mail source frustrations

mail source frustrations

[Adrian Kubala]

I'm trying to set up a simple system to feed gnus mail via procmail. In the
face of my complete lack of success, I must conclude either I'm stupid, or the
software is -- and, having known myself for longer than the software, it's easy
to give me the benefit of the doubt.

I wish I could report this as a bug, but since the docs leave me in the dark
on exactly how any of this mail-source stuff works, I can't tell if it's
really not working to spec, or I'm just doing something wrong, which is the
most frustrating thing.

Here's what I want to do:
- Configure my servers in lisp. How do I get stuff into the server alist?
  Putting a server into secondary-select-method isn't sufficient.
- Configure parameters for my mail groups in lisp. The docs don't mention
  this, expecting me to wade through the gnus interface so it can hide my
  settings in .newsrc.eld. No thanks.
- Have gnus move mail from procmail-generated files into the mail groups.

The last one seems straightforward, as there are at least a dozen answers to
it on the net, but I can't get the one which applies to me (Gnus 5.8.8) to
work:

	(setq gnus-secondary-select-methods '((nnml "")))
	(setq mail-sources '((directory :path "~/gnus/spool" :suffix "")))
	(setq nnml-directory "~/gnus/mail")
	(setq nndraft-directory "~/gnus")
	(setq mail-source-delete-incoming nil)

I have ~/gnus/spool/mail.unsorted to test with. I start gnus. Nothing special
happens, except that the spool file is now empty (despite delete-incoming
being nil). There's no ~/gnus/mail directory, so no clue where my mail went.

I tried several variations on this. Originally I'd wanted an nnfolder setup,
so I had something like this:
	(setq gnus-secondary-select-methods
	      '((nnfolder "mail")
			  ;; email
			  (nnfolder-directory "~/gnus/mail")
			  (nnfolder-get-new-mail t)
			  (nnfolder-inhibit-expiry nil))
		(nnfolder "archive"
			  ;; archived messages of all kinds
			  (nnfolder-directory "~/gnus/archive")
			  (nnfolder-get-new-mail nil)
			  (nnfolder-inhibit-expiry t))))

But that went about the same. When I try creating the groups manually, I
couldn't select them ("Can't select group"). My questions for the doc writers
would be, among others:

- What drives getting the mail from the mail source? How does it know when to
  keep files separate (as is apparently expected to happen here) and when to
  merge them (as the docs imply it does)?
- Why can't I enter some groups? Why can't I edit some servers?
- What, step-by-step, do I have to do to create a new mail group. "G m"
  doesn't seem to be enough, as I then can't select it or do anything
  useful with it.
- If I wanted to let procmail sort some of my mail, and gnus sort some of it,
  how exactly would I go about that?
- Why does gnus have no docs on procmail while procmail has whole pages of
  docs on gnus (albeit out of date)?

I'm sorry if this sounds like bitching. If someone can set me straight, I'll
make it up by posting a useful explanation to my.gnus.org. But I need to get
this !@#$ thing working first.

Thanks,
-Adrian