I recently installed MSYS2 with Emacs (64-bit) and am currently calling that Emacs from a Windows shortcut. It works fine, exactly like if I had downloaded the Emacs executable for Windows and unzipped it somewhere. Which is to say, it picks up all of my Windows environment variables and such.
For various reasons, I would prefer to run Emacs from an MSYS2 bash shell and use the environment variables in that shell. As it stands, I can open an MSYS2 MINGW64 shell, type emacs on the command line, and everything works the way I want it to.
Now I would like to package the whole thing up into either a one-liner I can stuff into to a Windows shortcut or a script I can call from a Windows shortcut. With the help of this post, I came up with the following:
C:\msys64\bin\mintty.exe /bin/env MSYSTEM=MINGW64 /bin/bash -l -c /mingw64/bin/emacs
This successfully opens Emacs, but fails to load the .bashrc file that I source in .bash_profile in the usual manner:
if [ -f "${HOME}/.bashrc" ] ; then
source "${HOME}/.bashrc"
fi
I define a function in .bashrc that I call in .bash_profile, so this is kind of important. It did not take much effort to realize that the problem is that HOME is not defined, so .bashrc is simply not found. However, if I define HOME like so:
C:\msys64\bin\mintty.exe /bin/env HOME=/home/alanhr MSYSTEM=MINGW64 /bin/bash -l -c /mingw64/bin/emacs
I get exactly the same result: .bashrc is not found and my function is not executed. Here's where it gets weird. If I simply leave off the call to emacs like so:
C:\msys64\bin\mintty.exe /bin/env HOME=/home/alanhr MSYSTEM=MINGW64 /bin/bash -l
I get a bash shell where .bashrc has been loaded correctly and my function is correctly executed. I can type emacs on the command line and have it function exactly as I want it to.
This feels like a classic case of missing something that is right under my nose, but I have read the bash man page to no avail. Does anyone have any idea how I can make this work?
It is the -i option to load .bashrc. The following works for me:
C:\msys64\usr\bin\mintty.exe -w hide /bin/env MSYSTEM=MINGW64 /bin/bash -l -i -c /mingw64/bin/emacs
I tried to set emacsformaxosx as the emacs command called from the command line (in order to install mu4e) by putting the following inside /usr/bin/emacs:
#!/bin/bash
/Applications/Emacs.app/Contents/MacOS/Emacs "$#"
When calling . /usr/bin/emacs emacs get launched but when calling which emacs I get nothing in my prompt, neither do I with just emacs. whereis emacs seem to find well that emacs is in /usr/bin/emacs.
You need to run
chmod a+x /usr/bin/emacs
to make the /usr/bin/emacs script executable.
The reason it works with the command
. /usr/bin/emacs
is that in that case, your shell sources the contents of the /usr/bin/emacs script and directly runs each command it finds there.
Also, note that since the shell script has nothing else to do after running emacs, you could add the command exec in front of the emacs command in the script so that the emacs process replaces the shell script process:
#!/bin/bash
exec /Applications/Emacs.app/Contents/MacOS/Emacs "$#"
How do I launch GUI Emacs from the command line in OSX?
I have downloaded and installed Emacs from http://emacsformacosx.com/.
I'll accept an answer fulfilling all of the following criteria:
The emacs window opens in front of my terminal window.
Typing "emacs" launches a GUI Emacs window. Finding files in that window will default to looking in the directory from where I started Emacs.
Typing "emacs foo.txt" when foo.txt exists launches a GUI Emacs window with foo.txt loaded.
Typing "emacs foo.txt" when foo.txt does not exist launches a GUI Emacs window with an empty text buffer named "foo.txt". Doing ^X^S in that buffer will save foo.txt in the directory from where I started Emacs.
Call the following script "emacs" and put it in your PATH somewhere:
#!/bin/sh
/Applications/Emacs.app/Contents/MacOS/Emacs "$#"
That covers #2, #3, and #4.
For #1, put this somewhere in your .emacs file:
(x-focus-frame nil)
The emacsformacosx.com site now has a How-To page, which is where the top snippet came from. There's more info there about running emacsclient and hooking Emacs up to git mergetool.
In your shell, alias the command 'emacs' to point to the OSX emacs application
In my shell (running the default bash), I have the following (in my .bashrc)
alias emacs='open -a /Applications/Emacs.app $1'
Then, typing emacs on the command line starts the emacs application.
