Re: bug in server-start

[Nick Roberts]

Juanma Barranquero writes:
 > On Mon, Dec 15, 2008 at 10:00, Nick Roberts <address@hidden> wrote:
 > 
 > > error: Server "server" is already running
 > >
 > > with a second emacs instance when (server-start) is in
 > > the .emacs file because, in this case server-process is nil and so
 > > the server process doesn't actually get deleted.
 > 
 > IIUC, you're saying that with
 > 
 > ;;; .emacs
 > (server-start)
 > ;;; end of .emacs
 > 
 > and running two emacs at once, the second one throws an error.
 > 
 > That's a feature. If you want to be sure that the most recent Emacs
 > instance is the current server, you can use
 > ;;; .emacs
 > (server-force-delete)
 > (server-start)
 > ;;; end of .emacs

What benefit does that bring?  Presumably, previously the first Emacs
instance was the current server, which was fine with me.


 > If that's not what you meant, please post detailed instructions to
 > reproduce the problem.

Yes, that is what I mean't and it follows the description in the manual:

                                            ...or put the expression
  `(server-start)' in your initialization file (*note Init File::).

So I expect many Emacs users will encounter this error.

In contrast, I see no mention of server-force-delete, so they probably won't
know what to do about it except remove server-start from their .emacs, or put
it in a condition-case.


-- 
Nick                                           http://www.inet.net.nz/~nickrob