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[[!meta copyright="Copyright © 2022 Niklas Eklund"]]
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# Getting detached from Emacs
Niklas Eklund (he/him, <mailto:niklas.eklund@posteo.net>)
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As an enthusiastic Emacs user I would find myself replacing the usage
of an external terminal emulator with the Emacs alternative
interfaces. This included using packages such as dired for file
management, magit for git and proced for processes. However I always
kept a terminal around for running shell commands. These were
commands that I knew would either, take a long time to run, produce a
lot of rapid text output or that I would run on a remote machine. In
the remote case I would rely on tmux to be able to detach and let the
command run even when I wasn't connected.
To rid me of the need for the terminal emulator in these situations I
developed the detached.el package. It is a package that builds on top
of the dtach program, which provides the ability to detach and
re-attach to processes, to offload Emacs from these processes. The
package seamlessly integrates the ability to detach and attach into
Emacs, and offers integration with many built in features such as
shell, eshell, compile, org and dired.
In this talk I will demonstrate the features of this alternative way
to run detached processes and how the package can leverage built in
Emacs functionality to provide a great experience. The user interface
will be showcased and how the processes essentially becomes text,
which fits very well into Emacs.
# Bio
- Blog: <https://niklaseklund.srht.site/>
- Source code: <https://sr.ht/~niklaseklund/>
My name is Niklas Eklund. I am 35 years young and I live in Gothenburg
(Sweden) with my wife and our dog. In my daily work, I write code in
C++ and Python. My free time I dedicate to music, board-games, improvement,
and of course, Emacs.
More than 4 years has passed since I first started using Emacs and
there is so much to like about it: its community, the ethics and how
it encourage me to experiment and explore. Whether it is about writing
a small function, or a package, the ability to mold Emacs to what
makes sense to us as individuals is something to cherish.
# Discussion
## Questions and answers
- Q: Can it replace ssh+tmux for persistent sessions on remote hosts?
- A: Not yet; being considered for future work.
- Q: I see integration with projectile in the readme, does it also
integrate with project.el?
- A: Not yet but should be easy to add.
- Q: Can you detach a session from shell-mode and reattach from
eshell/vterm/term-mode? Or start a compile in shell-mode and attach
it from compilation-mode?
- A:
- Q: How do you talk to detached? Could it be feasible to run a child
emacs instead of detached? Would it make sense? Better communication
maybe?
- A:
- Q: How does it handle processes that require user input? (Usually to
type y/n, etc). M-x compile is great but can't handle user input.
- A:
- Q: Can you rerun a command (session?) but in another directory?
- A:
- Q: What are some other places where this might be useful? mu4e
fetching mail? Git processes started by Magit? What things would
you like to see working in a 1-2 year timeframe?
- A:
- Q: What are you currently excited about in emacs?
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