Maintaining Large Programs
**************************

This chapter describes Emacs features for maintaining medium- to large-size programs and packages.  These features include:

  - Unified interface to Support for Version Control Systems (VCS) that record the history of changes to source files.

  - Commands for handling programming projects.

  - A specialized mode for maintaining ChangeLog files that provide a chronological log of program changes.

  - Xref, a set of commands for displaying definitions of symbols (a.k.a. ``identifiers'') and their references.

  - EDE, the Emacs's own IDE.

  - A mode for merging changes to program sources made on separate branches of development.

If you are maintaining a large Lisp program, then in addition to the features described here, you may find the Emacs Lisp Regression Testing (ERT) library useful (see ERT (Emacs Lisp Regression Testing)).

Version Control
===============

A version control system is a program that can record multiple versions of a source file, storing information such as the creation time of each version, who made it, and a description of what was changed.

The Emacs version control interface is called VC.  VC commands work with several different version control systems; currently, it supports Bazaar, CVS, Git, Mercurial, Monotone, RCS, SRC, SCCS/CSSC, and Subversion.  Of these, the GNU project distributes CVS, RCS, and Bazaar.

VC is enabled automatically whenever you visit a file governed by a version control system.  To disable VC entirely, set the customizable variable vc-handled-backends to nil (see Customizing VC).

To update the VC state information for the file visited in the current buffer, use the command vc-refresh-state.  This command is useful when you perform version control commands outside Emacs (e.g., from the shell prompt), or if you put the buffer's file under a different version control system, or remove it from version control entirely.

Introduction to Version Control
-------------------------------

VC allows you to use a version control system from within Emacs, integrating the version control operations smoothly with editing.  It provides a uniform interface for common operations in many version control operations.

Some uncommon or intricate version control operations, such as altering repository settings, are not supported in VC.  You should perform such tasks outside VC, e.g., via the command line.

This section provides a general overview of version control, and describes the version control systems that VC supports.  You can skip this section if you are already familiar with the version control system you want to use.

Understanding the Problems it Addresses
.......................................

Version control systems provide you with three important capabilities:

  * Reversibility: the ability to back up to a previous state if you discover that some modification you did was a mistake or a bad idea.

  * Concurrency: the ability to have many people modifying the same collection of files knowing that conflicting modifications can be detected and resolved.

  * History: the ability to attach historical data to your data, such as explanatory comments about the intention behind each change. Even for a programmer working solo, change histories are an important aid to memory; for a multi-person project, they are a vitally important form of communication among developers.

Supported Version Control Systems
.................................

VC currently works with many different version control systems, which it refers to as back ends:

  * SCCS was the first version control system ever built, and was long ago superseded by more advanced ones.  VC compensates for certain features missing in SCCS (e.g., tag names for releases) by implementing them itself.  Other VC features, such as multiple branches, are simply unavailable.  Since SCCS is non-free, we recommend avoiding it.

  * CSSC is a free replacement for SCCS.  You should use CSSC only if, for some reason, you cannot use a more recent and better-designed version control system.

  * RCS is the free version control system around which VC was initially built.  It is relatively primitive: it cannot be used over the network, and works at the level of individual files.  Almost everything you can do with RCS can be done through VC.

  * CVS is the free version control system that was, until circa 2008, used by the majority of free software projects.  Since then, it has been superseded by newer systems.  CVS allows concurrent multi-user development either locally or over the network.  Unlike newer systems, it lacks support for atomic commits and file moving/renaming.  VC supports all basic editing operations under CVS.

  * Subversion (svn) is a free version control system designed to be similar to CVS but without its problems (e.g., it supports atomic commits of filesets, and versioning of directories, symbolic links, meta-data, renames, copies, and deletes).

  * Git is a decentralized version control system originally invented by Linus Torvalds to support development of Linux (his kernel).  VC supports many common Git operations, but others, such as repository syncing, must be done from the command line.

  * Mercurial (hg) is a decentralized version control system broadly resembling Git.  VC supports most Mercurial commands, with the exception of repository sync operations.

  * Bazaar (bzr) is a decentralized version control system that supports both repository-based and decentralized versioning.  VC supports most basic editing operations under Bazaar.

  * SRC (src) is RCS, reloaded---a specialized version-control system designed for single-file projects worked on by only one person.  It allows multiple files with independent version-control histories to exist in one directory, and is thus particularly well suited for maintaining small documents, scripts, and dotfiles.  While it uses RCS for revision storage, it presents a modern user interface featuring lockless operation and integer sequential version numbers.  VC supports almost all SRC operations.

Concepts of Version Control
...........................

When a file is under version control, we say that it is registered in the version control system.  The system has a repository which stores both the file's present state and its change history---enough to reconstruct the current version or any earlier version.  The repository also contains other information, such as log entries that describe the changes made to each file.

The copy of a version-controlled file that you actually edit is called the work file.  You can change each work file as you would an ordinary file.  After you are done with a set of changes, you may commit (or check in) the changes; this records the changes in the repository, along with a descriptive log entry.

A directory tree of work files is called a working tree.

Each commit creates a new revision in the repository.  The version control system keeps track of all past revisions and the changes that were made in each revision.  Each revision is named by a revision ID, whose format depends on the version control system; in the simplest case, it is just an integer.

To go beyond these basic concepts, you will need to understand three aspects in which version control systems differ.  As explained in the next three sections, they can be lock-based or merge-based; file-based or changeset-based; and centralized or decentralized.  VC handles all these modes of operation, but it cannot hide the differences.

Merge-based vs Lock-based Version Control
.........................................

A version control system typically has some mechanism to coordinate between users who want to change the same file.  There are two ways to do this: merging and locking.

In a version control system that uses merging, each user may modify a work file at any time.  The system lets you merge your work file, which may contain changes that have not been committed, with the latest changes that others have committed.

Older version control systems use a locking scheme instead. Here, work files are normally read-only.  To edit a file, you ask the version control system to make it writable for you by locking it; only one user can lock a given file at any given time.  This procedure is analogous to, but different from, the locking that Emacs uses to detect simultaneous editing of ordinary files (see Interlocking).  When you commit your changes, that unlocks the file, and the work file becomes read-only again.  Other users may then lock the file to make their own changes.

Both locking and merging systems can have problems when multiple users try to modify the same file at the same time.  Locking systems have lock conflicts; a user may try to check a file out and be unable to because it is locked.  In merging systems, merge conflicts happen when you commit a change to a file that conflicts with a change committed by someone else after your checkout.  Both kinds of conflict have to be resolved by human judgment and communication.  Experience has shown that merging is superior to locking, both in convenience to developers and in minimizing the number and severity of conflicts that actually occur.

SCCS always uses locking.  RCS is lock-based by default but can be told to operate in a merging style.  CVS and Subversion are merge-based by default but can be told to operate in a locking mode. Decentralized version control systems, such as Git and Mercurial, are exclusively merging-based.

VC mode supports both locking and merging version control.  The terms ``commit'' and ``update'' are used in newer version control systems; older lock-based systems use the terms ``check in'' and ``check out''.  VC hides the differences between them as much as possible.

Changeset-based vs File-based Version Control
.............................................

On SCCS, RCS, CVS, and other early version control systems (and also in SRC), version control operations are file-based: each file has its own comment and revision history separate from that of all other files.  Newer systems, beginning with Subversion, are changeset-based: a commit may include changes to several files, and the entire set of changes is handled as a unit.  Any comment associated with the change does not belong to a single file, but to the changeset itself.

Changeset-based version control is more flexible and powerful than file-based version control; usually, when a change to multiple files has to be reversed, it's good to be able to easily identify and remove all of it.

Decentralized vs Centralized Repositories
.........................................

Early version control systems were designed around a centralized model in which each project has only one repository used by all developers.  SCCS, RCS, CVS, Subversion, and SRC share this kind of model.  One of its drawbacks is that the repository is a choke point for reliability and efficiency.

GNU Arch pioneered the concept of distributed or decentralized version control, later implemented in Git, Mercurial, and Bazaar.  A project may have several different repositories, and these systems support a sort of super-merge between repositories that tries to reconcile their change histories.  In effect, there is one repository for each developer, and repository merges take the place of commit operations.

VC helps you manage the traffic between your personal workfiles and a repository.  Whether the repository is a single master, or one of a network of peer repositories, is not something VC has to care about.

Types of Log File
.................

Projects that use a version control system can have two types of log for changes.  One is the log maintained by the version control system: each time you commit a change, you fill out a log entry for the change (see Log Buffer).  This is called the version control log.

The other kind of log is the file ChangeLog (see Change Log).  It provides a chronological record of all changes to a large portion of a program---typically one directory and its subdirectories. A small program would use one ChangeLog file; a large program may have a ChangeLog file in each major directory. See Change Log.  Programmers have used change logs since long before version control systems.

Changeset-based version systems typically maintain a changeset-based modification log for the entire system, which makes change log files somewhat redundant.  One advantage that they retain is that it is sometimes useful to be able to view the transaction history of a single directory separately from those of other directories.  Another advantage is that commit logs can't be fixed in many version control systems.

A project maintained with version control can use just the version control log, or it can use both kinds of logs.  It can handle some files one way and some files the other way.  Each project has its policy, which you should follow.

When the policy is to use both, you typically want to write an entry for each change just once, then put it into both logs.  You can write the entry in ChangeLog, then copy it to the log buffer with C-c C-a when committing the change (see Log Buffer).  Or you can write the entry in the log buffer while committing the change (with the help of C-c C-w), and later use the C-x v a command to copy it to ChangeLog (see Change Logs and VC).

Version Control and the Mode Line
---------------------------------

When you visit a file that is under version control, Emacs indicates this on the mode line.  For example, Bzr-1223 says that Bazaar is used for that file, and the current revision ID is 1223.

