CMake/Editors/Emacs

GNU Emacs is the king of text editors, it has been around since the mid-1970:s and it still actively being developed. It is available on multiple platforms, including Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux. It runs either as a modern windows-based application or you can use it in a terminal to edit on a remote machine. It can be extended using it's built-in programming language Emacs Lisp and there are literarily thousands of extensions available.

See the page CMake Editors Support for CMake support in other editors.

Modes

cmake-mode

See the combined syntax highlighting and indentation mode in the CMake source tree. To enable it, add the following to your .emacs file:

; Add cmake listfile names to the mode list.
(setq auto-mode-alist
	  (append
	   '(("CMakeLists\\.txt\\'" . cmake-mode))
	   '(("\\.cmake\\'" . cmake-mode))
	   auto-mode-alist))

(autoload 'cmake-mode "~/CMake/Auxiliary/cmake-mode.el" t)

cmake-font-lock

The package cmake-font-lock, written by Anders Lindgren, provides advanced font-lock support for CMake scripts.

Although the standard package have some syntax coloring support, this package raises the bar quite a bit.

The following is colored:

• Function arguments are colored according to it's use, An argument can be colored as a keyword, a variable, a property, or a target. This package provides information on all built-in CMake functions. Information on user-defined functions can be added.
• All function names are colored, however, special functions like if, while, function, and include are colored using a different color.
• The constants true, false, yes, no, y, n, on, and off.
• The constructs ${...}, $ENV{...}, and $<name:...>.
• In preprocessor definitions like -DNAME, NAME is colored.
• Comments and quoted strings.

Example:

company-mode (code completion in Emacs)

See company-mode , company-cmake.el is incorporated into company-mode since v0.6.12

Jump focus between tags (if/else/endif, foreach/endforeach, ...)

See evil-matchit, install evil and evil-matchit, then just press %

syntax check and other handy utilities

Install cpputils-cmake, then you can:

• open C++ header file at correct location,
• open gdb and append the full path of executable automatically
• set up include directories automatically for flymake, flycheck
• set up include directories for code completion (auto-complete, company-mode)

User Suggestions

Buffer Names

I've been long irritated with having to deal with multiple buffers all name CMakeLists.txt. Emacs by default will call them CMakeLists.txt, CMakeLists.txt<2>, CMakeLists.txt<3>, etc.. This is really hard to switch back and forth when the buffer names are difficult to associate with location.

I've found a couple of solutions to this problem.

1. Use uniquify emacs package. This gives several options to automatically rename buffers based on their location on disk.

   ;; uniquify.el is a helper routine to help give buffer names a better unique name.
   (when (load "uniquify" 'NOERROR)
     (require 'uniquify)
     (setq uniquify-buffer-name-style 'forward)
     ;(setq uniquify-buffer-name-style 'post-forward)
     )
   

2. Rename the buffer as part of the cmake-mode

   (defun cmake-rename-buffer ()
     "Renames a CMakeLists.txt buffer to cmake-<directory name>."
     (interactive)
     ;(print (concat "buffer-filename = " (buffer-file-name)))
     ;(print (concat "buffer-name     = " (buffer-name)))
     (when (and (buffer-file-name) (string-match "CMakeLists.txt" (buffer-name)))
         ;(setq file-name (file-name-nondirectory (buffer-file-name)))
         (setq parent-dir (file-name-nondirectory (directory-file-name (file-name-directory (buffer-file-name)))))
         ;(print (concat "parent-dir = " parent-dir))
         (setq new-buffer-name (concat "cmake-" parent-dir))
         ;(print (concat "new-buffer-name= " new-buffer-name))
         (rename-buffer new-buffer-name t)
         )
     )
   
   (add-hook 'cmake-mode-hook (function cmake-rename-buffer))
   

I actually prefer renaming my buffers with my cmake-rename-buffer function, because the buffer names start with a lower case letter. :)

Better handling of _ for movement commands

The following will make M-right and M-left stop after each word of a multiword identifier like add_custom_target. Unfortunately, this breaks the font-lock support of the standard CMake package. However, it is compatible with the cmake-font-lock package.

   (defun my-cmake-fix-underscrore ()
     (modify-syntax-entry ?_  "_" cmake-mode-syntax-table))
   (add-hook 'cmake-mode-hook 'my-cmake-fix-underscrore)