Using Emacs for big big projects

Question

Hello,

Maybe is a often repeated question here, but i can't find anything similar with the search. The point is that i like to use Emacs for my personal projects, usually very small applications using C or python, but i was wondering how to use it also for my work, in which we have project with about 10k files of source code, so is veeeery big (actually i am using source insight, that is very nice tool, but only for windows), questions are:

• Searching: Which is the most convenient way to search a string within the whole project?
• Navigating throught the function: I mean something like putting the cursor over a function, define, var, and going to the definition
• Refactoring

Also if you have any experience with this and want to share your thoughts i will consider it highly interesting.

Br

Answer 1

The "traditional" way of navigating C source files is to use "etags" to make a file called TAGS, then use ALT-. to go to functions across files.

For searching for strings in files, I usually use "grep". You could make a shell script with all the directories you want to search or something if you get tired of typing them in each time.

Answer 2

look to EDE from CEDET - it provide base support for projects...

Answer 3

There is also the Emacs Code Browser. It makes exploring projects a lot simpler. See here and here for more information.

Answer 4

Regarding searches in the whole project, I find extremely useful the rgrep command.

Also, imenu is quite handy to jump to a function definition in the same file.

These are my 2p.

Answer 5

In addition to using TAGS as others have mentioned, I find igrep and igrep-find very useful. There is also Emacs' built in grep and grep-find, but I find their interface more clumsy.

My standard search is:

M-x igrep-find some_regexp RET ~/work_area/*.cxx

Which will look for all *.cxx files under ~/work/area, and show results matching some_regexp. Like all the search utilities, it populates a compilation-like buffer you can navigate using C-x ` (aka M-x next-error).

Answer 6

My projects typically live in git, so I put this together to quickly search them:

;; There's something similar (but fancier) in vc-git.el: vc-git-grep
;; -I means don't search through binary files
(defcustom git-grep-switches "--extended-regexp -I -n --ignore-case"
  "Switches to pass to `git grep'."
  :type 'string)

(defun git-grep (command-args)
  (interactive
   (list (read-shell-command "Run git-grep (like this): "
                             (format "git grep %s -e "
                                     git-grep-switches)
                             'git-grep-history)))
  (let ((grep-use-null-device nil))
    (grep command-args)))

Answer 7

ECB is too heavyweight for my taste. I have had good results with xcscope. Needless to say it doesn't help too much with Python.

http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/CScopeAndEmacs