What is the difference between the Client and GTK versions of emacs?

Question

My Ubuntu 10.04 desktop has three versions of emacs:

1. emacs-snapshot (client)
2. emacs-snapshot (GTK)
3. GNU Emacs 23

I mostly use emacs-snapshot, but I also use regular emacs in terminal mode emacs -nw. However, it is not clear to me what the difference is between the client and GTK versions of emacs-snapshot is, which one is launched by emacs-snapshot at the terminal, and if I should uninstall one or just ignore it.

Answer 1

emacs-client will edit your files in already running emacs. So if you set the environment variable $EDITOR to emacs-client, and have an already running emacs, then every program that want to edit a file will use the already running Emacs.