Re: graceful shutdown of non-interactive Elisp program

[Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org>]

> From: Paul Pogonyshev <pogonyshev@gmail.com>
> Date: Sat, 13 Jun 2020 23:42:51 +0200
> 
> I'm trying to make a Elisp program that is run in a non-interactive mode, i.e. essentially as `emacs --batch
> --load myfile.el'. A normal way to shutdown terminal programs is with C-c, which is expected to be "graceful"
> shutdown, e.g. the program still has a chance to save files etc.
> 
> However, with Elisp I'm not sure how to achieve that except for constantly modifying `kill-emacs-hook', which
> would be a nightmare from coding perspective.
> 
> Naively I would expect this print "GOING DOWN" when aborted with C-c:
> 
>     $ emacs --batch --eval "(unwind-protect (while t) (message \"GOING DOWN\"))"
> 
> For example, Python's handler of SIGINT raises an exception within the program, which unwinds the stack
> as usual and, unless caught, cause program termination after cleaning up as expected (e.g. running all
> `finally' clauses and closing all `with' context managers). However, in Elisp, as I understand, there is no way
> to have a say in handling SIGINT other than adding a function to `kill-emacs-hook'.

I don't think I follow.  If you want to raise an exception from a
kill-emacs-hook (assuming that you want the unwind-protect forms to do
something), you can do that from kill-emacs-hook, no?

And if you had a say in handling SIGINT, what would you do in the
handler that you cannot do in kill-emacs-hook?

Also, you mention batch mode, but is it relevant?  That is, are you
saying that Emacs behaves differently in an interactive session when
it gets a fatal signal?

I'm confused.