Open an Emacs buffer when a command tries to open an editor in shell-mode

Question

I like to use Emacs\' shell mode, but it has a few deficiencies. One of those is that it\'s not smart enough to open a new buffer when a shell command tries to invoke an editor.

Answer 1

When I have (start-server) in my .emacs I get this error....

Debugger entered--Lisp error: (void-function start-server)
  (start-server)
  eval-buffer(# nil "/Users/jarrold/.emacs" nil t)  ; Reading at buffer position 22768
  load-with-code-conversion("/Users/jarrold/.emacs" "/Users/jarrold/.emacs" t t)
  load("~/.emacs" t t)
  #[nil "^H\205\276^@   \306=\203^Q^@\307^H\310Q\202A^@ \311=\2033^@\312\307\313\314#\203#^@\315\202A^@\312\307\$
  command-line()
  normal-top-level()

....I am using GNU Emacs 22.1.1

And this is the version of Mac OS-X I am using:

shandemo 511 $ uname -a Darwin Facilitys-MacBook-Pro.local 10.8.0

Darwin Kernel Version 10.8.0: Tue Jun 7 16:33:36 PDT 2011;

root:xnu-1504.15.3~1/RELEASE_I386 i386

Note that m-x ansi-term appears to allow me to successfully hg commit inside of its shell. However, that shell does not let me scroll through the buffer with e.g. c-p or c-n so I would prefer to us m-x shell.