deleting last article in nnmh?

deleting last article in nnmh?

[gdt]

I'm switching from mixed MH-E/Gnus with nnmh to Gnus with nnimap, and
migrating mail.

I have an nnmh select method and a lot of groups, and can do most
operations fine.

When I enter a group nnmh:foo, and then do

  M P a      # set process mark on all articles
  B m   nnimap+my.domain:lists.foo

the last article is not moved.   Trying to B m just that article
fails, and G DEL also won't delete it.  (I've done B c and the rm -rf
of the directory.)

In an nnmh group with one article, I did M P a (first line) and B m
nnimap+my.domain:lists.amanda (already existing) and got:

Marked 1 articles
Moving to nnimap+ir.bbn.com:lists.amanda: (63124)...
Group lists.amanda selected
Couldn't Move article 63124: Group lists.amanda selected

setting debug-on-error didn't result in a backtrace


(I've also seen the bulk move get hung up partway through, and
restarted it, but I don't think that's related.)

-- 
	Greg Troxel <gdt@work.lexort.com>

Re: deleting last article in nnmh?

[David Z Maze]

gdt@work.lexort.com writes:

> I have an nnmh select method and a lot of groups, and can do most
> operations fine.
>
> When I enter a group nnmh:foo, and then do
>
>   M P a      # set process mark on all articles
>   B m   nnimap+my.domain:lists.foo
>
> the last article is not moved.   Trying to B m just that article
> fails, and G DEL also won't delete it.  (I've done B c and the rm -rf
> of the directory.)

This is a "feature" of nnmh.  In Gnus's newsreaderly view of the
world, article numbers need to be monotonically increasing, but in
nnmh the only state is the article numbers themselves.  I can't find a
mention of it in the manual, though.  nnmh.el defines a function
nnmh-deletable-article-p which is called from a couple of places with
a comment "We can never delete the last article in the group"; you
could conceivably set

;; Don't even think about setting this variable.  It does not exist.
;; Forget about it.  Uh-huh.  Nope.  Nobody here.  It's only bound
;; dynamically by certain functions in nndraft.
(defvar nnmh-allow-delete-final nil)

to t.

Unless you're actively using another MH-based mail client (MH-E,
scan/show/...) you might consider using nnml as a mail backend instead
of nnmh.  It has the same one-file-per-message format ("you can still
grep your mail") with an added .overview file that contains the
subjects and senders of each message, which makes scanning a folder a
lot faster.

  --dzm

Re: deleting last article in nnmh?

[gdt]

David Z Maze <dmaze@MIT.EDU> writes:

> This is a "feature" of nnmh.  In Gnus's newsreaderly view of the
> world, article numbers need to be monotonically increasing, but in
> nnmh the only state is the article numbers themselves.  I can't find a
> mention of it in the manual, though.  nnmh.el defines a function
> nnmh-deletable-article-p which is called from a couple of places with
> a comment "We can never delete the last article in the group"; you
> could conceivably set
>
> ;; Don't even think about setting this variable.  It does not exist.
> ;; Forget about it.  Uh-huh.  Nope.  Nobody here.  It's only bound
> ;; dynamically by certain functions in nndraft.
> (defvar nnmh-allow-delete-final nil)
>
> to t.
>
> Unless you're actively using another MH-based mail client (MH-E,
> scan/show/...) you might consider using nnml as a mail backend instead
> of nnmh.  It has the same one-file-per-message format ("you can still
> grep your mail") with an added .overview file that contains the
> subjects and senders of each message, which makes scanning a folder a
> lot faster.

I'll try setting that variable, since all I'm trying to do is use gnus
to move my old mail from existing nnmh mailboxes into IMAP, preserving
the ticked flag.

(I did used to use MH-E, and I used procmail to deliver into nnmh - I
don't use gnus for splitting, wanting my mail presplit, especially now
that I use IMAP and other clients (including a Palm TX) to look at
INBOX.

Thanks very much for the hint.

-- 
	Greg Troxel <gdt@work.lexort.com>