The character between the back-end name and the revision ID indicates the version control status of the work file.  In a merge-based version control system, a - character indicates that the work file is unmodified, and : indicates that it has been modified.  ! indicates that the file contains conflicts as result of a recent merge operation (see Merging), or that the file was removed from the version control.  Finally, ? means that the file is under version control, but is missing from the working tree.

In a lock-based system, - indicates an unlocked file, and : a locked file; if the file is locked by another user (for instance, jim), that is displayed as RCS:jim:1.3. @ means that the file was locally added, but not yet committed to the master repository.

On a graphical display, you can move the mouse over this mode line indicator to pop up a tool-tip, which displays a more verbose description of the version control status.  Pressing mouse-1 over the indicator pops up a menu of VC commands, identical to Tools / Version Control on the menu bar.

When Auto Revert mode (see Reverting) reverts a buffer that is under version control, it updates the version control information in the mode line.  However, Auto Revert mode may not properly update this information if the version control status changes without changes to the work file, from outside the current Emacs session.  If you set auto-revert-check-vc-info to t, Auto Revert mode updates the version control status information every auto-revert-interval seconds, even if the work file itself is unchanged.  The resulting CPU usage depends on the version control system, but is usually not excessive.

Basic Editing under Version Control
-----------------------------------

Most VC commands operate on VC filesets.  A VC fileset is a collection of one or more files that a VC operation acts on.  When you type VC commands in a buffer visiting a version-controlled file, the VC fileset is simply that one file.  When you type them in a VC Directory buffer, and some files in it are marked, the VC fileset consists of the marked files (see VC Directory Mode).

On modern changeset-based version control systems (see VCS Changesets), VC commands handle multi-file VC filesets as a group. For example, committing a multi-file VC fileset generates a single revision, containing the changes to all those files.  On older file-based version control systems like CVS, each file in a multi-file VC fileset is handled individually; for example, a commit generates one revision for each changed file.

C-x v v
     Perform the next appropriate version control operation on the current VC fileset.

The principal VC command is a multi-purpose command, C-x v v (vc-next-action), which performs the most appropriate action on the current VC fileset: either registering it with a version control system, or committing it, or unlocking it, or merging changes into it.  The precise actions are described in detail in the following subsections.  You can use C-x v v either in a file-visiting buffer or in a VC Directory buffer.

Note that VC filesets are distinct from the named filesets used for viewing and visiting files in functional groups (see Filesets).  Unlike named filesets, VC filesets are not named and don't persist across sessions.

Basic Version Control with Merging
..................................

On a merging-based version control system (i.e., most modern ones; see VCS Merging), C-x v v does the following:

  * If there is more than one file in the VC fileset and the files have inconsistent version control statuses, signal an error.  (Note, however, that a fileset is allowed to include both newly-added files and modified files; see Registering.)

  * If none of the files in the VC fileset are registered with a version control system, register the VC fileset, i.e., place it under version control.  See Registering.  If Emacs cannot find a system to register under, it prompts for a repository type, creates a new repository, and registers the VC fileset with it.

  * If every work file in the VC fileset is unchanged, do nothing.

  * If every work file in the VC fileset has been modified, commit the changes.  To do this, Emacs pops up a *vc-log* buffer; type the desired log entry for the new revision, followed by C-c C-c to commit.  See Log Buffer.

     If committing to a shared repository, the commit may fail if the repository has been changed since your last update.  In that case, you must perform an update before trying again.  On a decentralized version control system, use C-x v + (see Pulling / Pushing) or C-x v m (see Merging). On a centralized version control system, type C-x v v again to merge in the repository changes.

  * Finally, if you are using a centralized version control system, check if each work file in the VC fileset is up-to-date.  If any file has been changed in the repository, offer to update it.

These rules also apply when you use RCS in its non-locking mode, except that changes are not automatically merged from the repository. Nothing informs you if another user has committed changes in the same file since you began editing it; when you commit your revision, that other user's changes are removed (however, they remain in the repository and are thus not irrevocably lost).  Therefore, you must verify that the current revision is unchanged before committing your changes.  In addition, locking is possible with RCS even in this mode: C-x v v with an unmodified file locks the file, just as it does with RCS in its normal locking mode (see VC With A Locking VCS).

Basic Version Control with Locking
..................................

On a locking-based version control system (such as SCCS, and RCS in its default mode), C-x v v does the following:

  * If there is more than one file in the VC fileset and the files have inconsistent version control statuses, signal an error.

  * If each file in the VC fileset is not registered with a version control system, register the VC fileset.  See Registering.  If Emacs cannot find a system to register under, it prompts for a repository type, creates a new repository, and registers the VC fileset with it.

  * If each file is registered and unlocked, lock it and make it writable, so that you can begin to edit it.

  * If each file is locked by you and contains changes, commit the changes.  To do this, Emacs pops up a *vc-log* buffer; type the desired log entry for the new revision, followed by C-c C-c to commit (see Log Buffer).

  * If each file is locked by you, but you have not changed it, release the lock and make the file read-only again.

  * If each file is locked by another user, ask whether you want to steal the lock.  If you say yes, the file becomes locked by you, and a warning message is sent to the user who had formerly locked the file.

These rules also apply when you use CVS in locking mode, except that CVS does not support stealing locks.

Advanced Control in C-x v v
...........................

When you give a prefix argument to vc-next-action (C-u C-x v v), it still performs the next logical version control operation, but accepts additional arguments to specify precisely how to do the operation.

  * You can specify the name of a version control system.  This is useful if the fileset can be managed by more than one version control system, and Emacs fails to detect the correct one.

  * Otherwise, if using CVS, RCS or SRC, you can specify a revision ID.

     If the fileset is modified (or locked), this makes Emacs commit with that revision ID.  You can create a new branch by supplying an appropriate revision ID (see Branches).

     If the fileset is unmodified (and unlocked), this checks the specified revision into the working tree.  You can also specify a revision on another branch by giving its revision or branch ID (see Switching Branches).  An empty argument (i.e., C-u C-x v v RET) checks out the latest (head) revision on the current branch.

     This is silently ignored on a decentralized version control system. Those systems do not let you specify your own revision IDs, nor do they use the concept of checking out individual files.

Features of the Log Entry Buffer
--------------------------------

When you tell VC to commit a change, it pops up a buffer named *vc-log*.  In this buffer, you should write a log entry describing the changes you have made (see Why Version Control?). After you are done, type C-c C-c (log-edit-done) to exit the buffer and commit the change, together with your log entry.

The major mode for the *vc-log* buffer is Log Edit mode, a variant of Text mode (see Text Mode).  On entering Log Edit mode, Emacs runs the hooks text-mode-hook and vc-log-mode-hook (see Hooks).

In the *vc-log* buffer, you can write one or more header lines, specifying additional information to be supplied to the version control system.  Each header line must occupy a single line at the top of the buffer; the first line that is not a header line is treated as the start of the log entry.  For example, the following header line states that the present change was not written by you, but by another developer:

     Author: J. R. Hacker <jrh@example.com>

Apart from the Author header, Emacs recognizes the headers Summary (a one-line summary of the changeset), Date (a manually-specified commit time), and Fixes (a reference to a bug fixed by the change).  Not all version control systems recognize all headers.  If you specify a header for a system that does not support it, the header is treated as part of the log entry.

While in the *vc-log* buffer, the current VC fileset is considered to be the fileset that will be committed if you type C-c C-c.  To view a list of the files in the VC fileset, type C-c C-f (log-edit-show-files).  To view a diff of changes between the VC fileset and the version from which you started editing (see Old Revisions), type C-c C-d (log-edit-show-diff).

To help generate ChangeLog entries, type C-c C-w (log-edit-generate-changelog-from-diff), to generate skeleton ChangeLog entries, listing all changed file and function names based on the diff of the VC fileset.  Consecutive entries left empty will be combined by C-q (fill-paragraph).

If the VC fileset includes one or more ChangeLog files (see Change Log), type C-c C-a (log-edit-insert-changelog) to pull the relevant entries into the *vc-log* buffer.  If the topmost item in each ChangeLog was made under your user name on the current date, this command searches that item for entries matching the file(s) to be committed, and inserts them. If you are using CVS or RCS, see Change Logs and VC, for the opposite way of working---generating ChangeLog entries from the Log Edit buffer.

To abort a commit, just don't type C-c C-c in that buffer.  You can switch buffers and do other editing.  As long as you don't try to make another commit, the entry you were editing remains in the *vc-log* buffer, and you can go back to that buffer at any time to complete the commit.

You can also browse the history of previous log entries to duplicate a commit comment.  This can be useful when you want to make several commits with similar comments.  The commands M-n, M-p, M-s and M-r for doing this work just like the minibuffer history commands (see Minibuffer History), except that they are used outside the minibuffer.

Registering a File for Version Control
--------------------------------------

C-x v i
     Register the visited file for version control.

The command C-x v i (vc-register) registers each file in the current VC fileset, placing it under version control. This is essentially equivalent to the action of C-x v v on an unregistered VC fileset (see Basic VC Editing), except that if the VC fileset is already registered, C-x v i signals an error whereas C-x v v performs some other action.

To register a file, Emacs must choose a version control system.  For a multi-file VC fileset, the VC Directory buffer specifies the system to use (see VC Directory Mode).  For a single-file VC fileset, if the file's directory already contains files registered in a version control system, or if the directory is part of a directory tree controlled by a version control system, Emacs chooses that system.  In the event that more than one version control system is applicable, Emacs uses the one that appears first in the variable vc-handled-backends (see Customizing VC). If Emacs cannot find a version control system to register the file under, it prompts for a repository type, creates a new repository, and registers the file into that repository.

