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:
(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)
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, term-mode and
eshell-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:
(add-hook 'shell-mode-hook 'with-editor-export-editor)
(add-hook 'term-exec-hook 'with-editor-export-editor)
(add-hook 'eshell-mode-hook 'with-editor-export-editor)
Some variants of this function exist, these two forms are equivalent:
(add-hook 'shell-mode-hook
(apply-partially 'with-editor-export-editor "GIT_EDITOR"))
(add-hook 'shell-mode-hook 'with-editor-export-git-editor)
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.