Re: Starting multiple async processes from inside dired using &

[Juri Linkov <juri@jurta.org>]

>>>> It seems the best option is to search and revive an existing buffer,
>>>> but there is another problem: the user might want to keep the output
>>>> of an old *Async Shell Command*<N> buffer and not overwrite it with
>>>> the output of another process.
>>
>> Emacs could retain the old output, concatenating the new output into it.
>
> That could be very confusing for someone who just wants "the output"
> tho...

Yes, unrelated command outputs will create a mess in the same buffer.

> Maybe it could keep a list of previously created async output buffers,
> and reuse any which are empty (and whose associated process is dead).

Empty async output buffers is a small subset of use cases.
The problem of reusing command buffers is more general -
e.g. grep and compile often overwrite old output that was
necessary to keep.

> Perhaps another issue, BTW is whether Emacs should kill asynch processes
> when exiting.  For the most common uses I have, it _shouldn't_, and it's
> surprising and annoying when it does (I typically say "yes" to the "kill
> processes?" prompt because I'm thinking of only those synchronous
> processed I know about, so occasionally I end up inadvertently killing
> an async process that I didn't want to...]

Maybe asking an additional question about async processes and detaching
them when exiting will help?

-- 
Juri Linkov
http://www.jurta.org/emacs/