gnus: Agent and flags
6.9.8 Agent and flags
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The Agent works with any Gnus back end including those, such as nnimap,
that store flags (read, ticked, etc.) on the server. Sadly, the Agent
does not actually know which backends keep their flags in the backend
server rather than in ‘.newsrc’. This means that the Agent, while
unplugged or disconnected, will always record all changes to the flags
in its own files.
When you plug back in, Gnus will then check to see if you have any
changed any flags and ask if you wish to synchronize these with the
server. This behavior is customizable by
‘gnus-agent-synchronize-flags’.
If ‘gnus-agent-synchronize-flags’ is ‘nil’, the Agent will never
automatically synchronize flags. If it is ‘ask’, which is the default,
the Agent will check if you made any changes and if so ask if you wish
to synchronize these when you re-connect. If it has any other value,
all flags will be synchronized automatically.
If you do not wish to synchronize flags automatically when you
re-connect, you can do it manually with the
‘gnus-agent-synchronize-flags’ command that is bound to ‘J Y’ in the
group buffer.
Technical note: the synchronization algorithm does not work by
“pushing” all local flags to the server, but rather by incrementally
updated the server view of flags by changing only those flags that were
changed by the user. Thus, if you set one flag on an article, quit the
group then re-select the group and remove the flag; the flag will be set
and removed from the server when you “synchronize”. The queued flag
operations can be found in the per-server ‘flags’ file in the Agent
directory. It’s emptied when you synchronize flags.
Info Catalog
gnus: Agent Regeneration
gnus: Gnus Unplugged
gnus: Agent and IMAP