Devenv Emulation: Improved Compiling and Debugging (gcc and gdb Integration) in GNU Emacs
GNU Emacs supports integrated compiling and debugging. This
brings with it such conveniences as jumping from a compiler
error message directly to the offending location in the source
code, and source-level debugging in Emacs buffers. Some people
argue that turning an editor into a development environment
like that is an ill-fated endeavour from the start; they hold
that a development environment should be a stand-alone program
of which the editor is an integrated component. Be that as it
may, many of us, including myself, use GNU Emacs' compiling
and debugging features.
Unfortunately, if you use GNU Emacs out of the box, compiling
and debugging come with some annoyances. My personal pet
peeves are:
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In an integrated development environment such as Microsoft
Visual Studio, the first thing you do is open a project
(or "solution" in Microsoft speak). After that, tasks such
as compiling an individual source file, building the whole
thing, starting a debug session, etc. can be kicked off
with function keys. One never has to to type a compile,
make, or debug command anymore. For me, that does make a
big difference in productivity.
-
Many compilers, including gcc, output error messages where
the file location of the error is given as a relative path.
That causes trouble in large projects, where source
files are scattered over several directories. In that case,
jumping from the error messages in the compilation output
buffer to the respective locations in the source files via
next-error (pressing Ctrl-x `)
has a problem: depending on your setup, it can either work
when compiling individual source files, or it can work when
compiling the entire project, but not for both.
The Devenv Emulation package removes these annoyances and adds
some minor conveniences. Among other things, it provides
function key bindings that are modeled after Microsoft Visual
Studio.
The online documentation of Devenv Emulation can be found
here. To download the
Devenv Emulation package including Emacs Lisp source code,
the byte-compiled code, and the HTML documentation, click
the link below.
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