RE: Dialog from emacsclientw.exe must be dismissed (was RE: Best practices for launching Emacs on Windows 7/8)

[Ludwig, Mark]

> From: Juanma Barranquero, Wednesday, June 26, 2013 6:12 PM
> 
> On Wed, Jun 26, 2013 at 8:47 PM, Richard Copley <rcopley@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> > I've never noticed it before, but it's easy enough to reproduce (run
> > emacs, start server, kill emacs, run emacsclientw).
> 
> Could you please file a bug report with a step-by-step recipe starting
> from emacs -Q (if possible)?
> 
> Thanks,
> 
>    Juanma

Okay, I will file a formal report, but first I want to make sure
others see the problem.  I also need to understand what to include in
the report.

Firstly, the problem is only reproducible (for me) by restarting
Windows.

Secondly, it does not involve emacs(!).  The problem is purely in
emacsclientw.exe.  Therefore, there is no .emacs involvement, so using
-Q also does not apply.

I am not aware of any configuration aspects to this error.  I am not
saying there are no configuration aspects, but I am not aware of any.

That said, I have set the ALTERNATE_EDITOR environmental variable to
the full path of runemacs.exe.  I doubt it matters w.r.t. the problem,
precisely, but the overall success scenario is based on
ALTERNATE_EDITOR being set.

The idea is to set up my Windows environment so that when I
double-click on a file that is associated with emacsclientw.exe, I get
a window (Emacs "frame") with the file available for editing.  If
Emacs is running as a server, that process pops up a new frame
(according to my .emacs); if Emacs server is not running, according to
ALTERNATE_EDITOR, Emacs gets started (by "runemacs").  (Now that I
think about it, my .emacs starts the server, naturally, so for that
reason, I don't think it even makes sense to attempt to use emacs -Q
anywhere in this reproduction scenario.)

The first time after restarting Windows, when I double-click on a file
that is associated with emacsclientw.exe, I have to dismiss the dialog
that I seek to eliminate.  Only after dismissing the dialog will the
alternate editor be invoked.  (I would not mind so much if the
alternate editor was launched asynchronously, not waiting for me to
respond to the dialog.)  The error message in the pop-up dialog that
must be dismissed is the long-winded Windows version of the UNIX error
"Connection refused": "No connection could be made because the target
machine actively refused it."

I am a network programmer, and the error message makes perfect sense:
it is simply saying there is no process listening.  That is absolutely
true!  It's also not something I want to confirm, because it's
patently obvious, and completely uninteresting -- at least in my case,
because I have the ALTERNATE_EDITOR variable (or the
--alternate-editor option) set.  AFAICT, the error only occurs if
Emacs server has never been started in the current running instance of
Windows.

What should I put in the bug report, exactly?

Thanks,
Mark