leaving comint.el for a better emacs shell

leaving comint.el for a better emacs shell

[Terrence Brannon]

I would like to have a shell which
  1. allows me to have multiple shells, with descriptive names, based
on the current working directory of the buffer I am in
  2. opens shells on remote machines, should the current working
directory be on a machine I have accessed via tramp
  3. reads .bashrc files

I need to rule out comint.el and find something else, because
comint.el does not work with a simple Perl script:


yet M-x term and M-x eshell both do

Eshell sounds neat, but I dont think it sources .bashrc files, does
it?
And term is OK, but how about getting multiple terms with descriptive
names?

Re: leaving comint.el for a better emacs shell

[Ted Zlatanov]

On Fri, 13 May 2011 14:46:41 -0700 (PDT) Terrence Brannon <thequietcenter@gmail.com> wrote: 

TB> I would like to have a shell which
TB>   1. allows me to have multiple shells, with descriptive names, based
TB> on the current working directory of the buffer I am in
TB>   2. opens shells on remote machines, should the current working
TB> directory be on a machine I have accessed via tramp

eshell does 1 and 2.

TB> Eshell sounds neat, but I dont think it sources .bashrc files, does
TB> it?

Why do you need to source bashrc files?  Do you need aliases, functions, prompts?

Ted

Re: leaving comint.el for a better emacs shell

[Tim X]

Ted Zlatanov <tzz@lifelogs.com> writes:

> On Fri, 13 May 2011 14:46:41 -0700 (PDT) Terrence Brannon
> <thequietcenter@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> TB> I would like to have a shell which
> TB>   1. allows me to have multiple shells, with descriptive names, based
> TB> on the current working directory of the buffer I am in
> TB>   2. opens shells on remote machines, should the current working
> TB> directory be on a machine I have accessed via tramp
>
> eshell does 1 and 2.
>
> TB> Eshell sounds neat, but I dont think it sources .bashrc files, does
> TB> it?
>
> Why do you need to source bashrc files? Do you need aliases, functions,
> prompts?
>

eshell is good EXCEPT when you need I/O redirection. I have found eshell
is only good as an interactive shell and can be quite dangerous or
misleading if used to execute other shell scripts that rely on I/O
redirection. 

My use for comint has been as the underlying part of some other
mode/task and not as a general 'shell' (as in the sense of term et.
al.). However, it probably wouldn't be too hard to setup the sort of
functionality you are after. For example, there are other modes that use
comint for communicaitons with external/remote systems that allow
multiple instances with different names. This would indicate there is
nothing inherent to comint that prevents multiple instances. I also have
comint based modes that will connect remotely if I execute the mode
while viewing a remote directory/file. So that aspect also does not seem
to be related to comint per se. 

Tim




-- 
tcross (at) rapttech dot com dot au

Re: leaving comint.el for a better emacs shell

[Terrence Brannon]

On May 13, 6:34 pm, Ted Zlatanov <t...@lifelogs.com> wrote:
> On Fri, 13 May 2011 14:46:41 -0700 (PDT) Terrence Brannon <thequietcen...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> TB> I would like to have a shell which
> TB>   1. allows me to have multiple shells, with descriptive names, based
> TB> on the current working directory of the buffer I am in
> TB>   2. opens shells on remote machines, should the current working
> TB> directory be on a machine I have accessed via tramp
>
> eshell does 1 and 2.
>
> TB> Eshell sounds neat, but I dont think it sources .bashrc files, does
> TB> it?
>
> Why do you need to source bashrc files?  Do you need aliases, functions, prompts?

well I need those things you mention and I'm sure that eshell does
them. But I have all that written in bash and sometimes I use xterm
and bash is common ground for my xterm work and emacs work. Eshell
could never fill that role

>
> Ted

I just realized I did not post the Perl script which fails in
comint.el but works in M-x term and M-x eshell
Here it is - https://gist.github.com/973675

Re: leaving comint.el for a better emacs shell

[Terrence Brannon]

On May 14, 9:48 pm, Tim X <t...@nospam.dev.null> wrote:
> there are other modes that use
> comint for communicaitons with external/remote systems that allow
> multiple instances with different names.

shell-current-directory.el does that for comint-based shell and has
for many years. I use it with TRAMP for that successfully.

I'm just a little irked that this one script works in emacs-eshell and
emacs-term but not emacs-comint

It also works just fine at the shell

> This would indicate there is
> nothing inherent to comint that prevents multiple instances. I also have
> comint based modes that will connect remotely if I execute the mode
> while viewing a remote directory/file. So that aspect also does not seem
> to be related to comint per se.

I dont think I said that comint wouldnt do that. It's just a
requirement of whatever else I use to replace comint (since comint
also does it)