with-editor

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• With-Editor

This library makes it possible to reliably use the Emacsclient as the ~$EDITOR~ of child processes. It makes sure that they know how to call home. For remote processes a substitute is provided, which communicates with Emacs on standard output/input instead of using a socket as the Emacsclient does.

It provides the commands ~with-editor-async-shell-command~ and ~with-editor-shell-command~, which are intended as replacements for ~async-shell-command~ and ~shell-command~. They automatically export ~$EDITOR~ making sure the executed command uses the current Emacs instance as "the editor". With a prefix argument these commands prompt for an alternative environment variable such as ~$GIT_EDITOR~. To always use these variants add this to your init file:

#+begin_src emacs-lisp (define-key (current-global-map) [remap async-shell-command] 'with-editor-async-shell-command) (define-key (current-global-map) [remap shell-command] 'with-editor-shell-command) #+end_src

Alternatively use the global ~shell-command-with-editor-mode~, which always sets ~$EDITOR~ for all Emacs commands which ultimately use ~shell-command~ to asynchronously run some shell command.

The command ~with-editor-export-editor~ exports ~$EDITOR~ or another such environment variable in ~shell-mode~, ~eshell-mode~, ~term-mode~ and ~vterm-mode~ buffers. Use this Emacs command before executing a shell command which needs the editor set, or always arrange for the current Emacs instance to be used as editor by adding it to the appropriate mode hooks:

#+begin_src emacs-lisp (add-hook 'shell-mode-hook 'with-editor-export-editor) (add-hook 'eshell-mode-hook 'with-editor-export-editor) (add-hook 'term-exec-hook 'with-editor-export-editor) (add-hook 'vterm-mode-hook 'with-editor-export-editor) #+end_src

Some variants of this function exist, these two forms are equivalent:

#+begin_src emacs-lisp (add-hook 'shell-mode-hook (apply-partially 'with-editor-export-editor "GIT_EDITOR")) (add-hook 'shell-mode-hook 'with-editor-export-git-editor) #+end_src

This library can also be used by other packages which need to use the current Emacs instance as editor. In fact this library was written for Magit and its ~git-commit-mode~ and ~git-rebase-mode~. Consult ~git-rebase.el~ and the related code in ~magit-sequence.el~ for a simple example.