Start Emacs.app from CLI

Emacs_starter.pl

#!/usr/bin/perl

# Emacs starter for Emacs mac port

# Thanks to Aquamacs Project and David Reitter

my $args = "";
my $tmpfiles = "";

for my $f (@ARGV) {
  $args .= '"'.$f.'" ';
  $tmpfiles .= '"'.$f.'" ' if (! -e $f);
}

system("touch $args") if ($tmpfiles);
 
system("open -a /Applications/Emacs.app $args");

# delay deletion because AE drag&drop doesn't work with non-existing documents
system("(sleep 3; rm $tmpfiles) &") if ($tmpfiles);
 
exit;

Maybe someone knows whether me using the Spacemacs distribution or the Zsh shell would break these approaches?
(RE Spacemacs, when I attempted to use @ChillingHsu's approach I tried placing the (server-start) line in init.el, as well as every possible section of my .spacemacs file without luck)

Hi SolidStill, as a fellow spacemacs user I also faced some issues getting this setup.

I've written a short blog post about my emacs/spacemacs installation and setup which hopefully might help you. I used a combination of the code snippets from here but had to change a few things. You will also need to disable all of the spacemacs server variables in your .spacemacs file. I detail this in the post though.

Best of luck.

Just scanned thorugh your blog post @aidanscannell; thanks v much for taking the time to reply - your post touches on a few key additional topics I've been trying to develop a decent understanding of: Latex authoring in emacs on macos, version-controlling emacs setups/configurations.

Funnily enough, I actually graduated from Bristol with a Maths BSci in 2010, never used that education in any meaningful way, and am now training myself up to get a job in data analysis. I'm looking to redevelop a technical mindset/mentality by getting into the guts of (and really understanding) all the tools/methods/theory I encounter along that journey. Your post really nails the kind of efficiently-verbose and well-reasoned exposition that is crucial in really developing understanding in a concept, as opposed to just becoming familiar with a concept.

In all honesty, the temptation to pester you with emacs-related technical support questions is probably going to be too strong to resist. I'm truly glad that I eventually noticed this post, "being less amateur with Github notifications" is def going on my learning-list. Thanks for the inspiration and kudos for helping deliver Skynet to mankind 😛

I wrote an Alfred workflow which supports emacs: https://github.com/willbchang/alfred-open-in-editor

Hi @mwolson, thanks for the update. I believe your starter script works for Nextstep port (although I haven't verify that by myself), but it not works for Mac port. Because Emacs Mac port lacks multi-tty support, which means, emacsclient from mac port can only able to create tty frames but not GUI frames.

@railwaycat This seems outdated. I'm able to open GUI emacs from emacsclient now. Could you update instructions for this? However, the Emacs server in GUI app won't run in the background. C-x C-x the last window closes the app and also the server. This behavior is different from the official Emacs build. Their Emacs.app can run without any window.