Question

My goal is to remotely write code. So far, I have been using ssh + screen + an editor (e.g. vim).

I understand using a local emacs (or vim), one can edit remote files. But once the local emacs is closed and I want to reopen it (or open it using another computer), I would need to reopen all the buffers again.

Is there a way to set up a emacs server on the remote machine and I could simply access it using a local emacs client? Which essentially simulate the screen behavior.

Answer 1

I think you might find your answer here;

http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/emacs/Emacs-Server.html

According to http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/emacs/emacsclient-Options.html#emacsclient-Options ;

An Emacs server usually uses an operating system feature called a “local socket” to listen for connections. Some operating systems, such as Microsoft Windows, do not support local sockets; in that case, Emacs uses TCP instead. When you start the Emacs server, Emacs creates a server file containing some TCP information that emacsclient needs for making the connection. By default, the server file is in ~/.emacs.d/server/. On Microsoft Windows, if emacsclient does not find the server file there, it looks in the .emacs.d/server/ subdirectory of the directory pointed to by the APPDATA environment variable. You can tell emacsclient to use a specific server file with the ‘-f’ or ‘–server-file’ option, or by setting the EMACS_SERVER_FILE environment variable.

Even if local sockets are available, you can tell Emacs to use TCP by setting the variable server-use-tcp to t. One advantage of TCP is that the server can accept connections from remote machines. For this to work, you must (i) set the variable server-host to the hostname or IP address of the machine on which the Emacs server runs, and (ii) provide emacsclient with the server file. (One convenient way to do the latter is to put the server file on a networked file system such as NFS.)

When the Emacs server is using TCP, the variable server-port determines the port number to listen on; the default value, nil, means to choose a random port when the server starts.

Of course, make sure to adjust your firewall settings on the server side, so that clients may connect to the machine running the emacs-server.