gnus: Startup Files
1.6 Startup Files
=================
Most common Unix news readers use a shared startup file called
‘.newsrc’. This file contains all the information about what groups are
subscribed, and which articles in these groups have been read.
Things got a bit more complicated with GNUS. In addition to keeping
the ‘.newsrc’ file updated, it also used a file called ‘.newsrc.el’ for
storing all the information that didn’t fit into the ‘.newsrc’ file.
(Actually, it also duplicated everything in the ‘.newsrc’ file.) GNUS
would read whichever one of these files was the most recently saved,
which enabled people to swap between GNUS and other newsreaders.
That was kinda silly, so Gnus went one better: In addition to the
‘.newsrc’ and ‘.newsrc.el’ files, Gnus also has a file called
‘.newsrc.eld’. It will read whichever of these files that are most
recent, but it will never write a ‘.newsrc.el’ file. You should never
delete the ‘.newsrc.eld’ file—it contains much information not stored in
the ‘.newsrc’ file.
You can turn off writing the ‘.newsrc’ file by setting
‘gnus-save-newsrc-file’ to ‘nil’, which means you can delete the file
and save some space, as well as exiting from Gnus faster. However, this
will make it impossible to use other newsreaders than Gnus. But hey,
who would want to, right? Similarly, setting ‘gnus-read-newsrc-file’ to
‘nil’ makes Gnus ignore the ‘.newsrc’ file and any ‘.newsrc-SERVER’
files, which can be convenient if you use a different news reader
occasionally, and you want to read a different subset of the available
groups with that news reader.
If ‘gnus-save-killed-list’ (default ‘t’) is ‘nil’, Gnus will not save
the list of killed groups to the startup file. This will save both time
(when starting and quitting) and space (on disk). It will also mean
that Gnus has no record of what groups are new or old, so the automatic
new groups subscription methods become meaningless. You should always
set ‘gnus-check-new-newsgroups’ to ‘nil’ or ‘ask-server’ if you set this
variable to ‘nil’ (
New Groups). This variable can also be a
regular expression. If that’s the case, remove all groups that do not
match this regexp before saving. This can be useful in certain obscure
situations that involve several servers where not all servers support
‘ask-server’.
The ‘gnus-startup-file’ variable says where the startup files are.
The default value is ‘~/.newsrc’, with the Gnus (El Dingo) startup file
being whatever that one is, with a ‘.eld’ appended. If you want to keep
multiple numbered backups of this file, set ‘gnus-backup-startup-file’.
It respects the same values as the ‘version-control’ variable.
‘gnus-save-newsrc-hook’ is called before saving any of the newsrc
files, while ‘gnus-save-quick-newsrc-hook’ is called just before saving
the ‘.newsrc.eld’ file, and ‘gnus-save-standard-newsrc-hook’ is called
just before saving the ‘.newsrc’ file. The latter two are commonly used
to turn version control on or off. Version control is on by default
when saving the startup files. If you want to turn backup creation off,
say something like:
(defun turn-off-backup ()
(set (make-local-variable 'backup-inhibited) t))
(add-hook 'gnus-save-quick-newsrc-hook 'turn-off-backup)
(add-hook 'gnus-save-standard-newsrc-hook 'turn-off-backup)
When Gnus starts, it will read the ‘gnus-site-init-file’
(‘.../site-lisp/gnus-init’ by default) and ‘gnus-init-file’ (‘~/.gnus’
by default) files. These are normal Emacs Lisp files and can be used to
avoid cluttering your ‘~/.emacs’ and ‘site-init’ files with Gnus stuff.
Gnus will also check for files with the same names as these, but with
‘.elc’ and ‘.el’ suffixes. In other words, if you have set
‘gnus-init-file’ to ‘~/.gnus’, it will look for ‘~/.gnus.elc’,
‘~/.gnus.el’, and finally ‘~/.gnus’ (in this order). If Emacs was
invoked with the ‘-q’ or ‘--no-init-file’ options (Initial
Options (emacs)Initial Options.), Gnus doesn’t read ‘gnus-init-file’.
Info Catalog
gnus: Changing Servers
gnus: Starting Up
gnus: Auto Save