Re: Gnus IMAP Qs: catch-up vs delete vs expire & "gnus-expire" tag ?

[James Thomas]

Joel Reicher wrote:

> David Masterson writes:
>
>> 2. Due to limited space in a free account on zohomail.com, I want to
>> clean up old mail on both my system and the server.  I assumed the
>> way to do that was (mostly) by "catchup", but that just marks all
>> the mails in the summary buffer as read.  How do you delete old
>> email?
>
> There are a few ways, but you might want to start by reading
>
> (info "(gnus) Expiring Mail")
>
> You don't have to use expiry - the important part is what is done when
> Gnus actions the expiry, and this can be done without the expiry
> process - but personally I quite like it because setting marks is
> fast, and the actual deletion (server command) is done in bulk. It
> feels a lot like commit vs push in git to me.
>
>> 3. I thought 'expire' was the way to delete, but the manual implies
>> that expired email can be deleted by Gnus at some future time.  How
>> is that controlled?
>
> That's covered by the info page above. I use nnmail-expiry-wait
> immediate.
>
>> 4. I found that the expired email wound up being tagged with
>> "gnus-expire" on the IMAP server.  Is there an assumption that the
>> IMAP server will delete emails tagged with "gnus-expire"? If so, how
>> does that work?
>
> No. Expiry is actioned by Gnus.

Just to clarify: This means that if you're using delayed expiry, the
message would have to be loaded in the Summary and old enough so that
'q' etc. will make Gnus delete it.

I too, mostly, simply expire immediately to the Deleted folder.

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