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Asked: 2026-05-10T15:25:42+00:00

I like to use Emacs’ shell mode, but it has a few deficiencies. One

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I like to use Emacs’ shell mode, but it has a few deficiencies. One of those is that it’s not smart enough to open a new buffer when a shell command tries to invoke an editor. For example with the environment variable VISUAL set to vim I get the following from svn propedit:

 $ svn propedit svn:externals .  'svn-prop.tmp' 2L, 149C[1;1H ~                                                                               [4;1H~                                                                               [5;1H~                                                                               [6;1H~                                                                               [7;1H~             ...

(It may be hard to tell from the representation, but it’s a horrible, ugly mess.)

With VISUAL set to 'emacs -nw', I get

 $ svn propedit svn:externals . emacs: Terminal type 'dumb' is not powerful enough to run Emacs. It lacks the ability to position the cursor. If that is not the actual type of terminal you have, use the Bourne shell command `TERM=... export TERM' (C-shell: `setenv TERM ...') to specify the correct type.  It may be necessary to do `unset TERMINFO' (C-shell: `unsetenv TERMINFO') as well.svn: system('emacs -nw svn-prop.tmp') returned 256

(It works with VISUAL set to just emacs, but only from inside an Emacs X window, not inside a terminal session.)

Is there a way to get shell mode to do the right thing here and open up a new buffer on behalf of the command line process?

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1 Answer

  1. You can attach to an Emacs session through emacsclient. First, start the emacs server with 

    M-x server-start

    or add (server-start) to your .emacs. Then,

    export VISUAL=emacsclient

    Edit away.

    Note:

    • The versions of emacs and emacsclient must agree. If you have multiple versions of Emacs installed, make sure you invoke the version of emacsclient corresponding to the version of Emacs running the server.
    • If you start the server in multiple Emacs processes/frames (e.g., because (server-start) is in your .emacs), the buffer will be created in the last frame to start the server.
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