Re: syncing groups/topics arrangement between machines?

[Eric Abrahamsen <eric@ericabrahamsen.net>]

Benjamin Slade <slade@jnanam.net> writes:

> Eric Abrahamsen <eric@ericabrahamsen.net> writes:
>
>> B. Slade wrote:
>>> So in the *Group* buffer, which looks like:
>>>
>>> [ Gnus -- 9198 ]
>>>   [ Emacs ]
>>>        0:imap+mymail:emacs
>>>        7:imap+mymail:sexy_emacs
>>>   [ Work ]
>>>     9000:imap+gmail:urgent_work
>>>   [ misc ]
>>>        89:imap+mymail:origami
>>>      ...
>>> etc., etc.
>>>
>>> I have setup certain topics and arranged groups within them. Is there a
>>> way to sync this between machines? Or is it something which needs to be
>>> recreated by hand on each separate machine?
>>>
>>> It doesn't look like Gnus is saving these settings in .emacs or anything.
>>
>> It's kept in the variable `gnus-topic-alist', which is saved to the file
>> pointed to by `gnus-startup-file', which on this machine points to
>> ~/.emacs.d/.newsrc. That's where gnus stores most of its state,
>> including subscribed groups and message marks.
>>
>> I wouldn't recommend copying this file between machines -- I tried that
>> before, and it didn't work out well. There is a possibility that in the
>> future, Gnus' various state objects will be separated out a little more
>> cleanly. It would be nice to at least have a separation between
>> "settings than can be synced or kept in version control" (which would
>> include group subscriptions and topic arrangements), and "settings that
>> only Gnus should mess with", which I guess would mostly be marks.
>>
>> For the time being, though, at least you can manually copy the setq
>> statement out of newsrc.eld...
>>
>
> Ah, thanks. I see it now.  Yes, I already tried just copying .newsrc and
> .newsrc.eld and that didn't seem to work well. But manually copying the
> setq out of .newsrc.eld seems like a reasonable stopgap solution.

Especially if you're not changing things all the time. Hopefully we'll
have a better solution before too long!