I would, however, recommend that you open a copy of emacs and just keep it up and running. If that's the case, and you want to load a file into an existing copy of emacs, you can use the emacsclient by placing the following in your .bashrc:
alias ec='/Applications/Emacs.app/Contents/MacOS/bin/emacsclient'
Then add the following to your .emacs file to start the emacs server (which receives the emacsclient calls)
;;========================================
;; start the emacsserver that listens to emacsclient
(server-start)
Then you can type
ec .bashrc
to load a copy of .bashrc into an existing emacs session!
This improves on David Caldwell's answer by starting Emacs in the background:
#!/bin/sh
$(/Applications/Emacs.app/Contents/MacOS/Emacs "$#") &
As stated in the other answer, this covers #2, #3, and #4. For #1, put this somewhere in your .emacs file: (x-focus-frame nil).
Note that the following does not work for me -- it does not start Emacs in a directory specified on the command line (e.g. emacs .)
# NOT RECOMMENDED
#!/bin/sh
/Applications/Emacs.app/Contents/MacOS/Emacs "$#" &
I assume you either:
Start the emacs daemon on login
Have (server-start) in your .emacs
Don't mind having lots of separate copies of emacs running
If so, then I think this satisfies the original four criteria, plus one more:
The emacs window opens in front of my terminal window.
it will always open to the foreground (with x-focus-frame).
Typing "emacs" launches a GUI Emacs window. Finding files in that window will default to looking in the directory from where I started Emacs.
It will open an existing emacs window in dired mode.
Typing "emacs foo.txt" when foo.txt exists launches a GUI Emacs window with foo.txt loaded.
If emacs is already running and has a server, then it will open in the existing window and come to the foreground.
Typing "emacs foo.txt" when foo.txt does not exist launches a GUI Emacs window with an empty text buffer named "foo.txt". Doing ^X^S in that buffer will save foo.txt in the directory from where I started Emacs.
Correct.
One extra:
Control returns to the terminal session immediately after typing the command.
~/bin/emacs
#!/bin/bash
EMACSPATH=/Applications/Emacs.app/Contents/MacOS
# Check if an emacs server is available
# (by checking to see if it will evaluate a lisp statement)
if ! (${EMACSPATH}/bin/emacsclient --eval "t" 2> /dev/null > /dev/null )
then
# There is no server available so,
# Start Emacs.app detached from the terminal
# and change Emac's directory to PWD
nohup ${EMACSPATH}/Emacs --chdir "${PWD}" "${#}" 2>&1 > /dev/null &
else
# The emacs server is available so use emacsclient
if [ -z "${#}" ]
then
# There are no arguments, so
# tell emacs to open a new window
${EMACSPATH}/bin/emacsclient --eval "(list-directory \"${PWD}\")"
else
# There are arguments, so
# tell emacs to open them
${EMACSPATH}/bin/emacsclient --no-wait "${#}"
fi
# Bring emacs to the foreground
${EMACSPATH}/bin/emacsclient --eval "(x-focus-frame nil)"
fi
On Mountain Lion, I am using Yamamoto Mitsuharu's port https://github.com/railwaycat/emacs-mac-port with the following alias:
alias emacs=/Applications/Emacs.app/Contents/MacOS/Emacs
and it satisfies all of your criteria.
Just built emacs with homebrew package manager according to this guide:
http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/EmacsForMacOS
with brew install --cocoa emacs
After that one should launch the .app version to get gui, which in my case was /usr/local/Cellar/emacs/24.3/Emacs.app/Contents/MacOS/Emacs
Further improving on David James' response the following works for me:
Per instructions to open a file from a terminal found at http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/EmacsForMacOS#toc20
open -a /Applications/Emacs.app <file-name>
combining this with David Jame's response I've created the following emax bash script and placed it in my path at ~/bin
#!/bin/bash
(open -a /Applications/Emacs.app "$#") &
Caveat: in order to get emacs to open the current directory in Dired by name mode, you need to use
emax .
Environment:
OS X Yosemite Version 10.10.2
GNU Emacs 24.4.2 (x86_64-apple-darwin14.0.0, NS apple-appkit-1343.14)
of 2014-11-13
Simple solution...
A lot of very complex solutions to this problem are posted here. That's fair because it seems non-trivial.
