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* (Yet another stab at) Sharing ~/.newsrc.eld among multiple machines
@ 2003-11-06 20:03 Steven E. Harris
  2003-11-06 22:24 ` (Yet another stab at) Sharing ~/.newsrc.eld among multiple Simon Josefsson
  2003-11-06 23:07 ` Kevin Greiner
  0 siblings, 2 replies; 7+ messages in thread
From: Steven E. Harris @ 2003-11-06 20:03 UTC (permalink / raw)


For the first time in a long time, I can now read the same news server
from home and work. That means that I should be able to rsync
.newsrc.eld and a bunch of score files around so that I can, say, read
mail and news at work, continue at home over the weekend, and pick up
again at work with consistent state along the way. I should be able
to, but the agent gets in the way.

Along with a primary news server, I read IMAP from three different
hosts. At home, I just connect to these hosts directly, optionally
with STARTTLS. At work, though, I have to reach these servers through
SSH port forwarding to get through our firewall. The "server names"
are identical in each case; it's the connection details that differ.¹

My long-time solution to this difference is to split my .gnus file
into a shared .gnus and a local .gnus-local.el, the latter included by
the former. Any changes to .gnus apply regardless of
location. Site-specific details (such as my three nnimap secondary
select methods) go into .gnus-local.el. Again, all of this would work
fine, except for the agent.

My three nnimap groups are agentized. This forces the full select
method definition of each into .newsrc.eld in the
gnus-agent-covered-methods variable. If I use Gnus all week at work
and try to take my .newsrc.eld home for the weekend, my .gnus-local.el
at home will conflict with the gnus-agent-covered-methods variable
stored in .newsrc.eld. (The agent seems to use a deep comparison to
see if a given select method is agentized; all select method
parameters must match, rather than just the name.) I'll have to
re-agentize these groups, and the gnus-agent-covered-methods variable
will continue to grow in my .newsrc.eld file.

Why can't we just store, say, "nnimap+speakeasy" and "nnimap+panix" in
.newsrc.eld, rather than cramming the full duplicated select method
definitions in there? As previous threads mentioned², this duplication
is dangerous, as the variables are also defined in the .gnus file. For
my scenario, the duplication causes conflicts.

I want to be able to refer to these servers by the minimal common
name. They are going to be nnimap groups at home and work, and I'll
call them "speakeasy" or "panix" regardless of where I am. Anything
beyond that, though, becomes a site-specific detail.

Has there been any progress since Gnus v5.10.2 that would help me
overcome this conflict? If not, perhaps I can help make my Gnus dream
come true.


Footnotes: 
¹ ;; work
  (setq gnus-secondary-select-methods
      '((nnimap "panix"
                (nnimap-address "localhost")
                (nnimap-server-port 1430)
                (nnimap-list-pattern ("INBOX" "INBOX.*")))

  ;; home
  (setq gnus-secondary-select-methods
      '((nnimap "panix"
                (nnimap-address "mail.panix.com")
                ;; Skip imtest and gsasl.
                (nnimap-stream starttls)
                (nnimap-list-pattern ("INBOX" "INBOX.*")))

² http://groups.google.com/groups?threadm=87he5nzjnb.fsf%40goldfish.local

-- 
Steven E. Harris        :: seh@panix.com



^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 7+ messages in thread
end of thread, other threads:[~2003-11-07  3:22 UTC | newest]

Thread overview: 7+ messages (download: mbox.gz / follow: Atom feed)
-- links below jump to the message on this page --
2003-11-06 20:03 (Yet another stab at) Sharing ~/.newsrc.eld among multiple machines Steven E. Harris
2003-11-06 22:24 ` (Yet another stab at) Sharing ~/.newsrc.eld among multiple Simon Josefsson
2003-11-06 22:43   ` Steven E. Harris
2003-11-06 23:49     ` Simon Josefsson
2003-11-06 23:07 ` Kevin Greiner
2003-11-07  1:22   ` Steven E. Harris
2003-11-07  3:22     ` Kevin Greiner

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