start-emacs-lisp-interface

Arguments: &optional use-background-streams emacs-listener-number port announce-to-file

This function starts the emacs-lisp interface. In general, in order for it to have effect, Lisp must have been started as a subprocess of Emacs using fi:common-lisp, as described in eli.htm, but see the information under Starting the interface after Lisp is already running below.

When a Lisp is started with fi:common-lisp,

-e (start-emacs-lisp-interface t)

(or an equivalent form) is made a command line argument to Lisp. If, because command-line arguments are ignored, the Emacs-Lisp interface does not start up (or if it does not start up for any other reason), you can start it directly from within Lisp by calling this function.

The default value of use-background-streams is t. If use-background-streams is true, then the function use-background-streams is used to initialize background streams. The value of use-background-streams is passed to the function use-background-streams (see Debugging background processes in debugging.htm).

The remaining optional arguments should only be specified when starting using a file as described under the heading Starting the interface after Lisp is already running below.

The typical form that will start the Emacs-Lisp interface is:

(excl:start-emacs-lisp-interface t)

It is not an error to call this function when the Emacs-Lisp interface is in fact running. Doing so will cause some printing to the listener but have no other effect.

Starting the interface after Lisp is already running

You can start the interface after Lisp has been started, typically not in Emacs, with this function and the emacs-lisp interface function fi:start-interface-via-file. This is typically done for debugging a running but apparently broken process. To do this, in Lisp call a form like:

(excl:start-emacs-lisp-interface t 1 7666 "~/.eli-startup")

Note we have specified the emacs-listener-number as 1 (it must not be a number already used for a *common-lisp* buffer, if any exist), the port as 7666 (it can be any valid port number on the machine that is not already in use), and announce-to-file as the file that will be used (it will be created for this call). Then, sometime later on the emacs side, do this (the host is "pie"):

(fi:start-interface-via-file "pie" "*common-lisp*" "~/.eli-startup")

The arguments are the host running Lisp, the buffer name, and the filename.

See eli.htm for information on the Emacs-Lisp interface.

Copyright (c) 1998-2002, Franz Inc. Oakland, CA., USA. All rights reserved.
Documentation for Allegro CL version 6.2. This page was not revised from the 6.1 page.
Created 2002.2.26.