The emacs rpm packages as distributed under 11.2 have a serious problem.
The base emacs package includes too much.
Particularly, it includes all the clients, including the X11 and gtk clients. Those clients should only be present in the emacs-x11 and emacs-gtk rpm’s respectively.
This means that if you only want emacs-nox, you still end up with emacs-x11 as the default client!
I can’t replicate your problem, here is a snippet from my box (which has nothing related to emacs, at all):
rawr:/home/heidi # zypper in emacs-nox
Loading repository data...
Reading installed packages...
Resolving package dependencies...
The following NEW packages are going to be installed:
anthy ctags emacs emacs-info emacs-nox libotf m17n-db m17n-lib xaw3d
Ah, but the emacs package installs the emacs-x11 and emacs-gtk executables, which it should not - they belong in the emacs-x11 and emacs-gtk rpms.
lxstjernstrom:/home/staffan # ls /usr/bin/emacs*
ls: cannot access /usr/bin/emacs*: No such file or directory
lxstjernstrom:/home/staffan # zypper in emacs-nox
Loading repository data...
Reading installed packages...
Resolving package dependencies...
The following NEW packages are going to be installed:
emacs emacs-nox
2 new packages to install.
Overall download size: 22.1 MiB. After the operation, additional 94.0 MiB will be used.
Continue? [y/n/?] (y):
Retrieving package emacs-23.1-3.6.x86_64 (1/2), 20.3 MiB (84.2 MiB unpacked)
Retrieving: emacs-23.1-3.6.x86_64.rpm [done]
Installing: emacs-23.1-3.6 [done]
Retrieving package emacs-nox-23.1-3.6.x86_64 (2/2), 1.8 MiB (9.7 MiB unpacked)
Retrieving: emacs-nox-23.1-3.6.x86_64.rpm [done]
Installing: emacs-nox-23.1-3.6 [done]
lxstjernstrom:/home/staffan # ls /usr/bin/emacs*
/usr/bin/emacs /usr/bin/emacsclient /usr/bin/emacs-gtk /usr/bin/emacs-nox /usr/bin/emacs-x11
lxstjernstrom:/home/staffan #
When I install emacs-nox on a clean system, I would not expect to see either the emacs-x11 or the emacs-gtk executables in the above (in fact it used to be the case that the install wouldn’t even create the emacs executable, but a symlink to the only-installed emacs-nox).
No matter how you install it, you end up with an X version of emacs as the default.
Hmm, you should report this as a bug on the Bugzilla vamonos.