Re: async-shell-command

[Marcin Borkowski]

On 2016-04-19, at 00:47, John Wiegley <address@hidden> wrote:

>>>>>> Marcin Borkowski <address@hidden> writes:
>
>> That sounds interesting. What if the command ends with "!" alone? Should it
>> be synchronous and silent? (I guess not.)
>
> That doesn't seem to make a lot of sense, does it...

Well, it would follow the Unix tradition: do what should be done, say
nothing;-).

But joking aside, I agree.

>> John, would you like me to explore this idea further and try to come up with
>> a patch? Are there any other ideas for the UI?
>
> I'm not sure about changing these functions in core Emacs. I can think of
> still other behaviors (like not showing the async output buffer until there is
> output to display). Rather than changing these venerable commands, it might be
> better to explore the UI possibilities in an add-on (using advice, maybe?) for
> the time being.
>
> Or maybe the concept the "execute but hide the buffer" should just be a new
> command, provided by an ELPA package that offers more options related to
> executing shell commands from the minibuffer?

OK.  I'm not sure whether I agree (probably not), but I solved the
problem in my init.el anyway;-).  I'll think about both options (I would
prefer the first one, configurable with an option).

>> Also, I'm pretty sure that the current meaning of the prefix argument for
>> `async-shell-command' /must/ be documented - it is far from obvious, and can
>> be learned only from careful reading of the code. I'm going to prepare such
>> a patch for docs (both the docstring and the manual) first.
>
> Yes, it should definitely be documented.

So I'll start with reaping this low-hanging fruit;-).

Best,

-- 
Marcin Borkowski
http://octd.wmi.amu.edu.pl/en/Marcin_Borkowski
Faculty of Mathematics and Computer Science
Adam Mickiewicz University