I always need to remove the `(setq gnus-format-specs ...)' line when
> moving between emacses nowadays, because it contains byte compiled
> stuff.

I don't have that line in .newsrc.eld anymore.  There was some
discussion previously where people told me that Gns now computes the
byte-code when it starts up.  Or something.
-- 
Ambibibentists unite!

Re: message about errors in .newsrc.eld on startup

[Jesper Harder]

kai.grossjohann@uni-duisburg.de (Kai Großjohann) writes:

> Simon Josefsson <jas@extundo.com> writes:
>
>> I always need to remove the `(setq gnus-format-specs ...)' line when
>> moving between emacses nowadays, because it contains byte compiled
>> stuff.
>
> I don't have that line in .newsrc.eld anymore.  There was some
> discussion previously where people told me that Gns now computes the
> byte-code when it starts up.

I think I was the one claiming that.  Don't believe it -- it's not
true :-)  I mixed up the global and buffer-local value of
`gnus-summary-line-format-spec'.

*But* byte-compiling the format-spec seems to have a very insignificant
influence on performance.  I can't measure any difference in the total
time, and timing the difference between 

  (with-temp-buffer
    (dotimes (i 100000)
      (eval gnus-summary-line-format-spec)))

with and without byte-compiling suggests that the difference for the
total time should be less than 1% ... at least for my summary-line.