On most version control systems, registering a file with C-x v i or C-x v v adds it to the working tree but not to the repository.  Such files are labeled as added in the VC Directory buffer, and show a revision ID of @@ in the mode line.  To make the registration take effect in the repository, you must perform a commit (see Basic VC Editing).  Note that a single commit can include both file additions and edits to existing files.

On a locking-based version control system (see VCS Merging), registering a file leaves it unlocked and read-only.  Type C-x v v to start editing it.

Examining And Comparing Old Revisions
-------------------------------------

C-x v =
     Compare the work files in the current VC fileset with the versions you started from (vc-diff).  With a prefix argument, prompt for two revisions of the current VC fileset and compare them.  You can also call this command from a Dired buffer (see Dired).

M-x vc-ediff
     Like C-x v =, but using Ediff.  See Ediff (The Ediff Manual).

C-x v D
     Compare the entire working tree to the revision you started from (vc-root-diff).  With a prefix argument, prompt for two revisions and compare their trees.

C-x v ~
     Prompt for a revision of the current file, and visit it in a separate buffer (vc-revision-other-window).

C-x v g
     Display an annotated version of the current file: for each line, show the latest revision in which it was modified (vc-annotate).

C-x v = (vc-diff) displays a diff which compares each work file in the current VC fileset to the version(s) from which you started editing.  The diff is displayed in another window, in a Diff mode buffer (see Diff Mode) named *vc-diff*.  The usual Diff mode commands are available in this buffer.  In particular, the g (revert-buffer) command performs the file comparison again, generating a new diff.

To compare two arbitrary revisions of the current VC fileset, call vc-diff with a prefix argument: C-u C-x v =.  This prompts for two revision IDs (see VCS Concepts), and displays a diff between those versions of the fileset.  This will not work reliably for multi-file VC filesets, if the version control system is file-based rather than changeset-based (e.g., CVS), since then revision IDs for different files would not be related in any meaningful way.

Instead of the revision ID, some version control systems let you specify revisions in other formats.  For instance, under Bazaar you can enter date:yesterday for the argument to C-u C-x v = (and related commands) to specify the first revision committed after yesterday.  See the documentation of the version control system for details.

If you invoke C-x v = or C-u C-x v = from a Dired buffer (see Dired), the file listed on the current line is treated as the current VC fileset.

M-x vc-ediff works like C-x v =, except that it uses an Ediff session.  See Ediff (The Ediff Manual).

C-x v D (vc-root-diff) is similar to C-x v =, but it displays the changes in the entire current working tree (i.e., the working tree containing the current VC fileset).  If you invoke this command from a Dired buffer, it applies to the working tree containing the directory.

To compare two arbitrary revisions of the whole trees, call vc-root-diff with a prefix argument: C-u C-x v D.  This prompts for two revision IDs (see VCS Concepts), and displays a diff between those versions of the entire version-controlled directory trees (RCS, SCCS, CVS, and SRC do not support this feature).

You can customize the diff options that C-x v = and C-x v D use for generating diffs.  The options used are taken from the first non-nil value amongst the variables vc-BACKEND-diff-switches, vc-diff-switches, and diff-switches (see Comparing Files), in that order.  Here, BACKEND stands for the relevant version control system, e.g., bzr for Bazaar.  Since nil means to check the next variable in the sequence, either of the first two may use the value t to mean no switches at all.  Most of the vc-BACKEND-diff-switches variables default to nil, but some default to t; these are for version control systems whose diff implementations do not accept common diff options, such as Subversion.

To directly examine an older version of a file, visit the work file and type C-x v ~ REVISION RET (vc-revision-other-window).  This retrieves the file version corresponding to REVISION, saves it to FILENAME.~REVISION~, and visits it in a separate window.

Many version control systems allow you to view files annotated with per-line revision information, by typing C-x v g (vc-annotate).  This creates a new ``annotate'' buffer displaying the file's text, with each line colored to show how old it is.  Red text is new, blue is old, and intermediate colors indicate intermediate ages.  By default, the color is scaled over the full range of ages, such that the oldest changes are blue, and the newest changes are red.  If the variable vc-annotate-background-mode is non-nil, the colors expressing the age of each line are applied to the background color, leaving the foreground at its default color.

When you give a prefix argument to this command, Emacs reads two arguments using the minibuffer: the revision to display and annotate (instead of the current file contents), and the time span in days the color range should cover.

From the ``annotate'' buffer, these and other color scaling options are available from the VC-Annotate menu.  In this buffer, you can also use the following keys to browse the annotations of past revisions, view diffs, or view log entries:

p
     Annotate the previous revision, i.e., the revision before the one currently annotated.  A numeric prefix argument is a repeat count, so C-u 10 p would take you back 10 revisions.

n
     Annotate the next revision, i.e., the revision after the one currently annotated.  A numeric prefix argument is a repeat count.

j
     Annotate the revision indicated by the current line.

a
     Annotate the revision before the one indicated by the current line. This is useful to see the state the file was in before the change on the current line was made.

f
     Show in a buffer the file revision indicated by the current line.

d
     Display the diff between the current line's revision and the previous revision.  This is useful to see what the current line's revision actually changed in the file.

D
     Display the diff between the current line's revision and the previous revision for all files in the changeset (for VC systems that support changesets).  This is useful to see what the current line's revision actually changed in the tree.

l
     Show the log of the current line's revision.  This is useful to see the author's description of the changes in the revision on the current line.

w
     Annotate the working revision--the one you are editing.  If you used p and n to browse to other revisions, use this key to return to your working revision.

v
     Toggle the annotation visibility.  This is useful for looking just at the file contents without distraction from the annotations.

VC Change Log
-------------

C-x v l
     Display the change history for the current fileset (vc-print-log).

C-x v L
     Display the change history for the current repository (vc-print-root-log).

C-x v I
     Display the changes that a ``pull'' operation will retrieve (vc-log-incoming).

C-x v O
     Display the changes that will be sent by the next ``push'' operation (vc-log-outgoing).

C-x v h
     Display the history of changes made in the region of file visited by the current buffer (vc-region-history).

M-x vc-log-search RET
     Search the change history for a specified pattern.

C-x v l (vc-print-log) displays a buffer named *vc-change-log*, showing the history of changes made to the current file, including who made the changes, the dates, and the log entry for each change (these are the same log entries you would enter via the *vc-log* buffer; see Log Buffer).  Point is centered at the revision of the file currently being visited.  With a prefix argument, the command prompts for the revision to center on, and the maximum number of revisions to display.

If you call C-x v l from a VC Directory buffer (see VC Directory Mode) or a Dired buffer (see Dired), it applies to the file listed on the current line.

C-x v L (vc-print-root-log) displays a *vc-change-log* buffer showing the history of the entire version-controlled directory tree (RCS, SCCS, CVS, and SRC do not support this feature).  With a prefix argument, the command prompts for the maximum number of revisions to display.  A numeric prefix argument specifies the maximum number of revisions without prompting. When the numeric prefix argument is 1, as in C-1 C-x v L or C-u 1 C-x v L, the command prompts for the revision ID, and displays the log entry of that revision together with the changes (diffs) it introduced.  (Some less capable version control systems, such as RCS and CVS, don't have commands to show a revision log with its diffs; for them the command displays only the log entry, and you can request to show the diffs by typing d or D, see below.)

The C-x v L history is shown in a compact form, usually showing only the first line of each log entry.  However, you can type RET (log-view-toggle-entry-display) in the *vc-change-log* buffer to reveal the entire log entry for the revision at point.  A second RET hides it again.

On a decentralized version control system, the C-x v I (vc-log-incoming) command displays a log buffer showing the changes that will be applied, the next time you run the version control system's pull command to get new revisions from another repository (see Pulling / Pushing).  This other repository is the default one from which changes are pulled, as defined by the version control system; with a prefix argument, vc-log-incoming prompts for a specific repository.  Similarly, C-x v O (vc-log-outgoing) shows the changes that will be sent to another repository, the next time you run the push command; with a prefix argument, it prompts for a specific destination repository.

In the *vc-change-log* buffer, you can use the following keys to move between the logs of revisions and of files, and to examine and compare past revisions (see Old Revisions):

p
     Move to the previous revision entry.  (Revision entries in the log buffer are usually in reverse-chronological order, so the previous revision-item usually corresponds to a newer revision.)  A numeric prefix argument is a repeat count.

n
     Move to the next revision entry.  A numeric prefix argument is a repeat count.

P
     Move to the log of the previous file, if showing logs for a multi-file VC fileset.  Otherwise, just move to the beginning of the log.  A numeric prefix argument is a repeat count.

N
     Move to the log of the next file, if showing logs for a multi-file VC fileset.  A numeric prefix argument is a repeat count.

a
     Annotate the revision on the current line (see Old Revisions).

e
     Modify the change comment displayed at point.  Note that not all VC systems support modifying change comments.

f
     Visit the revision indicated at the current line.

d
     Display a diff between the revision at point and the next earlier revision, for the specific file.

D
     Display the changeset diff between the revision at point and the next earlier revision.  This shows the changes to all files made in that revision.

RET
     In a compact-style log buffer (e.g., the one created by C-x v L), toggle between showing and hiding the full log entry for the revision at point.

Because fetching many log entries can be slow, the *vc-change-log* buffer displays no more than 2000 revisions by default.  The variable vc-log-show-limit specifies this limit; if you set the value to zero, that removes the limit.  You can also increase the number of revisions shown in an existing *vc-change-log* buffer by clicking on the Show 2X entries or Show unlimited entries buttons at the end of the buffer.  However, RCS, SCCS, CVS, and SRC do not support this feature.

A useful variant of examining history of changes is provided by the command vc-region-history (by default bound to C-x v h), which shows a *VC-history* buffer with the history of changes made in the region of the current buffer's file between point and the mark (see Mark).  The history of changes includes the commit log messages and also the changes themselves in the Diff format.

