Re: Restarting Emacs?

[Giorgos Keramidas <keramida@ceid.upatras.gr>]

On Wed, 29 Jul 2009 04:53:54 -0700 (PDT), Elena <egarrulo@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hello,
> can you make Emacs restart itself a la Firefox (for instance: after an
> heavy update of initialization file)?

Not really, no.  At least not _exactly_ what Firefox does, AFAICT.

You can, however, evaluate Lisp snippets in a *scratch* buffer as you
are editing your start-up code.  I often pull my `~/.gnus.el' in the
*scratch* buffer; copy parts of the Lisp code; then I modify them and
evaluate them in order (by typing `C-x C-e' after one or more s-exps).
When everything works I save the new Lisp code in my `~/.gnus.el' file
for later.

Now, if what you want is some sort of `session' support in Emacs, to
save a set of open buffers, and other runtime state, the `desktop'
library may be useful.  It is available in GNU Emacs 22 and it supports
parts of what Firefox does for GNU Emacs buffers.

See the manual for full details.  Look for the word `desktop' in the
index of the manual, and you'll quickly find this section:

,---[ C-h r i desktop RET ]--------------------------------------------
|
| 51 Saving Emacs Sessions
| ************************
|
| Use the desktop library to save the state of Emacs from one session to
| another.  Once you save the Emacs "desktop"--the buffers, their file
| names, major modes, buffer positions, and so on--then subsequent Emacs
| sessions reload the saved desktop.
|
| ...
|
`-----------------------------------------------------------------------