I've been using Emacs as a PHP IDE for quite some time now (with emacs-starter-kit, ECB, & Geben). With each new release for emacs-starter-kit or Emacs 24, ECB introduces new errors & window issues. It doesn't seem well-maintained anymore (last release was 2009).
Wondering if there's a project-manager / IDE emacs plugin that's today's defacto? Something that does file-browsing (like sr-speedbar), method list, possibly even auto ctags?
The answer is that unfortunately no such thing exists. emacs-nav offer a file browser similar to the one in ECB and you can use something like helm to jump to various stuff in your project (like files, tags, imenu entries, etc). Small utils like projectile might also be helpful to you.
All in all using heavyweight tools like ECB is not the Emacs way and I guess this is the reason while its development has stagnated - few Emacs users would use a tool like that given there a smaller more flexible alternatives.
I'm use sr-speedbar to file browser
http://emacswiki.org/emacs/SrSpeedbar
I'm using ecb on emacs-24 with no problems. the only thing I had to add to my .emacs was:
(setq stack-trace-on-error t)
it prevents from throwing errors on ecb startup. What kind of window issues do you experience?
Related
I learned programming with GUI editors such as Notepad++, Gedit, Netbeans and so on, so I'm used to some keybindings common in almost all of these programs (and some others like LO Writer, etc).
Is there any place where I can find a .emacs file that makes it work like that, so I can have all its power without spending half of my life in learning its keybindings or configuring it?
You might try ErgoMacs which was built to modernize Emacs. I haven't tried it since when I found it I already had too many of my own keybindings to switch, but if I were starting over, I'm pretty sure I would use it.
cua-mode remaps emacs to use the key bindings that most other programs use. It is built in to emacs and you can enable it in your .emacs with:
(cua-mode t)
It depends a bit on what you mean. There are ways to make Emacs use keyboard shortcuts that are standard in Windows, as e.g. pointed out by ataylor. However, when you say you want it to behave more like an IDE, it seems that you're not only interested in text editing keybindings (such as, moving the point, copy and paste, marking a region, etc.), but specifically for the functionality offered by IDEs: compiling, management of code projects, deployment, code refactoring, etc.
But Emacs is not an IDE. It's a text editor. Okay, it really is a lisp interpreter based around a visual model of text buffers.
As such it can do many tasks that IDEs do, but out of the box, IDEs do many of the tasks mentioned above better because they are made for these tasks. Since Emacs is just a lisp interpreter, a lot of people have written extensions to its core functionality, in form of so called "modes". So, yes, by installing the right modes on top of a vanilla Emacs you can make it a pretty powerful tool that can compete with IDEs.
But that doesn't go without spending half of my life in learning its keybindings or configuring it. Well, half your life is a bit of a stretch. Emacs has a steep learning curve, that's true, but it's worth it -- because it is not an IDE. It's more than that.
If you're not willing to learn new stuff, than maybe you might want to take a moment and reconsider whether programming really is for you. Because the IT landscape changes very quickly all the time. Maybe in five years, Java is dead and no-one uses Eclipse any more. But you can be pretty sure of one thing: Emacs will still be around.
Okay, the last paragraph was total FUD, so ignore it. But seriously, learning new keybindings is not as hard as you think. And it doesn't take thaaat long either. You could re-configure and re-assign completely to your own liking in Emacs, but why not give the standard keybindings a chance?
According to this answer, Emacs + Slime already has much advanced functionality. So how can I get syntax coloring, auto-completion, and perhaps even version control management, set up and running in my copy of Lispbox?
If it's of any help, I have installed Lispbox on Mac OS Lion.
Syntax highlighting should already be working as soon as you load a lisp file in Emacs, regardless of whether you've got SLIME installed or not. If it's not, try doing M-x font-lock-mode and see if that turns it on.
Version control isn't provided by Emacs or SLIME, but Emacs can integrate with pretty much any version control system you care to use. I recommend Mercurial or Git. Emacs should start vc-mode automatically when you open a file that is in one of the supported version control systems. The manual includes extensive documentation, do M-: (info "(emacs)Version Control") to jump right to it.
Auto-completion is more complicated. There is more than one way to skin this cat, but for Lisp SLIME's default method should be good enough. Use M-TAB to complete the symbol at point.
Emacs is my editor of choice, and I use the cscope intergration xcscope.el provides. Recently I had a flirt with Vim. I decided to stay with Emacs, but one of the things I really liked in Vim was how I could control where my cscope windows should appear. Using cscope_maps.vim (http://cscope.sourceforge.net/cscope_maps.vim) I get shortcuts that let Vim open search results in the same buffer, a new horizontal or a new vertical split.
