Re: How to follow the end of *Messages* buffer in Emacs?

[B. T. Raven]

> I am playing with Elisp, and I find convenient to have the *Messages*
> buffer always open in a window in my frame.
> 
> I discovered recently that sometimes the buffer stops following the last
> lines. If I want to see the last appended lines in this buffer, I need
> to go in the buffer and jump to the end manually, with M->. Which is
> quite annoying and disruptive.
> 
> I am trying to reproduce the "tail -f" command line, in a buffer. Of
> course 'auto-revert-tail-mode complains that the *Messages* is not a
> visited file... As a consequence, this mode does not want to work. But
> it gave me the idea to add a function hook when the buffer is modified.
> That function would jump to (point-max) each time that buffer is
> modified.
> 
> Here is my own attempt, invoked from *Messages* buffer, with M-:
> (add-hook
>  'after-change-functions
>  (lambda (s e l) (goto-char (point-max)))
>  nil t)
> 
> But it does not work. The (point) remains in the same place while I see
> the buffer is growing... The lambda function does not produce any error,
> otherwise it would have been removed from the 'after-change-functions
> hook and C-h k 'after-change-functions shows it is present.
> 
> Any better suggestions?
> 

I don't know if it's better, but this macro works:

C-x (
C-x 5 b *Messages*
M->
C-u -1
C-x 5 o
C-x )
C-x C-k n bot-mess
(global-set-key [(super a)] 'bot-mess) C-x C-e

Keeping at the bottom of *Messages* this way does require intermittent
manual intervention but it's only one keychord.

Ed