macos - How to launch GUI Emacs from command line in OSX?

Question

How do I launch GUI Emacs from the command line in OSX?

I have downloaded and installed Emacs from http://emacsformacosx.com/.

I'll accept an answer fulfilling all of the following criteria:

1. The emacs window opens in front of my terminal window.
2. Typing "emacs" launches a GUI Emacs window. Finding files in that window will default to looking in the directory from where I started Emacs.
3. Typing "emacs foo.txt" when foo.txt exists launches a GUI Emacs window with foo.txt loaded.
4. Typing "emacs foo.txt" when foo.txt does not exist launches a GUI Emacs window with an empty text buffer named "foo.txt". Doing ^X^S in that buffer will save foo.txt in the directory from where I started Emacs.

Answer 1

Call the following script "emacs" and put it in your PATH somewhere:

#!/bin/sh
/Applications/Emacs.app/Contents/MacOS/Emacs "$@"

That covers #2, #3, and #4.

For #1, put this somewhere in your .emacs file:

(x-focus-frame nil)

The emacsformacosx.com site now has a How-To page, which is where the top snippet came from. There's more info there about running emacsclient and hooking Emacs up to git mergetool.