[hcoop/debian/mlton.git] / doc / guide / localhost / EmacsBgBuildMode

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<a href="./Home">MLton 20180207</a>\r
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<div id="header">\r
<h1>EmacsBgBuildMode</h1>\r
</div>\r
<div id="content">\r
<div id="preamble">\r
<div class="sectionbody">\r
<div class="paragraph"><p>Do you really want to think about starting a build of you project?\r
What if you had a personal slave that would restart a build of your\r
project whenever you save any file belonging to that project?  The\r
bg-build mode does just that.  Just save the file, a compile is\r
started (silently!), you can continue working without even thinking\r
about starting a build, and if there are errors, you are notified\r
(with a message), and can then jump to errors.</p></div>\r
<div class="paragraph"><p>This mode is not specific to MLton per se, but is particularly useful\r
for working with MLton due to the longer compile times.  By the time\r
you start wondering about possible errors, the build is already on the\r
way.</p></div>\r
</div>\r
</div>\r
<div class="sect1">\r
<h2 id="_functionality_and_features">Functionality and Features</h2>\r
<div class="sectionbody">\r
<div class="ulist"><ul>\r
<li>\r
<p>\r
Each time a file is saved, and after a user configurable delay\r
period has been exhausted, a build is started silently in the\r
background.\r
</p>\r
</li>\r
<li>\r
<p>\r
When the build is finished, a status indicator (message) is\r
displayed non-intrusively.\r
</p>\r
</li>\r
<li>\r
<p>\r
At any time, you can switch to a build process buffer where all the\r
messages from the build are shown.\r
</p>\r
</li>\r
<li>\r
<p>\r
Optionally highlights (error/warning) message locations in (source\r
code) buffers after a finished build.\r
</p>\r
</li>\r
<li>\r
<p>\r
After a build has finished, you can jump to locations of warnings\r
and errors from the build process buffer or by using the <span class="monospaced">first-error</span>\r
and <span class="monospaced">next-error</span> commands.\r
</p>\r
</li>\r
<li>\r
<p>\r
When a build fails, bg-build mode can optionally execute a user\r
specified command.  By default, bg-build mode executes <span class="monospaced">first-error</span>.\r
</p>\r
</li>\r
<li>\r
<p>\r
When starting a build of a particular project, a possible previous\r
live build of the same project is interrupted first.\r
</p>\r
</li>\r
<li>\r
<p>\r
A project configuration file specifies the commands required to\r
build a project.\r
</p>\r
</li>\r
<li>\r
<p>\r
Multiple projects can be loaded into bg-build mode and bg-build mode\r
can build a given maximum number of projects concurrently.\r
</p>\r
</li>\r
<li>\r
<p>\r
Supports both <a href="http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/">Gnu Emacs</a> and\r
<a href="http://www.xemacs.org">XEmacs</a>.\r
</p>\r
</li>\r
</ul></div>\r
</div>\r
</div>\r
<div class="sect1">\r
<h2 id="_download">Download</h2>\r
<div class="sectionbody">\r
<div class="paragraph"><p>There is no package for the mode at the moment.  To install the mode you\r
need to fetch the Emacs Lisp, <span class="monospaced">*.el</span>, files from the MLton repository:\r
<a href="https://github.com/MLton/mlton/tree/master/ide/emacs"><span class="monospaced">emacs</span></a>.</p></div>\r
</div>\r
</div>\r
<div class="sect1">\r
<h2 id="_setup">Setup</h2>\r
<div class="sectionbody">\r
<div class="paragraph"><p>The easiest way to load the mode is to first tell Emacs where to find the\r
files.  For example, add</p></div>\r
<div class="listingblock">\r
<div class="content"><div class="highlight"><pre><span class="p">(</span><span class="nv">add-to-list</span> <span class="ss">&#39;load-path</span> <span class="p">(</span><span class="nv">file-truename</span> <span class="s">&quot;path-to-the-el-files&quot;</span><span class="p">))</span>\r
</pre></div></div></div>\r
<div class="paragraph"><p>to your <span class="monospaced">~/.emacs</span> or <span class="monospaced">~/.xemacs/init.el</span>.  You&#8217;ll probably also want\r
to start the mode automatically by adding</p></div>\r
