Re: GNU Emacs: Client/Server

[Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca>]

>> 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?

First, my point was at least as much about "change server.el rather than
creating a new emasserver.el" than about "modify emacsclient.c instead
of creating a new emacsclient.el".
One of the reasons for emacsclient.c is that it should be faster
to execute.  Now this is not necessarily the case and for other reasons
I think it might be worthwhile to implement an elisp version of the
emacsclient.
As far as portability is concerned, it shouldn't be that bad since it's just
some TCP socket code in emacsclient.c which AFAIK will only require some
header-inclusion-tweaking to get working: the code in itself will hopefully
work in both Unix and w32 environments without too much trouble.

>> 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?

Yes.  Much like Xauth (which gnuserv uses).


        Stefan