Invoke this command after marking in the current buffer the region in whose changes you are interested.  In the *VC-history* buffer it pops up, you can use all of the commands available in the *vc-change-log* buffer described above, and also the commands defined by Diff mode (see Diff Mode).

This command is currently available only with Git and Mercurial (hg).

The command vc-log-search allows searching for a pattern in the log of changes.  It prompts for a pattern (a regular expression), and displays all entries in the change history whose log messages match the pattern.  When invoked with a prefix argument, the command will also prompt for a specific VCS shell command to run for this purpose.

Undoing Version Control Actions
-------------------------------

C-x v u
     Revert the work file(s) in the current VC fileset to the last revision (vc-revert).

If you want to discard all the changes you have made to the current VC fileset, type C-x v u (vc-revert).  This shows you a diff between the work file(s) and the revision from which you started editing, and asks for confirmation for discarding the changes. If you agree, the fileset is reverted.  If you don't want C-x v u to show a diff, set the variable vc-revert-show-diff to nil (you can still view the diff directly with C-x v =; see Old Revisions).

On locking-based version control systems, C-x v u leaves files unlocked; you must lock again to resume editing.  You can also use C-x v u to unlock a file if you lock it and then decide not to change it.

Ignore Version Control Files
----------------------------

C-x v G
     Ignore a file under current version control system.  (vc-ignore).

Many source trees contain some files that do not need to be versioned, such as editor backups, object or bytecode files, and built programs.  You can simply not add them, but then they'll always crop up as unknown files.  You can also tell the version control system to ignore these files by adding them to the ignore file at the top of the tree.  C-x v G (vc-ignore) can help you do this.  When called with a prefix argument, you can remove a file from the ignored file list.

VC Directory Mode
-----------------

The VC Directory buffer is a specialized buffer for viewing the version control statuses of the files in a directory tree, and performing version control operations on those files.  In particular, it is used to specify multi-file VC filesets for commands like C-x v v to act on (see VC Directory Commands).

To use the VC Directory buffer, type C-x v d (vc-dir). This reads a directory's name using the minibuffer, and switches to a VC Directory buffer for that directory.  By default, the buffer is named *vc-dir*.  Its contents are described in VC Directory Buffer.

The vc-dir command automatically detects the version control system to be used in the specified directory.  In the event that more than one system is being used in the directory, you should invoke the command with a prefix argument, C-u C-x v d; this prompts for the version control system which the VC Directory buffer should use.

In addition to the VC Directory buffer, Emacs has a similar facility called PCL-CVS which is specialized for CVS.  See About PCL-CVS (PCL-CVS---The Emacs Front-End to CVS).

The VC Directory Buffer
.......................

The VC Directory buffer contains a list of version-controlled files and their version control statuses.  It lists files in the current directory (the one specified when you called C-x v d) and its subdirectories, but only those with a noteworthy status.  Files that are up-to-date (i.e., the same as in the repository) are omitted.  If all the files in a subdirectory are up-to-date, the subdirectory is not listed either.  As an exception, if a file has become up-to-date as a direct result of a VC command, it is listed.

Here is an example of a VC Directory buffer listing:

                          ./
         edited           configure.ac
     *   added            README
         unregistered     temp.txt
                          src/
     *   edited           src/main.c

Two work files have been modified but not committed: configure.ac in the current directory, and main.c in the src/ subdirectory.  The file named README has been added but is not yet committed, while temp.txt is not under version control (see Registering).

The * characters next to the entries for README and src/main.c indicate that the user has marked these files as the current VC fileset (see VC Directory Commands).

The above example is typical for a decentralized version control system like Bazaar, Git, or Mercurial.  Other systems can show other statuses.  For instance, CVS shows the needs-update status if the repository has changes that have not been applied to the work file.  RCS and SCCS show the name of the user locking a file as its status.

On CVS, the vc-dir command normally contacts the repository, which may be on a remote machine, to check for updates.  If you change the variable vc-cvs-stay-local to nil (see CVS Options), then Emacs avoids contacting a remote repository when generating the VC Directory buffer (it will still contact it when necessary, e.g., when doing a commit).  This may be desirable if you are working offline or the network is slow.

The VC Directory buffer omits subdirectories listed in the variable vc-directory-exclusion-list.  Its default value contains directories that are used internally by version control systems.

VC Directory Commands
.....................

Emacs provides several commands for navigating the VC Directory buffer, and for marking files as belonging to the current VC fileset.

n
SPC
     Move point to the next entry (vc-dir-next-line).

p
     Move point to the previous entry (vc-dir-previous-line).

TAB
     Move to the next directory entry (vc-dir-next-directory).

S-TAB
     Move to the previous directory entry (vc-dir-previous-directory).

RET
f
     Visit the file or directory listed on the current line (vc-dir-find-file).

o
     Visit the file or directory on the current line, in a separate window (vc-dir-find-file-other-window).

m
     Mark the file or directory on the current line (vc-dir-mark), putting it in the current VC fileset.  If the region is active, mark all files in the region.

     A file cannot be marked with this command if it is already in a marked directory, or one of its subdirectories.  Similarly, a directory cannot be marked with this command if any file in its tree is marked.

M
     If point is on a file entry, mark all files with the same status; if point is on a directory entry, mark all files in that directory tree (vc-dir-mark-all-files).  With a prefix argument, mark all listed files and directories.

G
     Add the file under point to the list of files that the VC should ignore (vc-dir-ignore).  For instance, if the VC is Git, it will append this file to the .gitignore file.  If given a prefix, do this with all the marked files.

q
     Quit the VC Directory buffer, and bury it (quit-window).

u
     Unmark the file or directory on the current line.  If the region is active, unmark all the files in the region (vc-dir-unmark).

U
     If point is on a file entry, unmark all files with the same status; if point is on a directory entry, unmark all files in that directory tree (vc-dir-unmark-all-files).  With a prefix argument, unmark all files and directories.

x
     Hide files with up-to-date or ignored status (vc-dir-hide-up-to-date).  With a prefix argument, hide items whose state is that of the item at point.

While in the VC Directory buffer, all the files that you mark with m (vc-dir-mark) or M (vc-dir-mark-all-files) are in the current VC fileset.  If you mark a directory entry with m, all the listed files in that directory tree are in the current VC fileset.  The files and directories that belong to the current VC fileset are indicated with a * character in the VC Directory buffer, next to their VC status.  In this way, you can set up a multi-file VC fileset to be acted on by VC commands like C-x v v (see Basic VC Editing), C-x v = (see Old Revisions), and C-x v u (see VC Undo).

The VC Directory buffer also defines some single-key shortcuts for VC commands with the C-x v prefix: =, +, l, i, D, L, G, I, O, and v.

For example, you can commit a set of edited files by opening a VC Directory buffer, where the files are listed with the edited status; marking the files; and typing v or C-x v v (vc-next-action).  If the version control system is changeset-based, Emacs will commit the files in a single revision.

While in the VC Directory buffer, you can also perform search and replace on the current VC fileset, with the following commands:

S
     Search the fileset (vc-dir-search).

Q
     Do a regular expression query replace on the fileset (vc-dir-query-replace-regexp).

M-s a C-s
     Do an incremental search on the fileset (vc-dir-isearch).

M-s a C-M-s
     Do an incremental regular expression search on the fileset (vc-dir-isearch-regexp).

Apart from acting on multiple files, these commands behave much like their single-buffer counterparts (see Search).

The VC Directory buffer additionally defines some branch-related commands starting with the prefix B:

B c
     Create a new branch (vc-create-tag).

B l
     Prompt for the name of a branch and display the change history of that branch (vc-print-branch-log).

B s
     Switch to a branch (vc-retrieve-tag).  See Switching Branches.

d
     Delete the marked files, or the current file if no marks (vc-dir-clean-delete).  The files will not be marked as deleted in the version control system, so this function is mostly useful for unregistered files.

The above commands are also available via the menu bar, and via a context menu invoked by mouse-2.  Furthermore, some VC backends use the menu to provide extra backend-specific commands.  For example, Git and Bazaar allow you to manipulate stashes and shelves (which are a way to temporarily put aside uncommitted changes, and bring them back at a later time).

Version Control Branches
------------------------

One use of version control is to support multiple independent lines of development, which are called branches.  Amongst other things, branches can be used for maintaining separate stable and development versions of a program, and for developing unrelated features in isolation from one another.

VC's support for branch operations is currently fairly limited.  For decentralized version control systems, it provides commands for updating one branch with the contents of another, and for merging the changes made to two different branches (see Merging).  For centralized version control systems, it supports checking out different branches and committing into new or different branches.

Switching between Branches
..........................

The various version control systems differ in how branches are implemented, and these differences cannot be entirely concealed by VC.

On some decentralized version control systems, including Bazaar and Mercurial in its normal mode of operation, each branch has its own working directory tree, so switching between branches just involves switching directories.  On Git, branches are normally co-located in the same directory, and switching between branches is done using the git checkout command, which changes the contents of the working tree to match the branch you switch to.  Bazaar also supports co-located branches, in which case the bzr switch command will switch branches in the current directory.  With Subversion, you switch to another branch using the svn switch command.  With Mercurial, command hg update is used to swith to another branch.

The VC command to switch to another branch in the current directory is C-x v r BRANCH-NAME RET (vc-retrieve-tag).

On centralized version control systems, you can also switch between branches by typing C-u C-x v v in an up-to-date work file (see Advanced C-x v v), and entering the revision ID for a revision on another branch.  On CVS, for instance, revisions on the trunk (the main line of development) normally have IDs of the form 1.1, 1.2, 1.3, ..., while the first branch created from (say) revision 1.2 has revision IDs 1.2.1.1, 1.2.1.2, ..., the second branch created from revision 1.2 has revision IDs 1.2.2.1, 1.2.2.2, ..., and so forth.  You can also specify the branch ID, which is a branch revision ID omitting its final component (e.g., 1.2.1), to switch to the latest revision on that branch.

