Re: Multiple Gnus running at the same time

[Simon Josefsson]

Stefan Monnier <address@hidden> writes:

> 1 - Let's say I have a Gnus running somewhere for a long time and I forget
>     about it.  Let's call it Gnus-1.
> 2 - Now I launch a new Emacs process, run Gnus in it (call it Gnus-2).
> 3 - Read some email and news in Gnus-2.
> 4 - quit Gnus-2.
> 5 - get hit by a truck and suddenly remember that there was
>     a Gnus-1 running.
> 6 - read email and news with Gnus-1, including using `s' to save the state.
>
> In step 6, things may look pretty odd (at least with imap folders, running
> Emacs-CVS's version of Gnus, when entering a folder I see for example
> entries in the summary for messages which aren't there any more), but at no
> time will Gnus warn me about the fact that some other process has messed
> with my .newsrc.eld file.

Seeing summary entries for messages that aren't there any more suggest
a bug in the agent cache, unless you have disabled it.  FWIW, I'm
seeing this too, but haven't had time to fix it.  You can `rm -rf
~/News/agent/nnimap/SERVER/GROUP' (even when Gnus is running) and
things will be back to normal.

What other things looked odd?  Users are often surprised that the
unread count in the group buffer is inaccurate, but this is actually a
documented behavior (it is an estimate, and can be wrong).  Changing
this would be nice, but may involve some work.  Pressing M-g on the
group fixes things.

> Given the behavior of Emacs in general when saving a file that was modified
> by some external process, I'd expect that in step 6, when saving with `s',
> Gnus should prompt me that the .newsrc.eld file has changed since
> last visited.

Or Gnus should handle when more than one instance is running at the
same time.  Some changes have been made to allow this (moving marks
from .newsrc.eld was the first step), but there is still more to do.

Warning seem like a good solution meanwhile.

I think 's' simply overwrite the .newsrc.eld, the file is not normally
visited, which would trigger Emacs' locking code.