How to open a remote file (ssh) with my local Emacs?

I use ssh to connect to a remote machine where a file is.

Once the connection is established, if I run emacs the_file in the terminal, instead of launching my local Emacs, it opens an editor inside the terminal which is very modest...

Does anyone know how to open this file in a normal emacs session?

1 Answer

You could use tramp. Simply start your local emacs, open file (ctrl+x+f) and type the full address like this: /the.server.name:/the/path/to/the/file. So assuming the server is at example.com and the file at /home/me/test.txt, the address to type would be /example.com:/home/me/test.txt. This will open the file in the local emacs instance.

(Note that this does not require an additional manual ssh connection.)

Of course there is also the second option to use sshfs to mount the remote directory on a local address and open the local version.