lock mechanism like in desktop.el (was: accidentally started gnus)

[Reiner Steib]

[ From the Gnus list, adding emacs-devel. ]

On Sun, Aug 30 2009, Graham Murray wrote:

> Tim Landscheidt <address@hidden> writes:
[ citation added ... ]
>> Dan Christensen <address@hidden> wrote:
>>> It's amazing how often this has saved me from having two copies of Gnus
>>> running! 
>>> 
>>> (add-hook 'gnus-before-startup-hook 'jdc-gnus-lock)
>>> 
>>> (defun jdc-gnus-lock ()
>>>   (or (equal 0 (shell-command "lockfile -r0 ~/Gnus/lock"))
>>>       (y-or-n-p "Lockfile exists.  Steal lock? ")
>>>       (progn (kill-buffer "*Group*")
>>>          (error "Unable to lock ~/Gnus/lock"))))
>>> 
>>> (add-hook 'gnus-after-exiting-gnus-hook 'jdc-gnus-unlock)
>>> 
>>> (defun jdc-gnus-unlock ()
>>>   (shell-command "rm -f ~/Gnus/lock"))

>> That sounds rather interesting. Any chance this could be in-
>> tegrated into the main source?

desktop.el has a lock mechanism that is independent of external
programs.  I'd prefer such a solution.  Maybe the lock mechanism in
desktop.el could be made more generic (and moved from desktop.el to
simple.el/files.el?)  so that other packages could use it without
duplicating the code (and loading desktop.el).

> Or change it so that instead of failing if gnus is already running it
> automatically runs 'gnus-slave' instead.

Prompting could offer this as well.

Bye, Reiner.
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