Question

I have a large repository of C++ code on a remote cluster (linux OS). When I need to work on this code from my home computer (Ubuntu OS), I try to access these codes through emacs on X windows. However the X window connection is very slow making the editing a painful process. So I sometimes move files manually between my local drive and remote cluster to edit the files. My question is: is there a way to configure my local emacs, such that when I edit the file in my local space, it would automatically be backed up in the cluster where it can then be compiled?

UPDATE:1

I installed TRAMP and it works well for servers that can be connected directly. However I also have servers which can be connected only when I activate VPN. How to provide the VPN information to TRAMP to connect to this server?

The other question I had was how to stop the TRAMP when it waits for prompts from remote shell without having to kill the whole emacs buffer.

Answer 1

This is typically a use case where TRAMP would be useful.

Instead of connecting to the server using SSH and opening Emacs there with X forwarding, run Emacs on your box and open your files remotely using TRAMP. For example:

C-xC-f/ssh:user@host:/remote/path/to/the/fileRET

This way, your Emacs process runs locally, but all file operations (e.g. save, revert, …) are forwarded to the server, and all shell commands issued from TRAMP buffers also run on the remote server (this includes M-x compile)

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UPDATE:1

When TRAMP hangs waiting for a remote shell prompt (which tends to happen frequently for reasons which are still obscure to me), I usually kill the underlying ssh process (htop with tree-like view is a good tool to do this) . TRAMP notices this and automatically respawns the killed process to resume operations.