Re: EmacsW32 invocation options

[Lennart Borgman (gmail)]

Juanma Barranquero wrote:
> On 5/2/07, Hadron <hadronquark@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Is there a solid reason NOT to start the server automatically if someone
> > starts a client?
>
> Yes. You can read the discussions in the emacs-devel list (those that
> Lennart seems to think never happened). Basically, for the client to
> be able to start the server, either you put too much "inteligence" in
> the client, or you have a way to clearly specify how to pass that info
> from the client to the server. I'm quite sure there's a clean way to
> do that, and I'm also quite sure it's not the one in EmacsW32-*, at
> least the last time I took a look at it.

I am sure you know these things much better than me, I just wanted 
something that worked now. You did the heroes work when you got Emacs 
client to run on MS Windows. I only reorganized what you wrote and added 
simple functions for user feedback.

I also added a switch

  --server-file FILENAME

for which I wrote "Set filename of the TCP authentication file". I do 
not know if that is enough, since I did not get any comments on that and 
I have hardly used it myself.


> Also, there's another good reason NOT to start the server
> automatically: there was *not enough* time during the Emacs 22
> freeze/pretest to properly develop that feature (hell, we were on the
> verge of simply *not* supporting emacsclient on Windows at all, and I
> know that for a fact). Lennart's rolled his own, which means that
> either we're forced to follow his path, even if we don't like it, or
> to do an incompatible change later.

Maybe I am missing something, but I tried to avoid compatibility 
problems. My guess is that the default action will be to start the local 
server just as it is started in .emacs with (server-start). That is what 
is done by my patched version of Emacs client now.

As I have pointed out several times there are no changes to Emacs itself 
for this.


Another problem is if the code runs on other OS:es. It would be nice if 
someone tested that. If someone wants to do that, please contact me.