On a locking-based system, switching to a different branch also unlocks (write-protects) the working tree.

Once you have switched to a branch, VC commands will apply to that branch until you switch away; for instance, any VC filesets that you commit will be committed to that specific branch.

Pulling/Pushing Changes into/from a Branch
..........................................

C-x v P
     On a decentralized version control system, update another location with changes from the current branch (a.k.a. ``push'' changes).  This concept does not exist for centralized version control systems

C-x v +
     On a decentralized version control system, update the current branch by ``pulling in'' changes from another location.

     On a centralized version control system, update the current VC fileset.

On a decentralized version control system, the command C-x v P (vc-push) updates another location with changes from the current branch.  With a prefix argument, it prompts for the exact version control command to run, which lets you specify where to push changes; the default is bzr push with Bazaar, git push with Git, and hg push with Mercurial.  The default commands always push to a default location determined by the version control system from your branch configuration.

Prior to pushing, you can use C-x v O (vc-log-outgoing) to view a log buffer of the changes to be sent.  See VC Change Log.

This command is currently supported only by Bazaar, Git, and Mercurial. The concept of ``pushing'' does not exist for centralized version control systems, where this operation is a part of committing a changeset, so invoking this command on a centralized VCS signals an error.  This command also signals an error when attempted in a Bazaar bound branch, where committing a changeset automatically pushes the changes to the remote repository to which the local branch is bound.

On a decentralized version control system, the command C-x v + (vc-pull) updates the current branch and working tree.  It is typically used to update a copy of a remote branch.  If you supply a prefix argument, the command prompts for the exact version control command to use, which lets you specify where to pull changes from. Otherwise, it pulls from a default location determined by the version control system.

Amongst decentralized version control systems, C-x v + is currently supported only by Bazaar, Git, and Mercurial.  With Bazaar, it calls bzr pull for ordinary branches (to pull from a master branch into a mirroring branch), and bzr update for a bound branch (to pull from a central repository).  With Git, it calls git pull to fetch changes from a remote repository and merge it into the current branch.  With Mercurial, it calls hg pull -u to fetch changesets from the default remote repository and update the working directory.

Prior to pulling, you can use C-x v I (vc-log-incoming) to view a log buffer of the changes to be applied.  See VC Change Log.

On a centralized version control system like CVS, C-x v + updates the current VC fileset from the repository.

Merging Branches
................

C-x v m
     On a decentralized version control system, merge changes from another branch into the current one.

     On a centralized version control system, merge changes from another branch into the current VC fileset.

While developing a branch, you may sometimes need to merge in changes that have already been made in another branch.  This is not a trivial operation, as overlapping changes may have been made to the two branches.

On a decentralized version control system, merging is done with the command C-x v m (vc-merge).  On Bazaar, this prompts for the exact arguments to pass to bzr merge, offering a sensible default if possible.  On Git, this prompts for the name of a branch to merge from, with completion (based on the branch names known to the current repository).  With Mercurial, this prompts for argument to pass to hg merge.  The output from running the merge command is shown in a separate buffer.

On a centralized version control system like CVS, C-x v m prompts for a branch ID, or a pair of revision IDs (see Switching Branches); then it finds the changes from that branch, or the changes between the two revisions you specified, and merges those changes into the current VC fileset.  If you just type RET, Emacs simply merges any changes that were made on the same branch since you checked the file out.

Immediately after performing a merge, only the working tree is modified, and you can review the changes produced by the merge with C-x v D and related commands (see Old Revisions).  If the two branches contained overlapping changes, merging produces a conflict; a warning appears in the output of the merge command, and conflict markers are inserted into each affected work file, surrounding the two sets of conflicting changes.  You must then resolve the conflict by editing the conflicted files.  Once you are done, the modified files must be committed in the usual way for the merge to take effect (see Basic VC Editing).

Creating New Branches
.....................

On centralized version control systems like CVS, Emacs supports creating new branches as part of a commit operation.  When committing a modified VC fileset, type C-u C-x v v (vc-next-action with a prefix argument; see Advanced C-x v v).  Then Emacs prompts for a revision ID for the new revision.  You should specify a suitable branch ID for a branch starting at the current revision.  For example, if the current revision is 2.5, the branch ID should be 2.5.1, 2.5.2, and so on, depending on the number of existing branches at that point.

To create a new branch at an older revision (one that is no longer the head of a branch), first select that revision (see Switching Branches).  Your procedure will then differ depending on whether you are using a locking or merging-based VCS.

On a locking VCS, you will need to lock the old revision branch with C-x v v.  You'll be asked to confirm, when you lock the old revision, that you really mean to create a new branch---if you say no, you'll be offered a chance to lock the latest revision instead.  On a merging-based VCS you will skip this step.

Then make your changes and type C-x v v again to commit a new revision.  This creates a new branch starting from the selected revision.

After the branch is created, subsequent commits create new revisions on that branch.  To leave the branch, you must explicitly select a different revision with C-u C-x v v.

     [file vc1-xtra.texi not included]

Working with Projects
=====================

A project is a collection of files used for producing one or more programs.  Files that belong to a project are typically stored in a hierarchy of directories; the top-level directory of the hierarchy is known as the project root.

Whether a given directory is a root of some project is determined by the project-specific infrastructure, known as project back-end. Emacs currently supports two such back-ends: VC (see Version Control), whereby a VCS repository is considered a project; and EDE (see EDE).  This is expected to be extended in the future to support additional types of projects.

Which files do or don't belong to a project is also determined by the project back-end.  For example, the VC back-end doesn't consider ``ignored'' files (see VC Ignore) to be part of the project.

Emacs provides commands for handling project files conveniently. This section describes these commands.

All of the commands described here share the notion of the current project.  The current project is determined by the default-directory (see File Names) of the buffer that is the current buffer when the command is invoked.  If that directory doesn't seem to belong to a recognizable project, these commands prompt you for the project directory.

The command project-find-file is a convenient way of visiting files (see Visiting) that belong to the current project.  Unlike C-x C-f, this command doesn't require to type the full file name of the file to visit, you can type only the file's base name (i.e., omit the leading directories).  In addition, the completion candidates considered by the command include only the files belonging to the current project, and nothing else.  If there's a file name at point, this command offers that file as the default to visit.

The command project-find-regexp is similar to rgrep (see Grep Searching), but it searches only the files that belong to the current project.  The command prompts for the regular expression to search, and pops up an Xref mode buffer with the search results, where you can select a match using the Xref mode commands (see Xref Commands).  When invoked with a prefix argument, this command additionally prompts for the base directory from which to start the search; this allows, for example, to limit the search only to project files under a certain subdirectory of the project root.

M-x project-search is an interactive variant of project-find-regexp.  It prompts for a regular expression to search in the current project's files, but instead of finding all the matches and displaying them, it stops when it finds a match and visits the matched file at the locus of the match, allowing you to edit the matched file.  To find the rest of the matches, type M-x fileloop-continue RET.

M-x project-query-replace-regexp is similar to project-search, but it prompts you for whether to replace each match it finds, like query-replace does (see Query Replace), and continues to the next match after you respond.  If your response causes Emacs to exit the query-replace loop, you can later continue with M-x fileloop-continue RET.

Change Logs
===========

Many software projects keep a change log.  This is a file, normally named ChangeLog, containing a chronological record of when and how the program was changed.  Sometimes, these files are automatically generated from the change log entries stored in version control systems, or are used to generate these change log entries. Sometimes, there are several change log files, each recording the changes in one directory or directory tree.

Change Log Commands
-------------------

The Emacs command C-x 4 a adds a new entry to the change log file for the file you are editing (add-change-log-entry-other-window).  If that file is actually a backup file, it makes an entry appropriate for the file's parent---that is useful for making log entries for functions that have been deleted in the current version.

C-x 4 a visits the change log file and creates a new entry unless the most recent entry is for today's date and your name.  It also creates a new item for the current file.  For many languages, it can even guess the name of the function or other object that was changed.

To find the change log file, Emacs searches up the directory tree from the file you are editing.  By default, it stops if it finds a directory that seems to be the root of a version-control repository. To change this, customize change-log-directory-files.

When the variable add-log-keep-changes-together is non-nil, C-x 4 a adds to any existing item for the file, rather than starting a new item.

You can combine multiple changes of the same nature.  If you don't enter any text after the initial C-x 4 a, any subsequent C-x 4 a adds another symbol to the change log entry.

If add-log-always-start-new-record is non-nil, C-x 4 a always makes a new entry, even if the last entry was made by you and on the same date.

If the value of the variable change-log-version-info-enabled is non-nil, C-x 4 a adds the file's version number to the change log entry.  It finds the version number by searching the first ten percent of the file, using regular expressions from the variable change-log-version-number-regexp-list.

The change log file is visited in Change Log mode.  In this major mode, each bunch of grouped items counts as one paragraph, and each entry is considered a page.  This facilitates editing the entries. C-j and auto-fill indent each new line like the previous line; this is convenient for entering the contents of an entry.

You can use the command change-log-goto-source (by default bound to C-c C-c) to go to the source location of the change log entry near point, when Change Log mode is on.  Then subsequent invocations of the next-error command (by default bound to M-g M-n and C-x `) will move between entries in the change log.  You will jump to the actual site in the file that was changed, not just to the next change log entry.  You can also use previous-error to move back through the change log entries.

You can use the command M-x change-log-merge to merge other log files into a buffer in Change Log Mode, preserving the date ordering of entries.

Version control systems are another way to keep track of changes in your program and keep a change log.  Many projects that use a VCS don't keep a separate versioned change log file nowadays, so you may wish to avoid having such a file in the repository.  If the value of add-log-dont-create-changelog-file is non-nil, commands like C-x 4 a (add-change-log-entry-other-window) will record changes in a suitably named temporary buffer instead of a file, if such a file does not already exist.

