Re: Detecting if the Emacs server is running

[Ilya Zakharevich]

On 2011-03-18, Deniz Dogan <deniz.a.m.dogan@gmail.com> wrote:
> `--alternate-editor=COMMAND'
>      Specify a command to run if `emacsclient' fails to contact Emacs.
>      This is useful when running `emacsclient' in a script.  For
>      example, the following setting for the `EDITOR' environment
>      variable will always give you an editor, even if no Emacs server is
>      running:
>
>           EDITOR="emacsclient --alternate-editor emacs +%d %s"
>
>      As a special exception, if COMMAND is the empty string, then
>      `emacsclient' starts Emacs in daemon mode and then tries
>      connecting again.

Unfortunately, AFAIK, this piece of documentation is wrong.  One is
forced to use much more baroque ways to do "the right thing".  The bug
I suspect is emacsclient using some unportable switch (like
--daemon) for emacs, instead of using
  -f server-start
on platforms which do not support --daemon.  I needed to create a
batch file which does
   emacs -f server-start %*
and give its name as the argument to --alternate-editor...

Ilya