<div class="listingblock">\r
<div class="content"><div class="highlight"><pre><span class="p">(</span><span class="nb">require</span> <span class="ss">&#39;bg-build-mode</span><span class="p">)</span>\r
<span class="p">(</span><span class="nv">bg-build-mode</span><span class="p">)</span>\r
</pre></div></div></div>\r
<div class="paragraph"><p>to your Emacs init file.  Once the mode is activated, you should see\r
the <span class="monospaced">BGB</span> indicator on the mode line.</p></div>\r
<div class="sect2">\r
<h3 id="_mlton_and_compilation_mode">MLton and Compilation-Mode</h3>\r
<div class="paragraph"><p>At the time of writing, neither Gnu Emacs nor XEmacs contain an error\r
regexp that would match MLton&#8217;s messages.</p></div>\r
<div class="paragraph"><p>If you use Gnu Emacs, insert the following code into your <span class="monospaced">.emacs</span> file:</p></div>\r
<div class="listingblock">\r
<div class="content"><div class="highlight"><pre><span class="p">(</span><span class="nb">require</span> <span class="ss">&#39;compile</span><span class="p">)</span>\r
<span class="p">(</span><span class="nv">add-to-list</span>\r
 <span class="ss">&#39;compilation-error-regexp-alist</span>\r
 <span class="o">&#39;</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="s">&quot;^\\(Warning\\|Error\\): \\(.+\\) \\([0-9]+\\)\\.\\([0-9]+\\)\\.$&quot;</span>\r
   <span class="mi">2</span> <span class="mi">3</span> <span class="mi">4</span><span class="p">))</span>\r
</pre></div></div></div>\r
<div class="paragraph"><p>If you use XEmacs, insert the following code into your <span class="monospaced">init.el</span> file:</p></div>\r
<div class="listingblock">\r
<div class="content"><div class="highlight"><pre><span class="p">(</span><span class="nb">require</span> <span class="ss">&#39;compile</span><span class="p">)</span>\r
<span class="p">(</span><span class="nv">add-to-list</span>\r
 <span class="ss">&#39;compilation-error-regexp-alist-alist</span>\r
 <span class="o">&#39;</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="nv">mlton</span>\r
   <span class="p">(</span><span class="s">&quot;^\\(Warning\\|Error\\): \\(.+\\) \\([0-9]+\\)\\.\\([0-9]+\\)\\.$&quot;</span>\r
    <span class="mi">2</span> <span class="mi">3</span> <span class="mi">4</span><span class="p">)))</span>\r
<span class="p">(</span><span class="nv">compilation-build-compilation-error-regexp-alist</span><span class="p">)</span>\r
</pre></div></div></div>\r
</div>\r
</div>\r
</div>\r
<div class="sect1">\r
<h2 id="_usage">Usage</h2>\r
<div class="sectionbody">\r
<div class="paragraph"><p>Typically projects are built (or compiled) using a tool like <a href="http://www.gnu.org/software/make/"><span class="monospaced">make</span></a>,\r
but the details vary.  The bg-build mode needs a project configuration file to\r
know how to build your project.  A project configuration file basically contains\r
an Emacs Lisp expression calling a function named <span class="monospaced">bg-build</span> that returns a\r
project object.  A simple example of a project configuration file would be the\r
(<a href="https://github.com/MLton/mltonlib/blob/master/com/ssh/async/unstable/example/smlbot/Build.bgb"><span class="monospaced">Build.bgb</span></a>)\r
file used with smlbot:</p></div>\r
<div class="listingblock">\r
<div class="content"><div class="highlight"><pre><span class="p">(</span><span class="nv">bg-build</span>\r
 <span class="ss">:name</span>  <span class="s">&quot;SML-Bot&quot;</span>\r
 <span class="ss">:shell</span> <span class="s">&quot;nice -n5 make all&quot;</span><span class="p">)</span>\r
</pre></div></div></div>\r
<div class="paragraph"><p>The <span class="monospaced">bg-build</span> function takes a number of keyword arguments:</p></div>\r
<div class="ulist"><ul>\r
<li>\r
<p>\r
<span class="monospaced">:name</span> specifies the name of the project.  This can be any\r
expression that evaluates to a string or to a nullary function that\r
returns a string.\r
</p>\r
</li>\r
<li>\r
<p>\r
<span class="monospaced">:shell</span> specifies a shell command to execute.  This can be any\r
