bug#23840: runemacs does not seem to pass command line arguments through to emacs properly

[Eliot Moss <moss@cs.umass.edu>]

On 6/25/2016 2:59 AM, Eli Zaretskii wrote:
> [Please keep the bug address on the CC list, so that the discussion is
> recorded by the Emacs bug tracker.]

Thanks for pointing that out.

>>
>> I get what you're saying, but I use this only for pop-up editing of emails,
>> which I need to have work when cygwin is not running.  Most of the time
>> I use an X version of emacs within cygwin, so I don't want a second emacs
>> server floating around.
>
> The X version comes with emacsclient as well.

That may be, but I need this to work when cygwin is not running.  When cygwin
is not running, I don't have X available (unless I do a whole second setup of
X, only for this use - I'm not inclined to do that).

> There's nothing wrong with runemacs, it does work as you expect.  I
> don't have Thunderbird installed, but I just set EDITOR in the
> environment to point to runemacs.exe, started Less browsing a file,
> typed 'v' there, which is supposed to invoke $EDITOR, and sure thing,
> a fresh Emacs session was started with point on the line where I was
> reading in Less.  I also see that Less invoked this command:

In the External Editor add-on, if I set the text editor to be:

"C:\Program Files\Emacs\bin\emacs.exe" --no-splash --file

then things work, though I get the annoying console window.

If I use this:

"C:\Program Files\Emacs\bin\runemacs.exe" --no-splash --file

then emacs pops up, but says the email message is a new file.

However, I think we're making progress on diagnosing this.  When I
looked very closely at the mode line in emacs, I could see the underscores
were actually there.  The two cases start up pointing to the same file
name in the same folder.  In the runemacs case, however, the file is
not present by the time emacs pops up.  Here is my theory.  runemacs
returns immediately after starting emacs.  Thunderbird sees that
return, reads back in the file it wrote, and deletes the file.  Then
emacs tries to open the file and does not see it.

If this theory is right, what I need / desire is for runemacs to wait
for the emacs child.  But AFAICT runemacs is not designed to do this.
I end up desiring a case not provided for, and hence probably need to
just live with the annoying pop up console window.

At least I think we have an explanation.  Still, it would be nice if
I could tell runemacs to wait ...

I appreciate your help with this.

Regards -- Eliot