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In my setup, I have several (GNU) Emacs instances running simultaneously on my local machine, one for each project or task that I'm currently working on.

I would like to be able to open buffers in an already running Emacs instance, for example by a command like 

$ emacs file.txt

The typically suggested solution to this is to run Emacs in server mode. However, this conflicts with my use of multiple Emacs instances, as I understand that by default only a single emacsclient can be active at any time.

How can I open files as buffers in existing (possibly multiple) Emacs instances? The final goal is to open the file in the Emacs instance that is in the current workspace (Compiz), or to create such an instance if it doesn't already exist.

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Felix Hoffmann
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  • I edited the title a bit. It seems you're asking about how to have multiple Emacs severs running simultaneously. Please correct me if I got it wrong. – Malabarba Sep 30 '14 at 10:29
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    The answers here are likely to be of interest: http://emacs.stackexchange.com/q/41/93 – nispio Sep 30 '14 at 10:31
  • If that's the case I'll remove my answer, because I thought he was asking for different clients in different workspaces. – Boccaperta-IT Sep 30 '14 at 10:31
  • @Malabarba I'm honestly not sure! The reason I put the question more broadly is because I don't know whether answering the question "How can I have multiple Emacs servers?" is the right approach to answer my problem "How can I having multiple Emacs instances and open files as buffers in one of them from the command line?". I do see however, that achieving to have multiple servers running could be a potential way of solving my problem. – Felix Hoffmann Sep 30 '14 at 12:13

2 Answers2

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This answer has the general method, though the question was different than yours.

You can use emacs --daemon=workspaceN combined with emacsclient -s workspaceN to have an emacs daemon on workspace N. If you need multiple, simply do workspace1, workspace2, etc. Note that the daemon name is entirely arbitrary and you can use whatever naming scheme you like.

Determining which workspace you're in will likely be more difficult, and I do not know how to determine it. If you have an environment variable then a shell alias or function will likely do the trick (if you only want to open things via shell).

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J David Smith
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    To add to your answer, `server-name` enables doing the same thing without having to use an Emacs daemon. Just set it before running `(server-start)`. It's possible to set it to a value depending on the value of `command-line-args`, to simulate something similar to the `--daemon` invocation – Sigma Sep 30 '14 at 15:18
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    @Sigma Thanks! While the `--daemon` solution does work in principle, I'm now running into some trouble with the last part of my question, "... or to create such an instance if it doesn't already exist." I can either pass `-c` to `emacsclient` or not, but there doesn't seem to be something in between (which I would need). Could you elobarte on your solution? How can I set `server-name` before running `server-start` (set-variable doesn't do the trick as the variable doesn't yet exist). An init.el solution, setting `server-name` depeding on command line args, would be just what I'm looking for. – Felix Hoffmann Sep 30 '14 at 16:06
  • `(set-variable 'server-name "foo")` worked for me. Did you remember to quote `server-name`? Also: you can use `server-running-p` to check if the server is already running. – J David Smith Oct 01 '14 at 13:42
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As far as I know, you can use Emacs in server mode to get what you are looking for. I often have multiple emacsclient instances in different workspaces, which, for instance, enables me to easily share buffers between them.

Here's what I do:

  • start emacs --daemon in my .xinitrc
  • run emacsclient -c in workspace 2
  • run emacsclient -t in workspace 1 (when I usually keep a fullscreen tmux)

I can edit buffers in each instance, moving quickly from term to GUI and viceversa.

You can find more approaches in Start two separate emacs daemons for console and GUI

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Boccaperta-IT
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