From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Maxim Cournoyer Subject: Re: Browsing Guix (or any) lists with Gmane Date: Wed, 04 Oct 2017 10:04:38 -0400 Message-ID: <87o9pnc8ll.fsf@gmail.com> References: <87fub26clj.fsf@gmail.com> <86h8vh54r0.fsf@gmail.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain Return-path: Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([2001:4830:134:3::10]:60875) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1dzkI3-0004u7-71 for guix-devel@gnu.org; Wed, 04 Oct 2017 10:04:53 -0400 Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1dzkHx-0000iO-AO for guix-devel@gnu.org; Wed, 04 Oct 2017 10:04:47 -0400 Received: from mail-io0-x233.google.com ([2607:f8b0:4001:c06::233]:55372) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtps (TLS1.0:RSA_AES_128_CBC_SHA1:16) (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1dzkHx-0000hr-5K for guix-devel@gnu.org; Wed, 04 Oct 2017 10:04:41 -0400 Received: by mail-io0-x233.google.com with SMTP id z187so10607827ioz.12 for ; Wed, 04 Oct 2017 07:04:41 -0700 (PDT) In-Reply-To: <86h8vh54r0.fsf@gmail.com> (myglc2@gmail.com's message of "Mon, 02 Oct 2017 22:45:07 -0400") List-Id: "Development of GNU Guix and the GNU System distribution." List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: guix-devel-bounces+gcggd-guix-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Sender: "Guix-devel" To: myglc2 Cc: guix-devel myglc2 writes: > On 10/01/2017 at 12:45 Maxim Cournoyer writes: > >> Hello Guix! >> >> For Guix and Gnus (or to become) users out there, I thought I'd share >> this brief post where I explained the process of setting up Gnus and Gmane. >> >> Here are some benefits: >> 1. No need to locally store emails; just view them over NNTP. >> 2. Easily subscribe to some lists in Gnus without having to go through >> the mailman registration. >> 3. Much nicer/convenient UI than the web archives pages; you can post >> follow-ups directly. >> 4. Rich collection of some 30000+ mailing list archives. >> >> The main drawback I've found so far is that server-side search facility >> doesn't seem to be available yet in the new Gmane. Still, it's not too >> long to load the full list of messages ever post to a list and use Emacs >> or Gnus native features to search/sort. > > For several years I used and really liked gmane + gnus. I was shocked > when gmane went offline at my vulnerability to something I had taken for > granted. When gmane came back I found that the loss of search, which I > relied on, was a killer. So I cooked up a workaround (see below). Gmane > has been back, but, IMO, stagnant, for a year. I say stagnant because a > year has gone by with no new news posts and the gmane search is still > not working. NNTP without search is, IMO, TOTALLY lame. This makes me > wonder about the depth of support at gmane and whether it makes sense to > rely on it going forward. > Well, having never been blessed to experience Gmane with a working search, I guess that's why I find it useful nonetheless ;) > My workaround is to download the mail list archives to a local maildir > cache indexed/searched by gnus/notmuch/nnir and read with gnus + > nnmaildir. I use a makefile and mb2md running in the background to do > downloads and trigger indexing. While not elegant, this bit of hackage > frees me from depending on gmane or any other 3rd party and has turned > out to be very reliable. There is really only one hitch - it suffers a > hit each time you (re)open gnus. Apparently gnus has a scaling problem > with large nnmaildir directories. E.g., my 1.9G cache takes ~45 sec to > open on a 3.4 Ghz E3 w/2500 MB/sec Samsung 950PRO SSD. This is not > really a problem in my situation because I run on the server and leave > gnus open all the time. The 1.9 G includes all the guix lists, > emacs-orgmode and geiser-users. But if I followed more or bigger lists > expect the gnus (re)open might become prohibitive. That's an interesting solution, albeit a heavy one :). Thanks for sharing it. On my too small of a SSD, I can't afford to keep gigabytes of mailing list material around just for the occasional search, but I appreciate that this would allow me to be independent from any service such as Gmane. > I could avoid the gnus open hit by reading the cache with the notmuch > gui or indexing/reading the maildir cache with mu/mu4e (which I do for > my email accounts) since then I wouldn't be using gnus at all. I guess I > continue to read these lists with gnus because I got into the habit :-) > > Of course the best thing would be for gmane to restore search and to be > managed by an organization that has dept and staying power. If that > happened I would gladly discard my workaround because gmane was truly a > thing of beauty when search worked. I do hope that this will happen. Reading the last posts on the new Gmane blog, it seems they had big plans. Big plans take time to materialize, so I will show some patience, although it would be nice if they could keep us in the loop more with more frequent posts on their blog. Maxim