Getting Gmail in Emacs?

I'm trying to learn Emacs, and I think that getting gmail right in it would be cool. I've tried a but of tutorials online, but I couldn't figure out what a lot of them were talking about. A lot of them listed elisp code but didn't tell where to put it, and others just didn't work (they created errors). All I really want is to send and receive email - folders and smtp(?) are completely optional.

Does anyone know a good way of doing this?

Edit: I found http://www.gohome.org/wl/doc/wl_toc.html to be helpful in figuring out Wanderlust.

Solution 1:

I've had success using wanderlust. This is a good tutorial for setting it up:

http://box.matto.nl/emacsgmail.html

Solution 2:

I have it setup as a gnus secondary source. In .gnus.el I have:

(add-to-list 'gnus-secondary-select-methods
  '(nnimap "gmail"
    (nnimap-address "imap.gmail.com")
    (nnimap-server-port 993)
    (nnimap-stream ssl)
    (nnimap-authinfo-file "~/.authinfo.gpg")
    ))

and in .authinfo.gpg I have:

machine "gmail" imap.gmail.com login [email protected] password trustno1

You'll need to enable imap on your accounts to make it work. .authinfo.gpg is gpg encrypted (for password privacy) and I have the easypg package installed to decrypt it on demand.

I send email locally, so you'll have to look at emacswiki.org to work out how to send it via gmail's servers.