CODEWITHSUNDEEP
macosuser-interfaceemacsideterminal
Austin A
Austin A

Reputation: 3138

How to open emacs gui/ide from mac terminal?

I'm trying to open files up on emacs outside of the terminal. I prefer a gui/ide environment when I code instead of doing it through a terminal. I initially thought that typing emacs filename.py would open that file through Emacs.app, however it only allowed me to edit the file through the terminal. When this didn't work, I looked into editing the .profile and .emacs files in my home directory but this was to no avail.

Maybe this is more intuitive than what I've read but I can't seem to figure it out. Any help is appreciated.

Upvotes: 24

Views: 60118

Answers (6)

artronics
artronics

Reputation: 1496

brew doesn't have cask command anymore. I used brew install emacs and I can find Emacs app installed in my application directory. You can also head to https://emacsformacosx.com and download the .dmg file.

Upvotes: 0

grooveplex
grooveplex

Reputation: 2529

The modern way to go about this is by installing Emacs using Homebrew Cask:

brew cask install emacs

Source: this comment by Homebrew project leader Mike McQuaid, which reads:

Cocoa support for Emacs will not be accepted. This is provided by brew cask install emacs.

Upvotes: 6

katspaugh
katspaugh

Reputation: 17899

Assuming you have Emacs installed from Homebrew like this:

brew install emacs --with-cocoa

Just type the following command to open Emacs.app from terminal:

open -a Emacs filename.py

If you want all files opened in the same frame, instead of new frames, put this into your .emacs file:

(setq ns-pop-up-frames nil)

Upvotes: 42

Yogesh Sajanikar
Yogesh Sajanikar

Reputation: 1116

One should link emacs to /Applications if not already done,

brew linkapps emacs

to link the emacs to symlink emacs installed in Cellar. Once symlinked, you can open emacs by 

open -a emacs

as already pointed out by @katspaugh

Upvotes: 3

shosti
shosti

Reputation: 7422

The best way to open files in Emacs from the terminal is the emacsclient command, which will open the file in your existing Emacs app (preventing startup time). If you're on OSX and you installed Emacs through Homebrew, the emacsclient binary will already be set up. (In your Emacs config, you have to include (server-start) somewhere.)

If you actually want to spin up a new GUI app instance instead, you can set up your own shell script and put it in your PATH somewhere before the existing emacs binary. It sounds like you're using Homebrew, which sets up the emacs binary as the following shell script:

#!/bin/bash
/usr/local/Cellar/emacs/24.3/Emacs.app/Contents/MacOS/Emacs -nw  "$@"

The -nw is what prevents Emacs from opening in GUI mode. You can make your own emacs shell script and leave out -nw:

#!/bin/bash
/usr/local/Cellar/emacs/24.3/Emacs.app/Contents/MacOS/Emacs "$@"

Upvotes: 8

qaphla
qaphla

Reputation: 4733

To do what you want, you'd need to find the location of the actual binary contained in Emacs.app, and use that as the command instead of emacs. Most likely, it's at

/path/to/Emacs.app/Contents/MacOS/Emacs

Which, if you have Emacs.app in your Applications folder, as would be typical, would be

/Applications/Emacs.app/Contents/MacOS/Emacs

To set it up with a shorter command to use, you could try adding to your .profile (I don't know what shell you use) the following line, or whatever equivalent it has for your shell (This works for bash and zsh, at least):

alias emacsgui='/Applications/Emacs.app/Contents/MacOS/Emacs'

Upvotes: 6

Related Questions