Don't manipulate gnus-newsrc-alist if it hasn't been initalized

* lisp/gnus/gnus-group.el (gnus-group-set-info): Packages that use
Gnus summary mode without actually booting Gnus might end up in this
situation. See bug#36903

1 files changed, 8 insertions, 6 deletions

diff --git a/lisp/gnus/gnus-group.el b/lisp/gnus/gnus-group.el
index 915125b655c..742f8f4be56 100644
--- a/lisp/gnus/gnus-group.el
+++ b/lisp/gnus/gnus-group.el
@@ -4465,12 +4465,14 @@ and the second element is the address."
               (setcar entry (length
                              (gnus-list-of-unread-articles (car info)))))
             ;; The above `setcar' will only affect the hashtable, not
-            ;; the alist: update the alist separately.
-            (push info (cdr (setq gnus-newsrc-alist
-                                   (remove (assoc-string
-                                            (gnus-info-group info)
-                                            gnus-newsrc-alist)
-                                           gnus-newsrc-alist)))))
+            ;; the alist: update the alist separately, but only if
+            ;; it's been initialized.
+            (when gnus-newsrc-alist
+              (push info (cdr (setq gnus-newsrc-alist
+                                    (remove (assoc-string
+                                             (gnus-info-group info)
+                                             gnus-newsrc-alist)
+                                            gnus-newsrc-alist))))))
         (error "No such group: %s" (gnus-info-group info))))))
 
 ;; Ad-hoc function for inserting data from a different newsrc.eld