Re: leaving comint.el for a better emacs shell

[Tim X <timx@nospam.dev.null>]

Ted Zlatanov <tzz@lifelogs.com> writes:

> On Fri, 13 May 2011 14:46:41 -0700 (PDT) Terrence Brannon
> <thequietcenter@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> TB> I would like to have a shell which
> TB>   1. allows me to have multiple shells, with descriptive names, based
> TB> on the current working directory of the buffer I am in
> TB>   2. opens shells on remote machines, should the current working
> TB> directory be on a machine I have accessed via tramp
>
> eshell does 1 and 2.
>
> TB> Eshell sounds neat, but I dont think it sources .bashrc files, does
> TB> it?
>
> Why do you need to source bashrc files? Do you need aliases, functions,
> prompts?
>

eshell is good EXCEPT when you need I/O redirection. I have found eshell
is only good as an interactive shell and can be quite dangerous or
misleading if used to execute other shell scripts that rely on I/O
redirection. 

My use for comint has been as the underlying part of some other
mode/task and not as a general 'shell' (as in the sense of term et.
al.). However, it probably wouldn't be too hard to setup the sort of
functionality you are after. For example, there are other modes that use
comint for communicaitons with external/remote systems that allow
multiple instances with different names. This would indicate there is
nothing inherent to comint that prevents multiple instances. I also have
comint based modes that will connect remotely if I execute the mode
while viewing a remote directory/file. So that aspect also does not seem
to be related to comint per se. 

Tim




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