On emacs26, is it possible to halt initializing and attach to running emacs-server with init.el?

Question

I'm using emacs26 on macOS and using server-client for the fast initialization.

However, it's a bit annoying that a new emacs instance is always spawning when I run "Emacs.app" with SpotLight instead of running 'emacsclient' in terminal. What I want is running emacs server as a background service when first emacs instance is created (when there is no running server), and other new instances are connected to the server without massive library loading.

To achieve that, I think these four functionalities are needed for the init.el.

1. Check running emacs server.
2. Run server as a background service.(For the first instance)
3. Attach to running server.
4. Skip rest of initialization.

Is there any example of init.el showing those functionalities?

Answer 1

If your init file is being evaluated, then you are starting a server, not a client. Or you are starting a non-server instance of Emacs. Your init file is not looked at by emacsclient (and there is nothing you can put into your init file which could transform the emacs instance which is evaluating it into a client of some other instance -- and even if there was, it would be the wrong solution).

If you use the client invocation emacsclient -a '' then the client will connect to an existing server if there is one, and if not it will start a new daemon and connect to it.

Maybe this is what you're after?

i.e. Never run emacs at all, or alias the command to do the thing you want.