While the gnus maintainer is now hopefully making the gnus package installable even on my system, I would recommend that if installation fails, there be a messages emitted to see http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=u1y713qu2.fsf%40sdm.de wherein we are told to manually delete the line "(setq gnus-format-specs '(..." from .newsrc.eld as the key to life with a removed gnus package, just using the previous emacs underlying version.
Odd how the previous gnus package I had installed is gone too. Fortunate that there is a gnus inside emacs to fall back on. Unfortunate that I must brace for more mailbox corruption as I scrape back and forth oort/non-oort.
