Re: emacsclient and XAUTHORITY variable

[Ulrich Mueller <ulm@gentoo.org>]

>>>>> On Thu, 06 Aug 2015, Stefan Monnier wrote:

>> frame's "environment" parameter. So Emacs has all information which
>> is necessary, and I wonder if this couldn't be passed to the Xau
>> library before opening the X display for the new frame?

> I'm pretty sure that in theory it can be handled, indeed.
> I don't know how much work it would entail in practice.

I've started to look into it, and it seems that Xau wasn't designed
with that problem in mind. The relevant function is XauFileName, which
checks the XAUTHORITY environment variable, or otherwise defaults to
~/.Xauthority. Other than that, there is no way of telling Xau about
the file's location. Neither can it handle multiple auth files.

So about the only possibility would be to temporarily add the
XAUTHORITY variable to Emacs' environment (that is, the real
environment, not 'process-environment') before opening the X display.
Not sure if this could be implemented without being too fragile.

> I must say that I find it a pain in the rear (as a plain user) that
> gdm3 started to set XAUTHORITY rather than to put the auth data
> where god intended it to be (i.e. ~/.Xauthority). "emacsclient" is
> not the only victim, so I'm not highly motivated to fix the problem
> on Emacs's side.

I agree, everyone using ~/.Xauthority would be the better solution.

Ulrich