Re: Maildir as simultaneous spool and backend.

[Paul Jarc]

usenet_spam@jfm3.org wrote:
> The Archives directory contains a bunch of sub-Maildirs:

nnmaildir won't scan for sub-maildirs recorsively.  You have to set up
a single directory that contains all your maildirs (or symlinks to
them) at the top level.  Something like this:

mkdir ~/nnmaildir
cd ~/nnmaildir
ln -s ~/Maildir ./
ln -s ~/Maildir/Spam ./
ln -s ~/Maildir/Archives ./
ln -s ~/Maildir/Archives/Commerce ./
ln -s ~/Maildir/Archives/Sent ./
ln -s ~/Maildir/Archives/Ubuntu ./
...

Then use (directory "~/nnmaildir") in your select method.

nnmaildir won't notice or use the hierarchical directory structure,
but if you like hierarchy, you can set up a hierarchical structure in
the Gnus *Group* buffer using topics, no matter how the maildirs are
arranged in the filesystem.

> Is it okay to use one Maildir as both the 'spool' and 'backend' for
> Gnus?

It depends on what you mean by "spool".  It's ok to have outside
programs deliver mail into the maildirs used by nnmaildir.  But if
you're using a maildir as a mail-sources entry, then you can't use
that same maildir as an nnmaildir group.  It's ok to have the
nnmaildir maildirs be subdirectories of the mail-sources maildir, as
long as the full list of nnmaildir maildirs is available in one flat
directory.

> can run more than one mail client without worrying about locking.

I don't recommend running more than one Gnus simultaneously.  Gnus
keeps some state information that isn't stored in the maildirs, or
isn't always kept synchronized with the disk state while it's
running.  Personally, I keep a single Gnus running under screen, and
use screen -x to reconnect to it.


paul