Re: How to get "emacsclient --eval x" to DWIM when Emacs is not started

["Lennart Borgman (gmail)" <lennart.borgman@gmail.com>]

Stefan Monnier wrote:
>>> How can I get "emacsclient --eval x" to DWIM when Emacs is not
>>> started? I have tried the following:
>>>
>>> emacsclient -e '(message "Hello!")' -a emacs
>>>
>>> But that does not work. What happens is that Emacs, when started as
>>> the alternate editor, tries to open a file with the name ''(message
>>> "Hello!").
>>>
>>> For normal operation, i.e. not using --eval but just for opening a
>>> file, -a emacs works well and does what I expect. Why does not --eval
>>> do the same? I have, of course, (server-start) in my .emacs file.
>>>
>>> As far as I can see, the manual does not mention this case.
> 
>> You can always try the patches I use for w32. It works fine for cases like
>> the above though you just write something like
> 
>>   emacsclient -e "(message \"hello\")"
> 
> I think it would be a good change for emacsclient to auto-start an Emacs
> server if the server is not running yet.
> 
> I have not followed closely your work on this (other than knowing it
> exists), so maybe if you can take your current code, bring it down to
> the simplest/cleanest patch (ignore everything that can be added
> later), we can start discussing it (in a new thread).


I hoped that Juanma should find some time to cooperate on this. I have 
restructured the code, it is not the best one can find, but the 
restructuring should help to understand what news it brings (I have 
moved the GUI part to separate files and only have some "hooks" to it in 
emacsclient.c).

Juanma, I think that it would be best to do some more restructuring off 
the list just to avoid unnecessary noise. What do you think?

Anyone else interested in taking part please mail me.