Whether you have a change log file or use a temporary buffer for change logs, you can type C-c C-a (log-edit-insert-changelog) in the VC Log buffer to insert the relevant change log entries, if they exist.  See Log Buffer.

Format of ChangeLog
-------------------

A change log entry starts with a header line that contains the current date, your name (taken from the variable add-log-full-name), and your email address (taken from the variable add-log-mailing-address).  Aside from these header lines, every line in the change log starts with a space or a tab.  The bulk of the entry consists of items, each of which starts with a line starting with whitespace and a star.  Here are two entries, both dated in May 1993, with two items and one item respectively.

     1993-05-25  Richard Stallman  <rms@gnu.org>

             * man.el: Rename symbols 'man-*' to 'Man-*'.
             (manual-entry): Make prompt string clearer.

             * simple.el (blink-matching-paren-distance):
             Change default to 12,000.

     1993-05-24  Richard Stallman  <rms@gnu.org>

             * vc.el (minor-mode-map-alist): Don't use it if it's void.
             (vc-cancel-version): Doc fix.

One entry can describe several changes; each change should have its own item, or its own line in an item.  Normally there should be a blank line between items.  When items are related (parts of the same change, in different places), group them by leaving no blank line between them.

You should put a copyright notice and permission notice at the end of the change log file.  Here is an example:

     Copyright 1997, 1998 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
     Copying and distribution of this file, with or without modification, are
     permitted provided the copyright notice and this notice are preserved.

Of course, you should substitute the proper years and copyright holder.

Find Identifier References
==========================

An identifier is a name of a syntactical subunit of the program: a function, a subroutine, a method, a class, a data type, a macro, etc.  In a programming language, each identifier is a symbol in the language's syntax.  Program development and maintenance requires capabilities to quickly find where each identifier was defined and referenced, to rename identifiers across the entire project, etc.

These capabilities are also useful for finding references in major modes other than those defined to support programming languages.  For example, chapters, sections, appendices, etc. of a text or a TeX document can be treated as subunits as well, and their names can be used as identifiers.  In this chapter, we use the term ``identifiers'' to collectively refer to the names of any kind of subunits, in program source and in other kinds of text alike.

Emacs provides a unified interface to these capabilities, called xref.

To do its job, xref needs to make use of information and to employ methods specific to the major mode.  What files to search for identifiers, how to find references to identifiers, how to complete on identifiers---all this and more is mode-specific knowledge. xref delegates the mode-specific parts of its job to a backend provided by the mode; it also includes defaults for some of its commands, for those modes that don't provide their own.

A backend can implement its capabilities in a variety of ways.  Here are a few examples:

 a. Some major modes provide built-in means for looking up the language symbols.  For example, Emacs Lisp symbols can be identified by searching the package load history, maintained by the Emacs Lisp interpreter, and by consulting the built-in documentation strings; the Emacs Lisp mode uses these facilities in its backend to allow finding definitions of symbols.  (One disadvantage of this kind of backend is that it only knows about subunits that were loaded into the interpreter.)

 b. An external program can extract references by scanning the relevant files, and build a database of these references.  A backend can then access this database whenever it needs to list or look up references. The Emacs distribution includes etags, a command for tagging identifier definitions in programs, which supports many programming languages and other major modes, such as HTML, by extracting references into tags tables.  See Create Tags Table.  Major modes for languages supported by etags can use tags tables as basis for their backend.  (One disadvantage of this kind of backend is that tags tables need to be kept reasonably up to date, by rebuilding them from time to time.)

Find Identifiers
----------------

This subsection describes the commands that find references to identifiers and perform various queries about identifiers.  Each such reference could define an identifier, e.g., provide the implementation of a program subunit or the text of a document section; or it could use the identifier, e.g., call a function or a method, assign a value to a variable, mention a chapter in a cross-reference, etc.

Looking Up Identifiers
......................

The most important thing that xref enables you to do is to find the definition of a specific identifier.

M-.
     Find definitions of an identifier (xref-find-definitions).

C-M-. PATTERN RET
     Find all identifiers whose name matches PATTERN (xref-find-apropos).

C-x 4 . RET
     Find definitions of identifier, but display it in another window (xref-find-definitions-other-window).

C-x 5 . RET
     Find definition of identifier, and display it in a new frame (xref-find-definitions-other-frame).

M-x xref-find-definitions-at-mouse
     Find definition of identifier at mouse click.

M-,
     Go back to where you previously invoked M-. and friends (xref-pop-marker-stack).

M-x xref-etags-mode
     Switch xref to use the etags backend.

M-. (xref-find-definitions) shows the definitions of the identifier at point.  With a prefix argument, or if there's no identifier at point, it prompts for the identifier.  (If you want it to always prompt, customize xref-prompt-for-identifier to t.)

If the specified identifier has only one definition, the command jumps to it.  If the identifier has more than one possible definition (e.g., in an object-oriented language, or if there's a function and a variable by the same name), the command shows the candidate definitions in the *xref* buffer, together with the files in which these definitions are found.  Selecting one of these candidates by typing RET or clicking mouse-2 will pop a buffer showing the corresponding definition.

When entering the identifier argument to M-., the usual minibuffer completion commands can be used (see Completion), with the known identifier names as completion candidates.

Like most commands that can switch buffers, xref-find-definitions has a variant that displays the new buffer in another window, and one that makes a new frame for it.  The former is C-x 4 . (xref-find-definitions-other-window), and the latter is C-x 5 .  (xref-find-definitions-other-frame).

The command xref-find-definitions-at-mouse works like xref-find-definitions, but it looks for the identifier name at or around the place of a mouse event.  This command is intended to be bound to a mouse event, such as C-M-mouse-1, for example.

The command C-M-. (xref-find-apropos) finds the definitions of one or more identifiers that match a specified regular expression.  It is just like M-. except that it does regexp matching of identifiers instead of matching symbol names as fixed strings.

When any of the above commands finds more than one definition, it presents the *xref* buffer showing the definition candidates. In that buffer, you have several specialized commands, described in Xref Commands.

To go back to places from where you found the definition, use M-, (xref-pop-marker-stack).  It jumps back to the point of the last invocation of M-..  Thus you can find and examine the definition of something with M-. and then return to where you were with M-,.  M-, allows you to retrace your steps to a depth determined by the variable xref-marker-ring-length, which defaults to 16.

Some major modes install xref support facilities that might sometimes fail to find certain identifiers.  For example, in Emacs Lisp mode (see Lisp Eval) M-. will by default find only functions and variables from Lisp packages which are loaded into the current Emacs session or are auto-loaded (see Autoload (The Emacs Lisp Reference Manual)).  If M-. fails to find some identifiers, you can try forcing xref to use the etags backend (see Xref).  To this end, turn on the Xref Etags minor mode with M-x xref-etags-mode, then invoke M-. again. (For this to work, be sure to run etags to create the tags table in the directory tree of the source files, see Create Tags Table.)

Commands Available in the *xref* Buffer
.......................................

The following commands are provided in the *xref* buffer by the special XREF mode:

RET
mouse-2
     Display the reference on the current line.

n
.
     Move to the next reference and display it in the other window (xref-next-line).

p
,
     Move to the previous reference and display it in the other window (xref-prev-line).

C-o
     Display the reference on the current line in the other window (xref-show-location-at-point).

TAB
     Display the reference on the current line and bury the *xref* buffer (xref-quit-and-goto-xref).

r PATTERN RET REPLACEMENT RET
     Perform interactive query-replace on references that match PATTERN (xref-query-replace-in-results), replacing the match with REPLACEMENT.  See Identifier Search.

g
     Refresh the contents of the *xref* buffer (xref-revert-buffer.

q
     Quit the window showing the *xref* buffer (xref-quit).

In addition, the usual navigation commands, such as the arrow keys, C-n, and C-p are available for moving around the buffer without displaying the references.

Searching and Replacing with Identifiers
........................................

The commands in this section perform various search and replace operations either on identifiers themselves or on files that reference them.

M-?
     Find all the references for the identifier at point.

M-x xref-query-replace-in-results RET REGEXP RET REPLACEMENT RET
     Interactively replace REGEXP with REPLACEMENT in the names of all the identifiers shown in the *xref* buffer.

M-x tags-search RET REGEXP RET
     Search for REGEXP through the files in the selected tags table.

M-x tags-query-replace RET REGEXP RET REPLACEMENT RET
     Perform a query-replace-regexp on each file in the selected tags table.

M-x fileloop-continue
     Restart one of the last 2 commands above, from the current location of point.

M-? finds all the references for the identifier at point, prompting for the identifier as needed, with completion.  Depending on the current backend (see Xref), the command may prompt even if it finds a valid identifier at point.  When invoked with a prefix argument, it always prompts for the identifier.  (If you want it to prompt always, customize the value of the variable xref-prompt-for-identifier to t; or set it to nil to prompt only if there's no usable identifier at point.)  The command then presents the *xref* buffer with all the references to the identifier, showing the file name and the line where the identifier is referenced.  The XREF mode commands are available in this buffer, see Xref Commands.

M-x xref-query-replace-in-results reads a regexp to match identifier names and a replacement string, just like ordinary M-x query-replace-regexp.  It then performs the specified replacement in the names of the matching identifiers in all the places in all the files where these identifiers are referenced.  This is useful when you rename your identifiers as part of refactoring.  This command should be invoked in the *xref* buffer generated by M-?.

M-x tags-search reads a regexp using the minibuffer, then searches for matches in all the files in the selected tags table, one file at a time.  It displays the name of the file being searched so you can follow its progress.  As soon as it finds an occurrence, tags-search returns.  This command requires tags tables to be available (see Tags Tables).

