Gnuclient vs Emacsclient

Gnuclient vs Emacsclient

[Paul Michael Reilly]

I've recently had Eclipse inflicted on me.  The source file editor is 
just abysmal for an experienced Emacs user.  I noticed that Alan Donovan 
created an Eclipse/Emacs plugin that uses gnuclient.  I built it for an 
x86_64 on FC5 and it does not work.  So there will be some development 
effort, hopefully small.

But it occurred to me that I ought to find out what the emacsclient vs 
gnuclient story is.  As near as I can tell, you all appeared to wrestle 
with adopting gnuserv and abandoning emacsserver about six years ago. 
And gnuserv now exists in about 4-5 flavors derived from Andy Norman's 
original work.

Left to my own devices I am inclined to pick one of the gnuserv variants 
and get it working within the current Emacs CVS tree and then retire 
emacsclient/emacsserver.  Probably Alan Donovan's, FWIW

Comments?  Suggestions?

-pmr

Re: Gnuclient vs Emacsclient

[Lennart Borgman]

Paul Michael Reilly wrote:
> I've recently had Eclipse inflicted on me.  The source file editor is 
> just abysmal for an experienced Emacs user.  I noticed that Alan 
> Donovan created an Eclipse/Emacs plugin that uses gnuclient.  I built 
> it for an x86_64 on FC5 and it does not work.  So there will be some 
> development effort, hopefully small.
>
> But it occurred to me that I ought to find out what the emacsclient vs 
> gnuclient story is.  As near as I can tell, you all appeared to 
> wrestle with adopting gnuserv and abandoning emacsserver about six 
> years ago. And gnuserv now exists in about 4-5 flavors derived from 
> Andy Norman's original work.
>
> Left to my own devices I am inclined to pick one of the gnuserv 
> variants and get it working within the current Emacs CVS tree and then 
> retire emacsclient/emacsserver.  Probably Alan Donovan's, FWIW
>
> Comments?  Suggestions?
>
> -pmr

Emacsclient/server is part of CVS Emacs. Gnuclient/server is not. 
Unfortunately emacsclient/server does not work on w32 yet, so there the 
only option is to use gnuclient/server.

Re: Gnuclient vs Emacsclient

[Martin Schwenke]

>>>>> "Paul" == Paul Michael Reilly <pmr@pajato.com> writes:

    Paul> Left to my own devices I am inclined to pick one of the
    Paul> gnuserv variants and get it working within the current Emacs
    Paul> CVS tree and then retire emacsclient/emacsserver.  Probably
    Paul> Alan Donovan's, FWIW

My approach has been to pull the latest gnuclient/gnuserv out of the
current XEmacs (possibly CVS?), since this will be the most
up-to-date, combine it with some autoconf stuff and distribute it via:

  http://meltin.net/hacks/emacs/

The latest version is:

  http://meltin.net/hacks/emacs/src/gnuserv-3.12.7.tar.gz

Various GNU/Linux distributions and, by the look of it, Mac OS/X have
picked up this version and distribute it.

I recently noticed a security vulnerability being fixed in gnuserv so
I'm planning to see if I can pick up the most recent version and
release a new package as soon as possible.  Hopefully not too much has
changed...

While there have been some improvements to emacsclient/server a quick
look at the Emacs 22 prerelease suggests that it still doesn't have
all of the features of gnuclient/gnuserv.  It doesn't seem likely that
gnuserv will ever be included in GNU Emacs - I was last involved in a
discussion on this topic about 4 years ago and the suggestion was to
reimplement the missing features in emacsclient/server.

peace & happiness,
martin

Re: Gnuclient vs Emacsclient

[Richard Stallman]

      As near as I can tell, you all appeared to wrestle 
    with adopting gnuserv and abandoning emacsserver about six years ago. 

I wanted to do this, but it came at the wrong time; and then there was
the security issue of the feature of feeding arbitrary expressions to
Emacs.

How have people dealt with this question?

    Left to my own devices I am inclined to pick one of the gnuserv variants 
    and get it working within the current Emacs CVS tree and then retire 
    emacsclient/emacsserver.

It might be good to do this, but we have to make sure that whatever version
we use, was written only by people we have papers from.