[Q] Several emacs instances / dired and "derived" buffers

[Q] Several emacs instances / dired and "derived" buffers

[Ames Andreas (MPA/DF)]

Hi all,

I've got two questions for which I'd welcome your experienced advice.

1) I use emacs not only for editing but also as calendar, mua etc (I
   think this is not extraordinary around here).  From time to time
   emacs freezes and I'm suspecting gnus (I use procmail and I'm not
   sure I have the locking right; furthermore I'm using nnimap with an
   MS Exchange which seems sometimes to be unreachable).  It is not
   enough of a problem for me to try to find the error(s) but I'm
   thinking of separating the non-editing tasks of my emacs into its
   own emacs instance/process.  That would also be an opportunity to
   make my .emacs more lightweight and faster (because I could do
   without starting calendar etc.).

   Does it make sense to have sevaral instances of emacs running?  How
   can I start emacs with a separate startup file (and not my default
   .emacs)?  How can I make sure that gnuclient and friends finds only
   my emacs-for-editing instance?  Are there other potential problems
   I do not recognise yet?

2) I use separate filesystem directories for separate programming (and
   other) projects (surprise, surprise).  When I begin working on one
   project, I usually dired its toplevel directory and then I open
   buffers below that one.  When I switch to another project I oftenly
   want to close all buffers related to the first project.  This is
   even a necessity when the project is in a directory that I have
   mounted from a mobile computer because I want/must to unmount when
   I stop working.

   Currently I just close all these buffers manually.  I'm wondering
   if there isn't someone who has already written a command that
   closes all buffers which are visiting files below a given
   directory.


TIA,

andreas

Re: [Q] Several emacs instances / dired and "derived" buffers

[Kai Grossjohann]

"Ames Andreas (MPA/DF)" <Andreas.Ames@tenovis.com> writes:

> 1) I use emacs not only for editing but also as calendar, mua etc (I
>    think this is not extraordinary around here).  From time to time
>    emacs freezes and I'm suspecting gnus (I use procmail and I'm not
>    sure I have the locking right; furthermore I'm using nnimap with an
>    MS Exchange which seems sometimes to be unreachable).  It is not
>    enough of a problem for me to try to find the error(s) but I'm
>    thinking of separating the non-editing tasks of my emacs into its
>    own emacs instance/process.  That would also be an opportunity to
>    make my .emacs more lightweight and faster (because I could do
>    without starting calendar etc.).

Please note that Gnus gets very angry if something else frobs its
files.  So it is best to tell procmail to deliver mail for the group
nnml:foo.bar into the file ~/spool/foo.bar.in, and then to set up
mail-sources like this:

(setq mail-sources '((directory :path "~/spool" :suffix ".in")))

Please note that the file is ~/spool/foo.bar.in (with a dot between
foo and bar) even if Gnus uses the directory ~/Mail/foo/bar (with a
slash between foo and bar) for the group.

The same setup also works for nnfolder and other backends, you do not
have to change the mail-sources setting, just
gnus-secondary-select-methods.

>    Does it make sense to have sevaral instances of emacs running?  How
>    can I start emacs with a separate startup file (and not my default
>    .emacs)?  How can I make sure that gnuclient and friends finds only
>    my emacs-for-editing instance?  Are there other potential problems
>    I do not recognise yet?

I define a function kai-gnus which does the Gnus-specific setup.  Then
the Gnus Emacs is started as "emacs -f kai-gnus".

The other Emacs is started as "emacs -f server-start".

Kai

Re: [Q] Several emacs instances / dired and "derived" buffers

[Barry Margolin]

In article <mailman.7759.1085670886.1061.help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org>,
 "Ames Andreas (MPA/DF)" <Andreas.Ames@tenovis.com> wrote:

>    Does it make sense to have sevaral instances of emacs running?  How
>    can I start emacs with a separate startup file (and not my default
>    .emacs)?  How can I make sure that gnuclient and friends finds only
>    my emacs-for-editing instance?  Are there other potential problems
>    I do not recognise yet?

You can use the -q option to prevent emacs from reading the default 
.emacs file, and -l filename to make it load a specific file.  So your 
gnus instance could be started up with something like:

emacs -q -l ~/.gnus.elc

Just make sure that only your init file for the emacs-for-editing 
instance executes (gnuserve) to start up the server for gnuclient.

You'll probably want the init files to give the windows distinct title 
bars.

-- 
Barry Margolin, barmar@alum.mit.edu
Arlington, MA
*** PLEASE post questions in newsgroups, not directly to me ***

Re: [Q] Several emacs instances / dired and "derived" buffers

[Michael Schierl]

Kevin Rodgers <ihs_4664@yahoo.com> writes:
> Michael Schierl wrote:
>  > "Ames Andreas (MPA/DF)" <Andreas.Ames@tenovis.com> writes:

>  >>   if there isn't someone who has already written a command that
>  >>   closes all buffers which are visiting files below a given
>  >>   directory.
>  >
>  > Quick&dirty solution:
>  >
>  > (defun close-all-buffers-below (dir)
>  >   (interactive "DDirectory: ")
>  >   (mapc '(lambda (buf) (if (and (buffer-file-name buf)
>  > 		 	(string= dir
>  > 		 		 (substring (buffer-file-name buf)
>  > 		 			    0
>  > 		 			    (length dir))))
>  > 			   (kill-buffer buf)))
>  > 	(buffer-list)))

After some testing: that solution throws an error if a file name is
shorter than the given directory name.

e.g. when you close all files below c:/program files/my projects/foo/
and have a file open in c:/autoexec.bat. Seems that Emacs' substring
function throws an error if the string is shorter than TO. (I
expected it to return the substring from FROM to the end of the string
then...)

> If dir is "/foo/bar", won't that delete all buffers visiting files under
> "/FoO/bAr" (because string= ignores case)

If string= ignored case, that would not be any problem, since both me
and the OP are using Windows ;-)

> and "/foo/bar1" (because you
> ignore all characters after "/foo/bar") etc. as well?

If you use the autocompletion feature, dir will always end with a
slash. Of course you could adjust it to add the slash manually if
ther is no one yet.

>    (mapc (lambda (buf)
> 	  (let ((file (buffer-file-name buf)))
> 	    (when (and file
> 		       (equal (file-name-directory file) dir))
> 	      (kill-buffer buf))))
> 	(buffer-list))

That one only closes all files *in* a directory and not *below* a
directory. If you specify to close all files below "/foo/bar", a file
like "/foo/bar/src/package/subpackage/blah/Classname.java" will
not be closed as well.

Michael

Re: [Q] Several emacs instances / dired and "derived" buffers

[Kevin Rodgers]

Michael Schierl wrote:
 > Kevin Rodgers <ihs_4664@yahoo.com> writes:
 >>   (mapc (lambda (buf)
 >>	  (let ((file (buffer-file-name buf)))
 >>	    (when (and file
 >> 
	       (equal (file-name-directory file) dir))
 >>	      (kill-buffer buf))))
 >>	(buffer-list))
 >
 > That one only closes all files *in* a directory and not *below* a
 > directory. If you specify to close all files below "/foo/bar", a file
 > like "/foo/bar/src/package/subpackage/blah/Classname.java" will
 > not be closed as well.

Change (equal (file-name-directory file) dir) to
(string-match (concat "^" (regexp-quote (file-name-directory))) dir)

-- 
Kevin Rodgers