However, this solution works really well for me.
ec() {
emacsclient -n $# 2> /dev/null
if [[ $? == 1 ]]; then
open -a Emacs.app -- $#
fi
}
Usage
ec file [...]
Let's unpack what's happening:
pass all the ec arguments to emacsclient and don't (-n) wait for emacs before continuing.
If Emacs is already running, we're all done and you're editing.
swallow up the error message posted by emacsclient when there's no emacs running. (2> /dev/null)
Manually handle the exit code 1 ([[ $? == 1 ]])
open Emacs.app and pass file arguments to it (paths will be correctly opened.)
You're all done, and Emacs has opened your files.
The other answers here didn't quite work for me. In particular, on my machine, the bash script
#!/bin/sh
/Applications/Emacs.app/Contents/MacOS/Emacs "$#"
always opens emacs in the home directory. To get it to open in the current working directory, I had to do
#!/bin/sh
/Applications/Emacs.app/Contents/MacOS/Emacs "$PWD/$#"
instead.
Compile Emacs according to the following steps:
./configure --with-x --prefix=/usr
make
sudo make install
And your done! It may help to download and install XQuartz, but that's just my opinion.
This is my script for open emacs/emacsclient on osx.
#!/bin/bash
# Ensure (server-start) is added in your emacs init script.
EMACS=/Applications/MacPorts/Emacs.app/Contents/MacOS/Emacs
EMACSCLIENT=/Applications/Macports/Emacs.app/\
Contents/MacOS/bin/emacsclient
# test if client already exsit.
$EMACSCLIENT -e "(frames-on-display-list)" &>/dev/null
# use emacsclient to connect existing server.
if [ $? -eq 0 ]; then
$EMACSCLIENT -n "$#"
# open emacs.app instead.
else
`$EMACS "$#"` &
fi
In all of the above when using "open" - make sure you use the "--args" option
Do not do this:
alias emacs='open -a /Applications/Emacs.app $1'
Instead this:
alias emacs='open -a /Applications/Emacs.app --args $1'
the --args option prevents "open" from consuming various options intended for Emacs.
The top answer is good, but I wanted the emacs process to run in the background so I could still use my shell. This answer appeared to do what I wanted, but didn't start emacs in the right directory, meaning absolute paths were required (or hacks to append pwd to the paths which wouldn't work in all cases). Furthermore, simply using & meant that if I killed the terminal, emacs would also be killed.
I decided to use screen and a bash function, and the following solution works for me on macOS 10.15.6 and emacs 26.2 installed with brew:
function emacs() {
screen -d -m /Applications/Emacs.app/Contents/MacOS/Emacs "$#"
}
For the meaning of the -d -m command line flags, they have a special meaning when used together and so can essentially be thought of as one command line flag. The explanation is in the manpage:
Start screen in "detached" mode. This creates a new session but doesn't attach to it. This is useful for system startup scripts.
open_emacs() {
num=$(ps aux | grep -E "[E]macs-x86_64-10_14 --|[e]macs --" | wc -l)
if [ $num -eq 0 ]; then
echo "## starting emacs"
# Run in a subshell to remove notifications and close STDOUT and STDERR:
(&>/dev/null emacsclient -t -q &)
fi
}
alias e="open_emacs"
Following line (&>/dev/null emacsclient -t -q &) will start the emacs daemon if it is not running on the background.
macOS may have defined the app name starting with E (ex: Emacs-x86_64-10_14.app), based on that you can check whether the emacs daemon running on the background or not.
Just want to update a response to this question. Since it is still a relevant question, but now there is an easier solution:
brew install --cask emacs
When this installs Emacs, it does the behavior you requested, without further intervention. It even runs the Emacs Server on startup.
Files installed/linked by default:
ebrowse -> /Applications/Emacs.app/Contents/MacOS/bin/ebrowse
emacs -> /Applications/Emacs.app/Contents/MacOS/Emacs
emacsclient -> /Applications/Emacs.app/Contents/MacOS/bin/emacsclient
etags -> /Applications/Emacs.app/Contents/MacOS/bin/etags
BTW, this is now a recommended way of installing Emacs on MacOS:
https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/download.html#nonfree
I am using MAC OX 10.6 , and install the emacs from here http://emacsformacosx.com/
I want to know how to start it in terminal, so my ecb can open current directory
It is actually quite easy, just run it from terminal like this:
/Applications/Emacs.app/Contents/MacOS/Emacs -nw
the -nw option means to start emacs without the gui frame.
