Skip to content

Latest commit

 

History

History
307 lines (216 loc) · 12.8 KB

emacs-daemon.rst.txt

File metadata and controls

307 lines (216 loc) · 12.8 KB
Raw

Using the Emacs daemon and clients

Home URL:https://github.com/pierre-rouleau/pel
Project:PEL -- Pragmatic Emacs Library
Created:Thursday, May 23 2024.
Author: Pierre Rouleau <[email protected]>
Modified:2024-05-29 08:23:53 EDT, updated by Pierre Rouleau.
Copyright: © 2024, Pierre Rouleau

Short Commands to start Emacs from the terminal shell

Instead of using the long explicit commands listed in the sections below, you can use the following short commands. These support both macOS and Linux.

     
. e[OPTIONS..] [FILE..]

Start Emacs in text mode.

  • Supports emacs options and file arguments. See emacs man page.
.

ge :

  • ge [-h | --help]
  • ge [OPTIONS..] [FILE..]

Start Emacs in graphics mode.

  • Supports emacs options and file arguments. See emacs man page.
.

ec :

  • ec [-h|--help]
  • ec [-g|gui] [--name=NAME] [FILE...]
  • ec --start-daemon [--name=NAME]
  • ec --check-daemon [--name=NAME]

Start an Emacs client for an Emacs daemon.

  • Use ec to start an Emacs client to the default Emacs daemon, starting the daemon if it is not already running. The client is a terminal based client by default.
  • To start a graphical (GUI) Emacs client instead, use ec -g or ec --gui. This also starts the Emacs daemon if it is not already running.
  • By default the ec command launches and connects to the default socket name. Use the --name option to specify another name (for both the daemon and its clients). For example, use ec --name=PEL to start and connect to a Emacs daemon that uses the socket named PEL.
    • With this option it is possible to create several independent groups of Emacs daemon/clients.
  • Use ec --start-daemon (optionally specifying the daemon name with --name) to start the Emacs daemon without starting the client. If the Emacs daemon is already running the command prints a message and exits with the exit code 1.
  • To explicitly check if the Emacs daemon for the default socket is running use the ec --check-daemon command. To check for the Emacs daemon that uses a named socket use the same command and specify the --name=NAME option.

For instructions on how to close/terminate the Emacs daemon and its clients, see the Closing Suspending PEL PDF

PEL also provides a quick installation script.

Test environments:

The commands were tested in the following environments:

  • macOS Sonoma 14.5, Apple Silicon
  • macOS Mojave 10.14.6, i386 architecture
  • Linux Ubuntu 16.04, i386 architecture
  • Linux Ubuntu 22.04, arm64 architecture

Using Emacs daemon on macOS

Goal: Provide ability to launch a graphical (GUI) or text-based (TTY) Emacs client from a macOS terminal.

Challenge: Several people, including myself, had problems launching the graphical based Emacs client from the terminal, regardless of the emacsclient command line used. All instances of Emacs client programs ended up being terminal based only.

Solution: The key is to use an Emacs binary that supports Emacs in graphics mode to launch the Emacs daemon. Once this done, it becomes possible to launch graphical Emacs clients and text-based Emacs clients:

  • To launch a graphical based Emacs client use a graphics-capable emacsclient binary.
  • To launch a text based Emacs client, you can use two methods:
    • Use a graphics-capable Emacs and issue the command emacsclient -nw
    • Use a text-based Emacs and issue one of the following 2 commands:
      • emacsclient -c or
      • emacsclient -nw

On macOS, the graphics-capable Emacs is one of the Emacs binary files inside the /Applications/Emacs.app universal DMG directory tree from Emacs for Mac OS X installed manually or from the Homebrew brew install --cask emacs command.

Other Considerations

Under macOS (as of macOS Sonoma in 2024), if you want to launch an independent terminal-based Emacs process from the terminal shell, it is best to use an Emacs binary that was built without graphical capabilities because it starts faster than an Emacs that was built with graphical capabilities.

Because of that you may want to install two instances of Emacs on macOS:

  • one with graphical capabilities and
  • one that does not have them built-in.

Fortunately it's possible to do both without having to build Emacs locally: Homebrew supports installing both as long as you follow some steps to trick it.

Installing Emacs on macOS

First install the graphics capable version of macOS. This can be done in two different ways:

Both install the same macOS universal DMG from Emacs for Mac OS X.

At this point, Homebrew won't let you install another version of emacs. You need to trick it.

  • First copy the Emacs DMG ( /Applications/Emacs.app ) somewhere else.
  • Next, uninstall Homebrew's installed (cask) Emacs with: brew uninstall --cask emacs.
  • Then install the terminal-only version of Emacs with Homebrew by issuing the following command: brew install emacs
  • Finally, put your Emacs.app copy back into /Applications so you will now also have /Applications/Emacs.app

At this point, if you type which emacs you should see that it is installed inside a Homebrew controlled directory. For macOS running on Apple Silicon processors, that's /opt/homebrew/bin/emacs.

