Re: GNU Emacs: Client/Server

["Dhruva Krishnamurthy" <devel@member.fsf.org>]

On 05 Feb 2004 10:05:01 -0500, "Stefan Monnier"
<monnier@iro.umontreal.ca> said:
> Maybe you know it and you're just experimenting, but I just want to make
> sure you do realize that gnuclient/gnuserver already solve those
> problems, so clearly there isn't much point is creating yet another system.

What about portability and distribution issues since it is written in C?
My idea was to write the whole stuff in Elisp and allow Emacs to handle
the platform dependend stuff.
with this approach, I can be sure that where Emacs runs, the
client/server code will run 
with no extra effort.

> What we want instead is to extend server.el and emacsclient.c with support
> for TCP sockets (and maybe add an elisp version of emacsclient.c).

This is not a problem. I had a brief look at the _usage_ of emacsclient.c
source (since
I cannot build it on w2k). IMHO, you can just visit files (at line and
col) using the
client and nothing beyond like invoking commands etc. Please correct me
if I am wrong in
my assumption. I plan to go ahead with a Elisp version of emacsclient.c
shortly.

> > - Server accepts a *secret* word which is then used to validate all
> > client connections
> >   Ex: (emacsserver-start "secret")
> 
> I'd prefer an automatically generated random string, but it otherwise
> looks reasonable.

How will the client know the randomly generated string to establish an
auth'ed connection? Do you suggest that the random string be stored in a
file which only the user invoking the server has access?

-dhruva
________________________________________
Dhruva Krishnamurthy
Proud FSF member: #1935
http://schemer.fateback.com/