You can put the following in your shell (on my mac .zshenv) :
alias Emacs="/Applications/Emacs.app/Contents/MacOS/Emacs -nw"
Then I just have two commands:
Emacs : for emacs version 24
emacs : for the apple version of emacs
Of course you can just alias the Emacs.app to emacs, but this allows me to customize the two differently - for instance Emacs 24 allows me to use list-packages and so forth. emacs 22 ignores most of this, so I can always revert to a 'bare metal' emacs if need be. Your usage may vary, but if you don't remember the arguments to emacs you can find them by doing this:
emacs --help
Some interesting ones:
Emacs.app --fullscreen
Emacs.app --line-spacing
Emacs.app --vertical-scroll-bars
More info here : http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/emacs/Option-Index.html#Option-Index
The answer from #Toymakerii is a good one, but you might also consider adding:
export PATH=/Applications/Emacs.app/Contents/MacOS/bin:$PATH
This way, you can use emacsclient to open files in an already-running Emacs instance:
emacsclient -t SOMEFILE # Open SOMEFILE in a terminal frame
emacsclient -c SOMEFILE # Open SOMEFILE in a new graphical frame
Depending on your Emacs version, you might need to put the following in your ~/.emacs.d/init.el (or ~/.emacs, if you're old-fashioned):
(require 'server)
(unless (server-running-p)
(server-start))
In my ~/.profile i have the following:
function emacs
{
if [ -e "$#" ]
then
command open -a emacs "${#}"
else
touch "$#"
command open -a emacs "${#}"
fi
}
(The reason for having a function is to make it also work when the specified file does not yet exist when emacs is started)
By default terminal will open /usr/bin/emacs on OS X.
You can change this behavior by changing what the "emacs" command will do. Open up ~/.profile and type the following:
alias emacs=open /Applications/Emacs.app
The next time you open a prompt this change will be active. (or you can run "source ~/.profile")
The easiest is to simply do
open /Applications/Emacs.app --args foo
An alias would then be
alias emacs=open /Applications/Emacs.app --args "${#}"
or in csh/tcsh
alias emacs 'open /Applications/Emacs.app --args $1'
edit: this seems to need a full path to open the correct file... I don't know if this is a problem with Emacs.app or with tcsh
OS Mac OS X 10.6.6
emacs 23.2.1
I'm currently trying to install magit on carbon emacs using their proposed make solution. I'm an almost complete makefile newby so I might be on the complete wrong path altogether.
Makefile displays:
%.elc: %.el
$(BATCH) --eval '(byte-compile-file "$<")'
which gets expanded to:
emacs -batch -q -no-site-file -eval "(setq load-path (cons (expand-file-name \".\") load-path))" --eval '(byte-compile-file "magit.el")'
What I do understand. However it comes back with:
Cannot open load file: subst-ksc
What after a bit of googling reveals some missing libraries. I also realized that the emacs referenced in the expanded command is pointing to /usr/bin/emacs which is one big file, I don't see the normal lisp / site-lisp / etc directories. I also know that my prefered emacs is carbon emacs located in /Application/Emacs.app which just opens when clicking on it, or alternatively, I can open it in with the terminal:
open /Application/MyApp.app
Finally the title question: How can I make Makefile using the Emacs.app on the applications directory? I hope someone here knows the answer, or can point me to alternatives.
regards,
Jeroen.
bash-3.2$ EMACSLOADPATH=/usr/share/emacs/22.1/site-lisp:/usr/share/emacs/22.1/lisp emacs - batch -eval '(print "hi")'
"hi"
bash-3.2$ emacs -batch -eval '(print "hi")'
Cannot open load file: subst-ksc
bash-3.2$
bash-3.2$ emacs -batch -eval '(print emacs-version)'
Cannot open load file: subst-ksc
bash-3.2$ unset EMACSLOADPATH
bash-3.2$ emacs -batch -eval '(print emacs-version)'
"22.1.1"
I had the same error Cannot open load file: subst-ksc on OS X Maverick running
cask exec emacs --no-site-file --no-site-lisp --batch \
\
-f batch-byte-compile projectile.el
I solved it with the method given here.
Replace the /usr/bin/emacs file by the following script:
#!/bin/sh
/Applications/Emacs.app/Contents/MacOS/Emacs "$#"
With that manner the emacs command will run your actual Emacs.