In Emacs a the cscope buffer just pops up in a window somewhere, according to some rules I don't know. My guess: A new window is opened if I have only one. If I have more, the one I've been away from for the longest time is used.
Pin Emacs buffers to windows (for cscope) is the only related topic I've found that helps a bit, but that doesn't make it near as flexible as the key bindings in Vim.
Anyone got a better cscope setup in Emacs than what xcscope.el provides? I don't know lisp, so I have no idea how hard it would be to make this work the way it does in Vim.
Emacs 24 (not yet released) changes radically how it is decided which buffers are displayed in which windows. In principle it should give you more fine-grained control. In any case, how you solve the problem for Emacs 24 will be different from how you solve it for older versions.
Consider filing an Emacs enhancement request to specifically get behavior more like what you had with Vim. To do that, use M-x report-emacs-bug.
I am very familiar with emacs--and I realize that there is nothing that it cannot do--but there are some things that it does not do well or efficiently. So, being between projects I am open to the idea of switching to a full-featured IDE such as Eclipse.
With muscle-memory being what it is, I would like to make Eclipse as emacs-like as possible. I have already discovered the excellent Emacs+ plugin which gets me about halfway there. However, I am still missing the following features of emacs which I routinely rely upon:
shell: It's not just a shell, it's also a buffer.
occur: Search->File... is close to what I want, but I just want it to search the current file--which might be a text file, a logfile, or a shell buffer, or whatever.
align-regexp: This awesome little command in emacs helps me make files more readable, and alignment helps with keyboard macros.
What plugins would you recommend to solve these issues? Are there any other emacs features you miss in Eclipse or plugins you would recommend?
Please, no emacs/vi zealots asking why on Earth I would do such a thing.
For the shell you have WickedShell
Ctrl+F is enough to trigger a Search within the current file. (does not create a new buffer with matched lines)
Only Mark Occurrences is about highlighting occurrences, but that is not as advanced as the Emacs function.
Formatter options can emulate "align-regex" function, as described here.
Preferences -> Java -> Code Style -> Formatter.
Click 'Edit' on the profile (you may need to make a new one since you can't edit the default).
In the indentation section select 'Align fields with columns'.
Then, in your code Ctrl+Shift+F will run that formatter.
I can confirm Brian's suggestion (Emacs key-bindings). What I do to resolve this dilemma is to use both Emacs and Eclipse simultaneously. They are both very good at reporting external changes to files so there is minimal chance of tromping on edits (but it can happen). More to the point, you can leverage the strengths of both tools without having to give up either one. The combination of using both tools and Eclipse having Emacs key-bindings makes this quite satisfactory for me.
IIRC (It's been a while since I've used eclipse) eclipse has a "use Emacs key-bindings" mode. I believe that there's also the option to tell eclipse to use emacs as its own editor...
I saw the the news that emacs 23.1 was released.
For a programmer, What are the big reasons to upgrade? I'm currently on 22.2.
None of the features listed really seem like must-haves for me. The most immediately interesting bit is that nXML is now integrated. I already have it though.
But I have to admit I don't know what is really behind "smarter minibuffer completion" or "per buffer text scaling".
Anyone have any tips or examples of what these things are?
For me, the biggest reason is the support for anti-aliased fonts. And the --daemon support is nice.
Emacs-fu has a nice write-up of some of the features.
M-x butterfly
No one said anything about multi-tty support? I have one long (LONG!) emacs session opened somewhere, and I ssh'ed into that machine remotely and use that particular emacs session (with all the temporary buffers, everything setup the way I liked, groups of buffers opened, etc.). The benefit of course, is that I don't need to worry about saving temporary buffers (you do use those as scratch pad, don't you?), etc. when switching machines (from school to home, for example).
Also, with multi-tty support, you can open emacs with emacsclient -nw to substitute your occasional needs for vi for quick terminal edits. emacsclient -nw will open even faster than vi, and you will have access to your opened emacs session as a bonus. (Before emacs 23, emacsclient cannot run from the terminal).
"Improved Unicode support (the internal character representation is now based on UTF-8)."
is a critical reason for me, but it no doubt depends on your work flow.
Some of the terms you are asking about were discussed in Set Emacs defaut font face per-buffer/mode and are also in the emacs wiki, e.g. http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/SetFonts (under Changing Font Size - Buffer Text Resizing ).
While I was using the pre-releases, the most noticeable feature has been the improved font support. and some small things about smarter window splitting.
for me its font support and gnupg integration.
also its nice to read pdf's from within emacs.