How to keep buffers when closing only Emacs client?

Question

I use Emacs 29.1.

When I open Emacsclient, I do it with the following command:

emacsclient -a -c --create-frame --no-wait

Then the situation: When I open Emacsclient, and visit a file foobar.txt. A buffer is created in the client.

To kill a Emacsclient window, I do it with 'M-x kill-frame' command.

But the buffer foobar.txt also disappear from the daemon. I want to retain the buffers, regardless of I close the frame or not. I want to remove buffers only with deleting buffers.

I want to keep the buffer foobar.txt, regardless if the client windows are open or not. The buffer foobar.txt should be staying in the Emacs daemon.

When looking for a solution, I found another this thread: Kill buffer when closing emacs with emacsclient

When checking server-kill-new-buffers, this is set on t.

I set this in Emacs client window on nil:

Then I visit the file foobar.txt again, and close the Emacsclient.

When open another Emacsclient instance, I see the buffer foobar.txt is not saved in memory.

TLDR: How can I leave the buffers intact inside daemon, when closing the only Emacsclient window with kill-frame command?

I added a bounty to this question, because after 10 months this question doesn't still get solved.

Answer 1

We're still missing some details in your question. However, the command you're using:

emacsclient -a -c --create-frame --no-wait

Doesn't actually work as written. The -a flag requires an argument, which can be just "". And -c and --create-frame do the same thing, so you only need one of them. If you start Emacs this way:

emacsclient -a "" --create-frame --no-wait

when there's no emacs server/daemon already running a new one will be started (that's what -a "" does). The new server won't have any of the buffers from your last session available, since it's a fresh process.

If there is a running server, then the new client will have access to all the buffers in that server. But you note that you're killing client frames with kill-frame. There is no function named kill-frame. There is a function kill-emacs, which will kill not just the client frame, but the running server. If you use that command to kill your client, the next time you call emacsclient with the -a "" --create-frame arguments, you're actually starting a new server.

If that's the case, you should be able to resolve your problem by killing clients with delete-frame, which is bound to C-x 5 0 by default.

Answer 2

It turned out this behaviour was caused by Doom configuration, and not by Emacs ietself. I reported it here: https://github.com/doomemacs/doomemacs/issues/8150