Question

I’m looking to set up an emacs server such that the files specified by emacsclients
are relative to the emacsclients’ filesystem and not the server’s filesystem. For instance, if I set up an
emacs server on a machine “darkstar” and I connect to this server through an emacsclient
on “brightstar” with the command

emacsclient -nw '~/fantastic'

The emacs server will attempt to edit the file ~/fantastic on darkstar and not on
brightstar. Id like the reverse of this. I’m open to all sorts of zany suggestions.

*Background note:
I want an emacs process that tracks all the buffers I open on various
machines, keeps track of my color settings, bindings, etc. I want all of this
available and replicated on any arbitrary machine with emacs. The emacs server
seems to do just this but without the ability to edit client’s local files!

Answer 1

You should be able to set to set up a shell function which uses tramp, like

edit-local() {
    emacsclient -e "(find-file (expand-file-name \"$1\" \"/ssh:$USER@$(hostname):$PWD\"))"
}

Of course you may have to change the tramp protocol to whatever you have setup.