Having found one match with tags-search, you probably want to find all the rest.  M-x fileloop-continue resumes the tags-search, finding one more match.  This searches the rest of the current buffer, followed by the remaining files of the tags table.

M-x tags-query-replace performs a single query-replace-regexp through all the files in the tags table.  It reads a regexp to search for and a string to replace with, just like ordinary M-x query-replace-regexp.  It searches much like M-x tags-search, but repeatedly, processing matches according to your input.  See Query Replace, for more information on query replace.

You can control the case-sensitivity of tags search commands by customizing the value of the variable tags-case-fold-search.  The default is to use the same setting as the value of case-fold-search (see Lax Search).

It is possible to get through all the files in the tags table with a single invocation of M-x tags-query-replace.  But often it is useful to exit temporarily, which you can do with any input event that has no special query replace meaning.  You can resume the query replace subsequently by typing M-x fileloop-continue; this command resumes the last tags search or replace command that you did. For instance, to skip the rest of the current file, you can type M-> M-x fileloop-continue.

Note that the commands described above carry out much broader searches than the xref-find-definitions family.  The xref-find-definitions commands search only for definitions of identifiers that match your string or regexp.  The commands xref-find-references, tags-search, and tags-query-replace find every occurrence of the identifier or regexp, as ordinary search commands and replace commands do in the current buffer.

As an alternative to xref-find-references and tags-search, you can run grep as a subprocess and have Emacs show you the matching lines one by one.  See Grep Searching.

Identifier Inquiries
....................

C-M-i
M-TAB
     Perform completion on the text around point, possibly using the selected tags table if one is loaded (completion-at-point).

M-x xref-find-apropos RET REGEXP RET
     Display a list of all known identifiers matching REGEXP.

M-x list-tags RET FILE RET
     Display a list of the identifiers defined in the program file FILE.

M-x tags-next-file
     Visit files recorded in the selected tags table.

In most programming language modes, you can type C-M-i or M-TAB (completion-at-point) to complete the symbol at point.  Some modes provide specialized completion for this command tailored to the mode; for those that don't, if there is a tags table loaded, this command can use it to generate completion candidates. See Symbol Completion.

M-x list-tags reads the name of one of the files covered by the selected tags table, and displays a list of tags defined in that file.  Do not include a directory as part of the file name unless the file name recorded in the tags table includes a directory.  This command works only with the etags backend, and requires a tags table for the project to be available.  See Tags Tables.  If used interactively, the default tag is file name of the current buffer if used interactively.

M-x tags-next-file visits files covered by the selected tags table. The first time it is called, it visits the first file covered by the table.  Each subsequent call visits the next covered file, unless a prefix argument is supplied, in which case it returns to the first file.  This command requires a tags table to be selected.

Tags Tables
-----------

A tags table records the tags (A tag is a synonym for identifier reference.  Commands and features based on the etags package traditionally use ``tag'' with this meaning, and this subsection follows that tradition.) extracted by scanning the source code of a certain program or a certain document.  Tags extracted from generated files reference the original files, rather than the generated files that were scanned during tag extraction.  Examples of generated files include C files generated from Cweb source files, from a Yacc parser, or from Lex scanner definitions; .i preprocessed C files; and Fortran files produced by preprocessing .fpp source files.

To produce a tags table, you run the etags shell command on a document or the source code file.  The etags program writes the tags to a tags table file, or tags file in short.  The conventional name for a tags file is TAGS. See Create Tags Table.  (It is also possible to create a tags table by using one of the commands from other packages that can produce such tables in the same format.)

Emacs uses the tags tables via the etags package as one of the supported backends for xref.  Because tags tables are produced by the etags command that is part of an Emacs distribution, we describe tags tables in more detail here.

The Ebrowse facility is similar to etags but specifically tailored for C++.  See Ebrowse (Ebrowse User's Manual).  The Semantic package provides another way to generate and use tags, separate from the etags facility. See Semantic.

Source File Tag Syntax
......................

Here is how tag syntax is defined for the most popular languages:

  * In C code, any C function or typedef is a tag, and so are definitions of struct, union and enum. #define macro definitions, #undef and enum constants are also tags, unless you specify --no-defines when making the tags table. Similarly, global variables are tags, unless you specify --no-globals, and so are struct members, unless you specify --no-members.  Use of --no-globals, --no-defines and --no-members can make the tags table file much smaller.

     You can tag function declarations and external variables in addition to function definitions by giving the --declarations option to etags.

  * In C++ code, in addition to all the tag constructs of C code, member functions are also recognized; member variables are also recognized, unless you use the --no-members option.  operator definitions have tag names like operator+.  If you specify the --class-qualify option, tags for variables and functions in classes are named CLASS::VARIABLE and CLASS::FUNCTION.  By default, class methods and members are not class-qualified, which allows to identify their names in the sources more accurately.

  * In Java code, tags include all the constructs recognized in C++, plus the interface, extends and implements constructs. Tags for variables and functions in classes are named CLASS.VARIABLE and CLASS.FUNCTION.

  * In LaTeX documents, the arguments for \chapter, \section, \subsection, \subsubsection, \eqno, \label, \ref, \cite, \bibitem, \part, \appendix, \entry, \index, \def, \newcommand, \renewcommand, \newenvironment and \renewenvironment are tags.

     Other commands can make tags as well, if you specify them in the environment variable TEXTAGS before invoking etags.  The value of this environment variable should be a colon-separated list of command names.  For example,

          TEXTAGS="mycommand:myothercommand"
          export TEXTAGS

     specifies (using Bourne shell syntax) that the commands \mycommand and \myothercommand also define tags.

  * In Lisp code, any function defined with defun, any variable defined with defvar or defconst, and in general the first argument of any expression that starts with (def in column zero is a tag.  As an exception, expressions of the form (defvar FOO) are treated as declarations, and are only tagged if the --declarations option is given.

  * In Scheme code, tags include anything defined with def or with a construct whose name starts with def.  They also include variables set with set! at top level in the file.

Several other languages are also supported:

  * In Ada code, functions, procedures, packages, tasks and types are tags.  Use the --packages-only option to create tags for packages only.

     In Ada, the same name can be used for different kinds of entity (e.g., for a procedure and for a function).  Also, for things like packages, procedures and functions, there is the spec (i.e., the interface) and the body (i.e., the implementation).  To make it easier to pick the definition you want, Ada tag names have suffixes indicating the type of entity:

     /b
          package body.

     /f
          function.

     /k
          task.

     /p
          procedure.

     /s
          package spec.

     /t
          type.

     Thus, M-x find-tag RET bidule/b RET will go directly to the body of the package bidule, while M-x find-tag RET bidule RET will just search for any tag bidule.

  * In assembler code, labels appearing at the start of a line, followed by a colon, are tags.

  * In Bison or Yacc input files, each rule defines as a tag the nonterminal it constructs.  The portions of the file that contain C code are parsed as C code.

  * In Cobol code, tags are paragraph names; that is, any word starting in column 8 and followed by a period.

  * In Erlang code, the tags are the functions, records and macros defined in the file.

  * In Fortran code, functions, subroutines and block data are tags.

  * In Go code, packages, functions, and types are tags.

  * In HTML input files, the tags are the title and the h1, h2, h3 headers.  Also, tags are name= in anchors and all occurrences of id=.

  * In Lua input files, all functions are tags.

  * In makefiles, targets are tags; additionally, variables are tags unless you specify --no-globals.

  * In Objective C code, tags include Objective C definitions for classes, class categories, methods and protocols.  Tags for variables and functions in classes are named CLASS::VARIABLE and CLASS::FUNCTION.

  * In Pascal code, the tags are the functions and procedures defined in the file.

  * In Perl code, the tags are the packages, subroutines and variables defined by the package, sub, use constant, my, and local keywords.  Use --globals if you want to tag global variables.  Tags for subroutines are named PACKAGE::SUB.  The name for subroutines defined in the default package is main::SUB.

  * In PHP code, tags are functions, classes and defines.  Vars are tags too, unless you use the --no-members option.

  * In PostScript code, the tags are the functions.

  * In Prolog code, tags are predicates and rules at the beginning of line.

  * In Python code, def or class at the beginning of a line generate a tag.

  * In Ruby code, def or class or module at the beginning of a line generate a tag.  Constants also generate tags.

You can also generate tags based on regexp matching (see Etags Regexps) to handle other formats and languages.

Creating Tags Tables
....................

The etags program is used to create a tags table file.  It knows the syntax of several languages, as described in Tag Syntax. Here is how to run etags:

     etags INPUTFILES...

The etags program reads the specified files, and writes a tags table named TAGS in the current working directory.  You can optionally specify a different file name for the tags table by using the --output=FILE option; specifying - as a file name prints the tags table to standard output.  You can also append the newly created tags table to an existing file by using the --append option.

If the specified files don't exist, etags looks for compressed versions of them and uncompresses them to read them.  Under MS-DOS, etags also looks for file names like mycode.cgz if it is given mycode.c on the command line and mycode.c does not exist.

If the tags table becomes outdated due to changes in the files described in it, you can update it by running the etags program again.  If the tags table does not record a tag, or records it for the wrong file, then Emacs will not be able to find that definition until you update the tags table.  But if the position recorded in the tags table becomes a little bit wrong (due to other editing), Emacs will still be able to find the right position, with a slight delay.

Thus, there is no need to update the tags table after each edit. You should update a tags table when you define new tags that you want to have listed, or when you move tag definitions from one file to another, or when changes become substantial.

You can make a tags table include another tags table, by passing the --include=FILE option to etags.  It then covers all the files covered by the included tags file, as well as its own.

