11.7.2.5 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:

(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.