launching "emacsclient" makes the powerline looks bad

[jonesberg]

I've been using emacs client with a command similar to this

#!/bin/bash
exec emacsclient --alternate-editor="" -c "$@"

Since I installed spacemacs, launching this command makes the powerline looks bloated (see screenshot) :

Launching emacs "the regular way", I get the expected powerline.

Thanks!

[smartass101]

I can reproduce this problem.

However, if I launch emacs the regular way and then just connect to it via emacsclient -c, the mode line works correctly. So I think this has something to do with the fact that the -a '' option runs emacs --daemon as described in the man page emacsclient(1)

 -a, --alternate-editor=EDITOR
          if the Emacs server is not running, run the specified editor instead. 
          This can also be specified via the `ALTERNATE_EDITOR' environment variable.
          If the value of EDITOR is the empty string, run `emacs --daemon' to start Emacs
          in daemon mode, and try to connect to it.

Therefore, I think this might be related to #1894

Currently a simple workaround is to

1. specify emacs as the alternate editor
2. set dotspacemacs-persistent-server to non-nil

because on first run that will start spacemacs and the server and afterwards it will connect to the server. The magic command thus is

emacsclient -c -a emacs

(it works with -t instead of -c too, of course)

I would like to add that the -a emacs option is a very convenient way of starting the daemon in a lazy way on demand. Since spacemacs seems to prefer the lazy-loading approach to reduce loading times, I think that this on demand loading option should be mentioned in the documentation, because I think it's better than the current approach when one has to remember to first start a proper emacs and later use emacsclient.

So the question is whether to

• mention this -a emacs approach in the documentation as the recommended way and close this issue (and possibly emacs --daemon weird behaviour #1894 unless somebody really needs --daemon) in favor of this workaround
• properly fix emacs --daemon weird behaviour #1894 by making sure --daemon works and afterwards mention -a '' in the documentation as a a convenient way to load emacs on demand

[TheBB]

I agree this is likely the same as #1894 and should be fixed by #2652 when that PR becomes more mature. I'm tagging this as a duplicate since #1894 has more information.

[StreakyCobra]

@jonesberg Now that spacemacs is using spaceline, can you verify this bug still occurs for you? I can not reproduce it. I also know it can be related to #1894, but you know… just to be sure ☺️

[jonesberg]

It doesn't on my side either. :-)

Thank you so much!

[StreakyCobra]

👍 Nice. I'm happy it's solved for you :-)