e

Command for running GNU Emacs. Because I almost never work on a remote server, if I'm working on a remote server, I needed a command that could open a file in my local Emacs while I'm in a shell on a remote machine. e is the solution to this.

It makes the following assumptions:

• GNU Emacs is running locally with the Emacs server running.
• sshd is running on the local machine and the servers can connect back.
• Public keys have been placed in all the right places (although GNU Emacs will take care of prompting for a password if required, but that'd get very old very quick).

When run, e then uses ssh to call back to the local machine, running emacsclient and passing it a tramp filename. It also does some simple tests to check if it should ask tramp to sudo the edit too (so watch out for that: an attempt to edit a file you don't own might actually work if you have sudo rights on the remote machine).

It also works locally too, opening a file in a locally-running Emacs server, or kicking off a new copy of Emacs if one isn't available.