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Hooking New Back Ends Into Gnus ​

Having Gnus start using your new back end is rather easy—you just declare it with the gnus-declare-backend functions. This will enter the back end into the gnus-valid-select-methods variable.

gnus-declare-backend takes two parameters—the back end name and an arbitrary number of abilities.

Here’s an example:

emacs-lisp
(gnus-declare-backend "nnchoke" 'mail 'respool 'address)

The above line would then go in the nnchoke.el file.

The abilities can be:

mail ​

This is a mailish back end—followups should (probably) go via mail.

post ​

This is a newsish back end—followups should (probably) go via news.

post-mail ​

This back end supports both mail and news.

none ​

This is neither a post nor mail back end—it’s something completely different.

respool ​

It supports respooling—or rather, it is able to modify its source articles and groups.

address ​

The name of the server should be in the virtual server name. This is true for almost all back ends.

prompt-address ​

The user should be prompted for an address when doing commands like B in the group buffer. This is true for back ends like nntp, but not nnmbox, for instance.