Re: Mac terminal.app: starting emacs, possibly as sudo

[Perry Smith <pedzsan@gmail.com>]

On Oct 16, 2011, at 5:26 PM, Marius Hofert wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> If I start "emacs" from the Mac terminal (Terminal.app), I get a rather old GNU Emacs 22.1.1 (/usr/bin/emacs) instead of the wonderful new GNU Emacs 23.3 I installed. 
> 1) How can I have the new emacs version opened when typing "emacs" in the terminal? 
> 2) Is it possible to start emacs in "sudo mode", so starting  emacs via "sudo emacs" in the terminal (and then being root when opening a shell from within emacs)?
> I know I can have 1) by typing "open -a Emacs.app", but that does not allow 2). 

This may take a little experimentation.  I have emacs 23.something compiled for Mac.  I have an application bundle in /Applications called Emacs.app.

If I run /Applications/Emacs.app/Contents/MacOS/bin/emacs, it starts up in the terminal.  If I run /Applications/Emacs.app/Contents/MacOS/Emacs it runs as a GUI (like open -a Emacs.app).

By running the bin/emacs, you can do sudo before hand and it will give you a root shell prompt (I just tested it.) Be aware that it will be using root's .emacs or .emacs.d files -- not yours.

The final thing you need is to either make an alias in your .bashrc file -- something like:

alias emacs=/Applications/Emacs.app/Contents/MacOS/bin/emacs

or you can change your PATH to point to /Applications/Emacs.app/Contents/MacOS/bin before /usr/bin

I'm not sure the alias will work with sudo.  Changing the path might be better.  aliases are weird critters.

HTH,
pedz