Subject: When emacs-pgtk fails to find a Wayland display available, it fails to run instead of opening in -nw mode
From: Gunnar Wolf <[email-masked]>
To: [email-masked]
Date: Thu, 25 Jul 2024 20:37:40 -0600
List-Id: <debbugs-submit.debbugs.gnu.org>

Package: emacs

I have Emacs installed in all of my systems. Paricularly, I have
emacs-pgtk all systems where I often use a graphical environment (and
emacs-nox in those where I don't).

Back when I used X11, if I started Emacs and had no $DISPLAY set, it
would open in a terminal. With emacs-pgtk, the behavior is not the
same:

    $ emacs foobar

    (emacs:3988): Gtk-WARNING **: 19:19:10.887: cannot open display:
    $

This impacted me because I neede to use a remote machine to do work
via scripts (i.e. dch, debcommit) that call /usr/bin/editor and I
found impossible to hand-specify emacs to use -nw; I ended up
installing emacs-nox, but I don't find it to be an acceptable,
transparent-enough solution.

I think emacs-pgtk should behave just as emacs-gtk, falling back to
the console if a windowed environment is not found.

Thank you in advance!