Using MailDir as a Backend for Gnus

Question

I am using offlineimap to sync my gmail account to a locak maildir, then using gnus to read that directory everything is fine but gnus uses its own flags for marking read unread status of messages and they are not synced back to gmail. is there a way to force gnus to use standart maildir flags?

Answer 1

I use offlineimap and dovecot to download and serve my mail locally. I also use GNUS. Getting dovecot to work kept me from using GNUS for quite a while since GNUS's support for maildir is so lousy. This is what I needed to make dovecot work:

mail_location = maildir:~/Mail:LAYOUT=fs:INBOX=~/Mail/INBOX

One of the really nice parts of my solution is that I have a real and working offline sync, so that when the network is unavailable (approximate 80% of the time while on campus) I still can check and sort my mail.

Answer 2

This has been fixed in nnmaildir in Gnus trunk as of 2012-09-05. The fix appeared in the Gnus version released with Emacs 24.3.

Answer 3

A solution is to use a local imap server (as dovecot) to look at your maildir, and to use gnus to access to this imap server.