Re: Group parameters

[Kevin Brubeck Unhammer]

Ian Zimmerman <itz@buug.org> writes:

> I have Gnus installed on 2 computers ("desktop" and "laptop").  I would
> like my groups to have exactly the same parameters in both cases.  It
> doesn't have to be completely automatic, but not completely manual,
> either; that is, I want to avoid doing G c on each group on each
> computer and entering the same things.  The shape of the solution I have
> in mind is that after customizing a group on one computer I execute a
> magic command foo (inside Emacs or otherwise) and the changes propagate
> to the other.  (This is how I handle many other situations, with foo ==
> unison).

I don't know if it's completely transferrable to "G c", since I've never
used that, but I use unison to sync which messages are read and which
groups are subscribed to (I have .emacs and friends in git instead,
since I prefer version history there). I guess my setup would sync "G c"
settings too if they are in newsrc.

my ~/.unison/default.prf:
path=.newsrc
path=.newsrc.eld
path=.Mail
path=.News
ignore=Name temp.*
ignore=Name .*~
ignore=Name *.tmp

my ~/.emacs:
(setq gnus-directory "~/.News")
(setq message-directory "~/.Mail/")

I also run (shell-command "unison --args") in
`gnus-after-exiting-gnus-hook'.

> However, the way Gnus saves the group parameters unfortunately doesn't
> easily allow such solution: it saves them into the newsrc.eld file along
> with, and interspersed with, other data that is clearly instance
> specific, so I cannot just sync the whole file.  I guess I could use the
> gnus-parameters variable and read it from a different file, maybe
> .emacs.  But that still has 2 big disadvantages: 1. I am condemned to
> use plain Lisp to set the parameters instead of Customize, and 2. I
> cannot see a way to export the parameters I have already accumulated so I
> would have to start by translating them manually (for each group).
>
> Presumably 2 can be solved with some personal Lisp code, but 1 would
> remain.  Does anyone have a helpful idea?

If you're planning on being subscribed to the same groups on both
machines, why not take a backup and just try it out?

For me it has worked fairly well. I'm probably syncing some stuff I
shouldn't be syncing (I still don't really know what goes into
~/.newsrc{,.eld}), but I think the most serious problems I've had so far
is occasionally having to mark things as read that I'm sure I already
marked as read on the other computer.


-- 
Kevin Brubeck Unhammer

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