Re: automatic Agentizing of servers (was: Summary buffer

[Kevin Greiner <kgreiner@xpediantsolutions.com>]

Simon Josefsson <jas@extundo.com> writes:

> Steinar Bang <sb@dod.no> writes:
>
>>>>>>> Simon Josefsson <jas@extundo.com>:
>>
>>> Uhm, but what would you expect to happen?  The knowledge about which
>>> servers are agentized and which are not is stored in
>>> ~/News/agent/lib/servers, so if you remove that file, Gnus will
>>> auto-agentize your servers.
>>
>> Ah, OK.  Right now it only contains the text nil, and no servers were
>> agentized when I started Gnus.
>>
>> Can I delete everything in the ~/News/agent/ directory, except this
>> file? 
>
> Yes.  You can delete that file too, of course, but then some servers
> will be auto-agentized when you restart.
>
>>> The point of the patch is that auto-agentification only happens once
>>> (unless you modify ~/News/agent/ manually).  I think if a user
>>> remove ~/News/agent she wishes to start afresh, and
>>> auto-agentification is useful in that case.
>>
>>> What do you think?  Can you suggest/describe a better logic that
>>> does what you want?
>>
>> Well, for me auto-agentizing is unexpected behaviour, and I wouldn't
>> wish it ever to occur.

That's probably because the agent was originally intended for offline
use.  Auto-agentizing was added to support client-side caching of
articles (an online performance option).  Personally, I also find it a
little strange but it is a better solution than having the agent, the
cache, AND a client-side cache storing articles on your local hard
drive.

>> I want to agentize servers when I say J a in the *Server* buffer,
>> and only then.
>
> Then don't delete ~/News/agent/lib/servers and remove the
> auto-agentized servers. :-)
>
> I guess this could be customizable.  Cvs update again and customize
> `gnus-agent-auto-agentize-methods' to an empty list.  Then you can
> wipe out ~/News/agent/ and nothing will be auto-agentized.  I have
> added this to the manual:
>
> `gnus-agent-auto-agentize-methods'
>      If you have never used the Agent before (or more technically, if
>      `~/News/agent/lib/servers' does not exist), Gnus will
>      automatically agentize a few servers for you.  This variable
>      control which backends should be auto-agentized.  It is typically
>      only useful to agentize remote backends.  The auto-agentizing has
>      the same effect as running `J a' on the servers (see *note Server
>      Agent Commands::).  If the file exist, you must manage the servers
>      manually by adding or removing them, this variable is only
>      applicable the first time you start Gnus.  The default is `(nntp
>      nnimap)'.

That's inappropriate as gnus-agent-auto-agentize-methods isn't
customizable.  It is also incorrect as, as I mentioned earlier, the
agent has more uses than agentizing remote backends.

Kevin