The graphical version of Emacs is located inside the following directory:

>0@14:53:40 L3 roup@macStudio1:/Applications/Emacs.app/Contents/MacOS
zsh% ls -lFGO
total 156416
-rwxr-xr-x@  1 roup  admin  -  4085936 24 Mar 10:18 Emacs*
-rwxr-xr-x@  1 roup  admin  -  8236224 24 Mar 10:18 Emacs-arm64-11*
-rw-r--r--@  1 roup  admin  - 16995328 24 Mar 10:18 Emacs-arm64-11.pdmp
-rwxr-xr-x@  1 roup  admin  -  8469888 24 Mar 10:18 Emacs-x86_64-10_11*
-rw-r--r--@  1 roup  admin  - 16922656 24 Mar 10:18 Emacs-x86_64-10_11.pdmp
-rwxr-xr-x@  1 roup  admin  -  8349024 24 Mar 10:18 Emacs-x86_64-10_14*
-rw-r--r--@  1 roup  admin  - 16995160 24 Mar 10:18 Emacs-x86_64-10_14.pdmp
lrwxr-xr-x   1 roup  admin  -       16 22 May 08:31 bin@ -> bin-x86_64-10_11
drwxr-xr-x@  6 roup  admin  -      192 24 Mar 10:18 bin-arm64-11/
drwxr-xr-x@  6 roup  admin  -      192 24 Mar 10:18 bin-x86_64-10_11/
drwxr-xr-x@  6 roup  admin  -      192 24 Mar 10:18 bin-x86_64-10_14/
-rwxr-xr-x@  1 roup  admin  -      281 24 Mar 10:18 emacs-nw*
-rwxr-xr-x@  1 roup  admin  -    11272 24 Mar 10:18 launch.rs*
drwxr-xr-x@ 50 roup  admin  -     1600 24 Mar 10:18 lib-arm64-11/
drwxr-xr-x@  8 roup  admin  -      256 24 Mar 10:18 lib-x86_64-10_11/
drwxr-xr-x@ 51 roup  admin  -     1632 24 Mar 10:18 lib-x86_64-10_14/
lrwxr-xr-x   1 roup  admin  -       20 22 May 08:31 libexec@ -> libexec-x86_64-10_11
drwxr-xr-x@  5 roup  admin  -      160 24 Mar 10:18 libexec-arm64-11/
drwxr-xr-x@  5 roup  admin  -      160 24 Mar 10:18 libexec-x86_64-10_11/
drwxr-xr-x@  5 roup  admin  -      160 24 Mar 10:18 libexec-x86_64-10_14/
>0@14:53:51 L3 roup@macStudio1:/Applications/Emacs.app/Contents/MacOS
zsh%

And the Apple Silicon ARM64 binaries are see here:

>0@14:55:57 L3 roup@macStudio1:/Applications/Emacs.app/Contents/MacOS/bin-arm64-11
zsh% ls -lFGO
total 1168
-rwxr-xr-x@ 1 roup  admin  - 204752 24 Mar 10:18 ctags*
-rwxr-xr-x@ 1 roup  admin  -  91744 24 Mar 10:18 ebrowse*
-rwxr-xr-x@ 1 roup  admin  -  92912 24 Mar 10:18 emacsclient*
-rwxr-xr-x@ 1 roup  admin  - 204480 24 Mar 10:18 etags*
>0@14:56:03 L3 roup@macStudio1:/Applications/Emacs.app/Contents/MacOS/bin-arm64-11
zsh%

Launching Independent Emacs Processes

The next sections list the explicit commands to launch Emacs in a specific way. These assume Emacs was installed in macOS as described in the previous section.

Launching an independent terminal Emacs process from a terminal shell

Explicit command line:

emacs

Launching an independent graphical Emacs process from a terminal shell

Explicit command line:

open -n -a /Applications/Emacs.app/Contents/MacOS/Emacs

This uses the macOS open command with the following command line options:

  • -n: open a new instance on each invocation
  • -a application: identify the path of the application

Launching an independent graphical Emacs process from macOS Finder

Assuming no Emacs daemon is running, you can use Spotlight to open Emacs from the keyboard:

  • Type ⌘-SPACE then Emacs and RET

Launching a graphics-capable Emacs Daemon

Explicit command line for an Emacs daemon with the default socket name:

/Applications/Emacs.app/Contents/MacOS/Emacs --daemon

If you want to create multiple Emacs daemon, each one must identify a socket by name. The command is:

/Applications/Emacs.app/Contents/MacOS/Emacs --daemon --socket-name=FILENAME

where, according the emacsclient man page:

*Use socket named FILENAME for communication. Relative filenames are relative to "$XDG_RUNTIME_DIR/emacs/" or "$TMPDIR/".

See also the EMACS_SOCKET_NAME environment variable, over which this option takes precedence.*

Opening Emacs Clients to the running Emacs Daemon

Opening a graphics-based Emacs client

Explicit command for macOS running on Apple Silicon:

/Applications/Emacs.app/Contents/MacOS/bin-arm64-11/emacsclient -c -n

Opening a text-based Emacs client

Explicit command using the mac OS X Emacs, for macOS on Apple Silicon:

/Applications/Emacs.app/Contents/MacOS/bin-arm64-11/emacsclient   -nw

Explicit command using the text-based Emacs installed with Homebrew brew install emacs command:

emacsclient -nw