Emacs Daemon Service

Emacs Daemon Service

[Andrew Wong]

Greetings!

Recently I’ve been trying to have an Emacs daemon start in the background on login. On Guix, I’ve found some interesting behavior in that an Emacs started with no args and then the command “server-start” will then be available to subsequent emacsclient calls, but an “emacs —daemon” is inaccessible, even if I call the command from my WM startup.

1. Does anyone understand why Guix’s design results in this behavior?
2. How can I set up a service in my configure-home.scm to start emacs —daemon (and have it be available) on login? I found a post from 2019 about it, but it must be outdated as it doesn’t mention the Guix home feature.

Thank you for your assistance,
Andrew

Re: Emacs Daemon Service

[Guillaume Le Vaillant]

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Andrew Wong <brosasaki@gmail.com> skribis:

> Greetings!
>
> Recently I’ve been trying to have an Emacs daemon start in the background on
> login. On Guix, I’ve found some interesting behavior in that an Emacs started
> with no args and then the command “server-start” will then be available to
> subsequent emacsclient calls, but an “emacs —daemon” is inaccessible, even if
> I call the command from my WM startup.
>
> 1. Does anyone understand why Guix’s design results in this behavior?
> 2. How can I set up a service in my configure-home.scm to start emacs —daemon
> (and have it be available) on login? I found a post from 2019 about it, but it
> must be outdated as it doesn’t mention the Guix home feature.
>
> Thank you for your assistance,
> Andrew

Hi.
In my Guix home configuration, I use the following service to start an
Emacs server:

--8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8---
(define (emacs-server-shepherd-service config)
  (list (shepherd-service
         (documentation "Emacs server.")
         (provision '(emacs-server))
         (start #~(make-forkexec-constructor
                   (list #$(file-append emacs "/bin/emacs")
                         "--fg-daemon")))
         (stop #~(make-kill-destructor)))))

(define home-emacs-server-service-type
  (service-type
   (name 'home-emacs-server)
   (extensions (list (service-extension home-shepherd-service-type
                                        emacs-server-shepherd-service)))
   (default-value #f)
   (description "Run Emacs in server mode.")))

(home-environment
  ...
  (services
   (list ...
         (service home-emacs-server-service-type)
         ...)))
--8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8---

Then, using "emacsclient -n -c some-file" works.

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Re: Emacs Daemon Service

[Andrew Wong]

Thank you! That’s very useful.
As for the strange daemon issue, I found that it was an issue with my personal config. Remember to set package-user-dir in early-init.el, friends.