What alternate session managers are available for Emacs?

Question

I have read the page in Emacs wiki which contains a list of session manager plugins. But after trying all of these, I am still not happy with any of them.

By comparison, the VIM session manager saves and loads sessions by name, which is one of the most important features for me.

In particular, I want a session manager for Emacs that:

• Managing sessions by name
• Saving tabs, screens, frames etc..

I'm trying to use Emacs because it has got really good features but a good session manager is important to my workflow.

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Related:

• Emacs: reopen buffers from last session on startup?
• Saving Window Configurations in Emacs

Answer 1

Try Emacs desktop. Go here

Answer 2

Already answered:

• Emacs: reopen buffers from last session on startup?
• Saving Window Configurations in Emacs

Explaining your requirements in detail allow us to provide a more specific solution for you.

Edit

Desktop mode allows you to have more than one sessions—saved desktops are not name but directory based.

From chapter Saving Emacs Sessions:

You can save the current desktop and reload one saved in another directory by typing M-x desktop-change-dir.

Furthermore, desktop-path variable allows you to define a list of directories to search for the saved desktops.

Edit 2

The Elisp code snippet sent by scottfrazer allows you to name your session, as in the background it translates the name to the proper directory name for Desktop mode.

Answer 3

Since you don't like the base functionality of desktop.el, throw some elisp around it:

(defvar my-desktop-session-dir
  (concat (getenv "HOME") "/.emacs.d/desktop-sessions/")
  "*Directory to save desktop sessions in")

(defvar my-desktop-session-name-hist nil
  "Desktop session name history")

(defun my-desktop-save (&optional name)
  "Save desktop with a name."
  (interactive)
  (unless name
    (setq name (my-desktop-get-session-name "Save session as: ")))
  (make-directory (concat my-desktop-session-dir name) t)
  (desktop-save (concat my-desktop-session-dir name) t))

(defun my-desktop-read (&optional name)
  "Read desktop with a name."
  (interactive)
  (unless name
    (setq name (my-desktop-get-session-name "Load session: ")))
  (desktop-read (concat my-desktop-session-dir name)))

(defun my-desktop-get-session-name (prompt)
  (completing-read prompt (and (file-exists-p my-desktop-session-dir)
                               (directory-files my-desktop-session-dir))
                   nil nil nil my-desktop-session-name-hist))

EDIT:

Getting some votes, so add niceties like completing-read and history