E30DC: Get the latest gnus to improve speed

December 30, 2010 3 minutes read | 447 words by Ruben Berenguel

The gnus logo,
from gnus homepage

Ever since my first post of the emacs 30 Day Challenge, I was warned about gnus slowness. A lot of comments in reddit pointed to this, and suggested using wanderlust or installing a local IMAP server (like dovecot or notmuch) to speed up the IMAP back-end (search, retrieval and processing), while also allowing for offline reading.

The main drawback was keeping it nicely cross-platform. As you may remember, I split my time between two computers: my MacBook and my Acer netbook. Any solution regarding to gnus had to be completely cross-platform in the most seamless way I could. And having a local IMAP server didn’t look like it (although notmuch can be installed through macports).

When I posted my first update on gnus in HackerNews, a kind reader pointed me to the latest development snapshot, as having far, far better IMAP and nnir (the gnus IMAP search system) support. I went to the gnus homepage, and downloaded the latest CVS snapshot. It didn’t work any better, it was in fact worse: nnir search didn’t even work!

The problem? The latest development snapshot is in git, not in CVS! By the way, I have found very hard to know which is the latest version of gnus. I had Gnus 5.13 (if I’m not mistaken) before installing the git version, which is NoGnus 0.11 All gnus alpha versions are labeled NoGnus, to distinguish them from the final versions.

What do you need to install the latest gnus? First, a recent copy of git. At least 1.7.0.4 as suggested by the gnus git page. Don’t ignore this: I had an outdated git in my MacBook and without upgrading it I could not get the package.

Once you have a current git system, fire a terminal window and go to where you want to have your new gnus. I did the following steps in ~/emacs/ Download the repository with

git clone http://git.gnus.org/gnus.git  

```and then you are ready to go with

cd gnus
./configure

Cannot open doc string file “/Applications/Emacs.app/Contents/Resources/etc/DOC-22.1.1”
make[1]: *** [gnus-load.el] Error 255
make: *** [lick] Error 2

cd /Applications/Emacs.app/Contents/Resources/etc
cp DOC-22.3.1 DOC-22.1.1
cd -
make

(add-to-list ‘load-path “~/emacs/test-git-gnus/gnus/lisp/")
(require ‘gnus-load)

nnir search Symbol’s value as variable is void: gnus-registry-install

(setq gnus-registry-install t)

(setq nnmail-crosspost t)

(setq gnus-agent nil)


* * *

  
I hope you enjoyed this second installment in the world of [gnus](http://www.mostlymaths.net/2010/12/emacs-30-day-challenge-using-gnus-to.html). I hope you give gnus another try, if the problem you had was its speed. The development git gnus will surprise you!  
  
If you enjoyed this post, please share it with your emacs (or emacs-wannabe) friends through Hacker News, Reddit/emacs, Twitter or even Facebook. Thank you for reading this far!  
  
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