Re: Folding emacsclient into emacs (was: New start up splash screen annoyance...)

[Davis Herring]

> Many programs today will attach themselves to an existing process when
> started. Emacs can do the same thing. If the "emacs" executable
> detects an existing process on the local machine owned by the same
> user in the same session (X server), and the -nw option is not
> specified, it can behave like emacsclient; otherwise, it starts a new
> process.

Such attachment is not necessarily a good idea, and it certainly shouldn't
be the default.  If the new process exits immediately (after sending its
command line to another process), then such things as shell scripts will
break; if it waits, how long should it wait when the command is simply
"emacs"?  Should it wait forever if the user (perhaps not even knowing
that there are two "emacs" processes) never kills the buffers that the
command line creates?

I don't see much harm in the behavior if it's explicitly requested, but it
seems that emacsclient could support it (if it doesn't already) with the
--alternate-editor option.

Davis

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