bug#21071: Gnus message flags must be set before expiration, not afterwards

[Nikolaus Rath]

Package: gnus

Hello,

If you perform the following steps:

1. Enter an nnimap group with expiry-target set to another nnimap group,
and expiry-wait 'immediate.
2. Select an unread article, mark it as read
3. Also mark the article for expiry
4. Leave the group

.. then the article will be in the target group, but it will still be
unread.

As far as I can tell, this is because Gnus is running
nn*-request-expire-articles *before* nn*-request-set-mark rather than
the other way around.


Best,
-Nikolaus

[Glenn Morris]

You don't need to x-debbugs-cc every bug report you make to emacs-devel
and ***@gnus.org, thus sending it to 3 (including gnus-bug) separate
mailing lists. Just the bug list is fine.

[Steinar Bang]

Post by Glenn Morris
You don't need to x-debbugs-cc every bug report you make to emacs-devel
mailing lists. Just the bug list is fine.

FWIW I'm happy to see patches CC'd to ding (but it's OK for me to leave
out actual bug reports).

[Nikolaus Rath]

Hello,

This issue is caused by article expiry being done in
gnus-summary-prepare-exit-hook. gnus-summary-exit calls this hook before
calling gnus-update-read-articles (which sets the read mark).

A trivial patch is to invert the order:

#V+
diff --git a/lisp/gnus-sum.el b/lisp/gnus-sum.el
index 37a707e..56406d0 100644
--- a/lisp/gnus-sum.el
+++ b/lisp/gnus-sum.el
@@ -7252,7 +7252,6 @@ If FORCE (the prefix), also save the .newsrc file(s)."
(gnus-score-adaptive))
(when gnus-use-scoring
(gnus-score-save)))
- (gnus-run-hooks 'gnus-summary-prepare-exit-hook)
(when gnus-use-cache
(gnus-cache-possibly-remove-articles)
(gnus-cache-save-buffers))
@@ -7269,6 +7268,7 @@ If FORCE (the prefix), also save the .newsrc file(s)."
(unless quit-config
(gnus-run-hooks 'gnus-exit-group-hook)
(gnus-summary-update-info))
+ (gnus-run-hooks 'gnus-summary-prepare-exit-hook)
(gnus-close-group group)
;; Make sure where we were, and go to next newsgroup.
(when (buffer-live-p (get-buffer gnus-group-buffer))
#V-

I did not find any specific guarantees on when
gnus-summary-prepare-exit-hook is called in the documentation, but that
doesn't mean that people are not relying on the current calling
order. Would a change like that nevertheless be acceptable?


Alternatively, is what do people think about removing
gnus-summary-expire-articles from the default value of
gnus-summary-prepare-exit-hook and explicitly calling
gnus-summary-expire-articles from gnus-summary-exit?


Best,
-Nikolaus