On Fri, Feb 14 2003, Frank Schmitt wrote:

> We have been talking in gnu.emacs.gnus about possibilities of reducing
> the amount of diskspace the Incoming* files need. Perhaps there's
> somebody who thinks our ideas are cool and wants to implement them?
>
> Reiner Steib <4.uce.03.r.s@nurfuerspam.de> writes:
[...]
>> (defcustom mail-source-delete-incoming nil
>>   "*If t, delete incoming files after handling.
>> If a positive number, delete files, older than number days.  If set to the
>> symbol `compress', compress the files.  If it is a negative number, compress
>> the files and delete compressed files older than that number of
>> days.  If nil, never delete."

I have write `mail-source-delete-old-incoming' but the function *needs
review* and testing.  I haven't worked with elisp times and
file-attributes before, so my approach might be too complicated or
complete nonsense. ;-) *Feedback welcome*!

With the attached patch, old (>= 3 days) incoming files will be
deleted (after confirmation!).  You may also test the function without
applying the patch[1]:

,----[ C-h f mail-source-delete-old-incoming RET ]
| mail-source-delete-old-incoming is an interactive Lisp function in `...'.
| (mail-source-delete-old-incoming &optional AGE CONFIRM)
| 
| Remove incoming files older than AGE days.
| If CONFIRM is non-nil, ask for confirmation before removing a file.
`----

`M-: (mail-source-delete-old-incoming 7 t) RET'

If you set gnus-verbose to 10 you'll get lots of debugging output.