If you specify the source files with relative file names when you run etags, the tags file will contain file names relative to the directory where the tags file was initially written.  This way, you can move an entire directory tree containing both the tags file and the source files, and the tags file will still refer correctly to the source files.  If the tags file is - or is in the /dev directory, however, the file names are made relative to the current working directory.  This is useful, for example, when writing the tags to the standard output.

When using a relative file name, it should not be a symbolic link pointing to a tags file in a different directory, because this would generally render the file names invalid.

If you specify absolute file names as arguments to etags, then the tags file will contain absolute file names.  This way, the tags file will still refer to the same files even if you move it, as long as the source files remain in the same place.  Absolute file names start with /, or with DEVICE:/ on MS-DOS and MS-Windows.

When you want to make a tags table from a great number of files, you may have problems listing them on the command line, because some systems have a limit on its length.  You can circumvent this limit by telling etags to read the file names from its standard input, by typing a dash in place of the file names, like this:

     find . -name "*.[chCH]" -print | etags -

etags recognizes the language used in an input file based on its file name and contents.  It first tries to match the file's name and extension to the ones commonly used with certain languages.  Some languages have interpreters with known names (e.g., perl for Perl or pl for Prolog), so etags next looks for an interpreter specification of the form #!INTERP on the first line of an input file, and matches that against known interpreters.  If none of that works, or if you want to override the automatic detection of the language, you can specify the language explicitly with the --language=NAME option.  You can intermix these options with file names; each one applies to the file names that follow it.  Specify --language=auto to tell etags to resume guessing the language from the file names and file contents.  Specify --language=none to turn off language-specific processing entirely; then etags recognizes tags by regexp matching alone (see Etags Regexps).  This comes in handy when an input file uses a language not yet supported by etags, and you want to avoid having etags fall back on Fortran and C as the default languages.

The option --parse-stdin=FILE is mostly useful when calling etags from programs.  It can be used (only once) in place of a file name on the command line.  etags will read from standard input and mark the produced tags as belonging to the file FILE.

etags --help outputs the list of the languages etags knows, and the file name rules for guessing the language.  It also prints a list of all the available etags options, together with a short explanation.  If followed by one or more --language=LANG options, it outputs detailed information about how tags are generated for LANG.

Etags Regexps
.............

The --regex option to etags allows tags to be recognized by regular expression matching.  You can intermix this option with file names; each one applies to the source files that follow it.  If you specify multiple --regex options, all of them are used in parallel.  The syntax is:

     --regex=[{LANGUAGE}]/TAGREGEXP/[NAMEREGEXP/]MODIFIERS

The essential part of the option value is TAGREGEXP, the regexp for matching tags.  It is always used anchored, that is, it only matches at the beginning of a line.  If you want to allow indented tags, use a regexp that matches initial whitespace; start it with [ \t]*.

In these regular expressions, \ quotes the next character, and all the C character escape sequences are supported: \a for bell, \b for back space, \e for escape, \f for formfeed, \n for newline, \r for carriage return, \t for tab, and \v for vertical tab.  In addition, \d stands for the DEL character.

Ideally, TAGREGEXP should not match more characters than are needed to recognize what you want to tag.  If the syntax requires you to write TAGREGEXP so it matches more characters beyond the tag itself, you should add a NAMEREGEXP, to pick out just the tag. This will enable Emacs to find tags more accurately and to do completion on tag names more reliably.  In NAMEREGEXP, it is frequently convenient to use ``back references'' (see Regexp Backslash) to parenthesized groupings \( ... \) in TAGREGEXP.  For example, \1 refers to the first such parenthesized grouping.  You can find some examples of this below.

The MODIFIERS are a sequence of zero or more characters that modify the way etags does the matching.  A regexp with no modifiers is applied sequentially to each line of the input file, in a case-sensitive way.  The modifiers and their meanings are:

i
     Ignore case when matching this regexp.

m
     Match this regular expression against the whole file, so that multi-line matches are possible.

s
     Match this regular expression against the whole file, and allow . in TAGREGEXP to match newlines.

The -R option cancels all the regexps defined by preceding --regex options.  It too applies to the file names following it.  Here's an example:

     etags --regex=/REG1/i voo.doo --regex=/REG2/m \
         bar.ber -R --lang=lisp los.er

Here etags chooses the parsing language for voo.doo and bar.ber according to their contents.  etags also uses REG1 to recognize additional tags in voo.doo, and both REG1 and REG2 to recognize additional tags in bar.ber.  REG1 is checked against each line of voo.doo and bar.ber, in a case-insensitive way, while REG2 is checked against the whole bar.ber file, permitting multi-line matches, in a case-sensitive way.  etags uses only the Lisp tags rules, with no user-specified regexp matching, to recognize tags in los.er.

You can restrict a --regex option to match only files of a given language by using the optional prefix {LANGUAGE}. (etags --help prints the list of languages recognized by etags.)  This is particularly useful when storing many predefined regular expressions for etags in a file.  The following example tags the DEFVAR macros in the Emacs source files, for the C language only:

     --regex='{c}/[ \t]*DEFVAR_[A-Z_ \t(]+"\([^"]+\)"/\1/'

When you have complex regular expressions, you can store the list of them in a file.  The following option syntax instructs etags to read two files of regular expressions.  The regular expressions contained in the second file are matched without regard to case.

     --regex=@CASE-SENSITIVE-FILE --ignore-case-regex=@IGNORE-CASE-FILE

A regex file for etags contains one regular expression per line.  Empty lines, and lines beginning with space or tab are ignored. When the first character in a line is @, etags assumes that the rest of the line is the name of another file of regular expressions; thus, one such file can include another file.  All the other lines are taken to be regular expressions.  If the first non-whitespace text on the line is --, that line is a comment.

For example, we can create a file called emacs.tags with the following contents:

             -- This is for GNU Emacs C source files
     {c}/[ \t]*DEFVAR_[A-Z_ \t(]+"\([^"]+\)"/\1/

and then use it like this:

     etags --regex=@emacs.tags *.[ch] */*.[ch]

Here are some more examples.  The regexps are quoted to protect them from shell interpretation.

  * Tag Octave files:

          etags --language=none \
                --regex='/[ \t]*function.*=[ \t]*\([^ \t]*\)[ \t]*(/\1/' \
                --regex='/###key \(.*\)/\1/' \
                --regex='/[ \t]*global[ \t].*/' \
                *.m

     Note that tags are not generated for scripts, so that you have to add a line by yourself of the form ###key SCRIPTNAME if you want to jump to it.

  * Tag Tcl files:

          etags --language=none --regex='/proc[ \t]+\([^ \t]+\)/\1/' *.tcl

  * Tag VHDL files:

          etags --language=none \
            --regex='/[ \t]*\(ARCHITECTURE\|CONFIGURATION\) +[^ ]* +OF/' \
            --regex='/[ \t]*\(ATTRIBUTE\|ENTITY\|FUNCTION\|PACKAGE\
            \( BODY\)?\|PROCEDURE\|PROCESS\|TYPE\)[ \t]+\([^ \t(]+\)/\3/'

Selecting a Tags Table
----------------------

Emacs has at any time at most one selected tags table.  All the commands for working with tags tables use the selected one.  To select a tags table, type M-x visit-tags-table, which reads the tags table file name as an argument, with TAGS defaulting to the first directory that contains a file named TAGS encountered when recursively searching upward from the default directory.

Emacs does not actually read in the tags table contents until you try to use them; all visit-tags-table does is store the file name in the variable tags-file-name, and not much more.  The variable's initial value is nil; that value tells all the commands for working with tags tables that they must ask for a tags table file name to use.

Using visit-tags-table when a tags table is already loaded gives you a choice: you can add the new tags table to the current list of tags tables, or start a new list.  The tags commands use all the tags tables in the current list.  If you start a new list, the new tags table is used instead of others.  If you add the new table to the current list, it is used as well as the others.

You can specify a precise list of tags tables by setting the variable tags-table-list to a list of strings, like this:

     (setq tags-table-list
           '("~/.emacs.d" "/usr/local/lib/emacs/src"))

This tells the tags commands to look at the TAGS files in your ~/.emacs.d directory and in the /usr/local/lib/emacs/src directory.  The order depends on which file you are in and which tags table mentions that file.

Do not set both tags-file-name and tags-table-list.

Emacs Development Environment
=============================

EDE (Emacs Development Environment) is a package that simplifies the task of creating, building, and debugging large programs with Emacs.  It provides some of the features of an IDE, or Integrated Development Environment, in Emacs.

This section provides a brief description of EDE usage. For full details, see EDE (Emacs Development Environment).

EDE is implemented as a global minor mode (see Minor Modes).  To enable it, type M-x global-ede-mode or click on the Project Support (EDE) item in the Tools menu.  You can also enable EDE each time you start Emacs, by adding the following line to your initialization file:

     (global-ede-mode t)

Activating EDE adds a menu named Development to the menu bar. Many EDE commands, including the ones described below, can be invoked from this menu.

EDE organizes files into projects, which correspond to directory trees.  The project root is the topmost directory of a project.  To define a new project, visit a file in the desired project root and type M-x ede-new.  This command prompts for a project type, which refers to the underlying method that EDE will use to manage the project (see EDE (Emacs Development Environment)).  The most common project types are Make, which uses Makefiles, and Automake, which uses GNU Automake (see Automake).  In both cases, EDE also creates a file named Project.ede, which stores information about the project.

A project may contain one or more targets.  A target can be an object file, executable program, or some other type of file, which is built from one or more of the files in the project.

To add a new target to a project, type C-c . t (M-x ede-new-target).  This command also asks if you wish to add the current file to that target, which means that the target is to be built from that file.  After you have defined a target, you can add more files to it by typing C-c . a (ede-add-file).

To build a target, type C-c . c (ede-compile-target). To build all the targets in the project, type C-c . C (ede-compile-project).  EDE uses the file types to guess how the target should be built.

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