Re: Back to emacsclient/server

[Ted Zlatanov <tzz@lifelogs.com>]

On 24 Oct 2006, monnier@iro.umontreal.ca wrote:

>>>> This may seem like an offbeat suggestion, but I think Emacs could
>>>> behave like a SSH daemon for emacsclient/server interactions..
>>>
>>> You mean: no change to server.el, and simply change emacsclient such that
>>> it runs emacsclient on the server host via ssh?
>>>
>>> I used to do that with a script and it's trivial to do, indeed.
>
>> No, I mean:
>
>> 1) on the client side
>
>> ssh tzz@hostname:4567 '(function)'
>
>> 2) on the Emacs side, running on `hostname' with IP `ip'
>
>> ; bind to ip:4567
>> (sshd ip 4567)
>> ; add a user for remote execution, with the following keys
>> (sshd-add-keys "tzz" "~/.ssh/identity" "~/.ssh/id_dsa")
>
>> So emacsclient would be gone, and server.el would be sshd.el or
>> something similar.
>
> What would be the benefit compared to what I suggested (i.e. on the server
> side just a unix-socket, and on the client side "ssh machine emacsclient
> ...")?

1) no quoting required, you're talking directly to Emacs--this is very
   convenient, shells can make quotes hell

2) no SSHD needed on server machine (e.g. Windows users would like
   that)

3) you can open just Emacs, not general SSHD, to outside access

4) Emacs "user" (named in sshd-add-keys) doesn't have to be a valid
   local system user

5) no need to download, compile, and set up emacsclient/gnuclient

Ted