I got so accustomed to using Visual Studio 2010 over the course of my internship, that I seriously was missing it while coding in Linux. I knew there were tools available like libclang+vim etc., but they never seemed complete. So finally I sat down and got auto-complete working with emacs in Ubuntu Linux(Note: This should also work in other distributions, but I’ve only tested it on Debian testing and Ubuntu 12.04).
I also got the browsing mode setup which enables me to jump to definitions, see the references of functions etc., A complete setup for browsing source is here.
Here are the steps:
1. Install emacs, emacs-goodies, global, clang, auto-complete
sudo apt-get install emacs emacs-goodies-el global clang auto-complete-el cscope-el
2. Download this emacs conf file and copy it to ~/.emacs
3. Copy the contents of this file into ~/.emacs.d/
4. generate global tags in the rootsource directory by issuing the command
gtags -v
5. Done!
- Auto complete in emacs using clang
* To search for tags, use M-. * To search for symbols, use M-] * To search for function references, use M-[ * To go back to where you were, use M-*
If there are any errors/suggestions, please let me know in the comments. Thanks!
update 11/08/2012: added cscope-el
Nice Article, Do you know how it works ? Does it do a compile
before it auto-completes ?
It does not compile the code. It build the AST and walks the tree for indexing and cross-referencing. You can get more details here: http://llvm.org/devmtg/2010-11/Gregor-libclang.pdf
How do we extend this for say boost libraries ?
I did not try this but downloading the boost library and running gtags in the root folder should be enough. Let me know if that works.