Subject: Re: bug#18431: 24.3; emacsclient spurious error message

From: Rustom Mody <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 9 Sep 2014 21:31:15 +0530

On Tue, Sep 9, 2014 at 9:20 PM, Glenn Morris <[email-masked]> wrote:
> Rustom Mody wrote:
>
>> Error (warning) message as follows is given:
>>
>> emacsclient: can't find socket; have you started the server?
>> To start the server in Emacs, type "M-x server-start".
>>
>> After printing which, it starts ok, editing the file!!
>
> It it is letting you know that it tried to contact an existing Emacs
> instance but failed, and it shares the message text with the non
> --alternate-editor case. Yes, the message could be special-cased for
> --alternate-editor, but it doesn't seem like a big deal.

Sure its minor.
Nevertheless its a bogus error message.
Also as you say the messages are shared; they are not the same:

Without alternate
$ emacsclient foo
emacsclient: can't find socket; have you started the server?
To start the server in Emacs, type "M-x server-start".
emacsclient: No socket or alternate editor.  Please use:

    --socket-name
    --server-file      (or environment variable EMACS_SERVER_FILE)
    --alternate-editor (or environment variable ALTERNATE_EDITOR)

With alternate
$ emacsclient -a emacs foo
emacsclient: can't find socket; have you started the server?
To start the server in Emacs, type "M-x server-start".

In any case thanks for working on emacs and yeah its not a big deal!
Rusi