expression that evaluates to a string, a list of strings, or to a\r
nullary function returning a list of strings.\r
</p>\r
</li>\r
<li>\r
<p>\r
<span class="monospaced">:build?</span> specifies a predicate to determine whether the project\r
should be built after some files have been modified.  The predicate is\r
given a list of filenames and should return a non-nil value when the\r
project should be built and nil otherwise.\r
</p>\r
</li>\r
</ul></div>\r
<div class="paragraph"><p>All of the keyword arguments, except <span class="monospaced">:shell</span>, are optional and can be left out.</p></div>\r
<div class="paragraph"><p>Note the use of the <span class="monospaced">nice</span> command above.  It means that background\r
build process is given a lower priority by the system process\r
scheduler.  Assuming your machine has enough memory, using nice\r
ensures that your computer remains responsive.  (You probably won&#8217;t\r
even notice when a build is started.)</p></div>\r
<div class="paragraph"><p>Once you have written a project file for bg-build mode.  Use the\r
<span class="monospaced">bg-build-add-project</span> command to load the project file for bg-build\r
mode.  The bg-build mode can also optionally load recent project files\r
automatically at startup.</p></div>\r
<div class="paragraph"><p>After the project file has been loaded and bg-build mode activated,\r
each time you save a file in Emacs, the bg-build mode tries to build\r
your project.</p></div>\r
<div class="paragraph"><p>The <span class="monospaced">bg-build-status</span> command creates a buffer that displays some\r
status information on builds and allows you to manage projects (start\r
builds explicitly, remove a project from bg-build, &#8230;) as well as\r
visit buffers created by bg-build.  Notice the count of started\r
builds.  At the end of the day it can be in the hundreds or thousands.\r
Imagine the number of times you&#8217;ve been relieved of starting a build\r
explicitly!</p></div>\r
</div>\r
</div>\r
</div>\r
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	6	<title>EmacsBgBuildMode</title>\r
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	21	<div id="banner-home">\r
	22	<a href="./Home">MLton 20180207</a>\r
	23	</div>\r
	24	</div>\r
	25	<div id="header">\r
	26	<h1>EmacsBgBuildMode</h1>\r
	27	</div>\r
	28	<div id="content">\r
	29	<div id="preamble">\r
	30	<div class="sectionbody">\r
	31	<div class="paragraph"><p>Do you really want to think about starting a build of you project?\r
	32	What if you had a personal slave that would restart a build of your\r
	33	project whenever you save any file belonging to that project? The\r
	34	bg-build mode does just that. Just save the file, a compile is\r
	35	started (silently!), you can continue working without even thinking\r
	36	about starting a build, and if there are errors, you are notified\r
	37	(with a message), and can then jump to errors.</p></div>\r
	38	<div class="paragraph"><p>This mode is not specific to MLton per se, but is particularly useful\r
	39	for working with MLton due to the longer compile times. By the time\r
	40	you start wondering about possible errors, the build is already on the\r
	41	way.</p></div>\r
	42	</div>\r
	43	</div>\r
	44	<div class="sect1">\r
	45	<h2 id="_functionality_and_features">Functionality and Features</h2>\r
	46	<div class="sectionbody">\r
	47	<div class="ulist"><ul>\r
	48	<li>\r
	49	<p>\r
	50	Each time a file is saved, and after a user configurable delay\r
	51	period has been exhausted, a build is started silently in the\r
	52	background.\r
	53	</p>\r
	54	</li>\r
	55	<li>\r
	56	<p>\r
	57	When the build is finished, a status indicator (message) is\r
	58	displayed non-intrusively.\r
	59	</p>\r
	60	</li>\r
	61	<li>\r
	62	<p>\r
	63	At any time, you can switch to a build process buffer where all the\r
	64	messages from the build are shown.\r
65	</p>\r
66	</li>\r
67	<li>\r
68	<p>\r
69	Optionally highlights (error/warning) message locations in (source\r
70	code) buffers after a finished build.\r
71	</p>\r
72	</li>\r
73	<li>\r
74	<p>\r
75	After a build has finished, you can jump to locations of warnings\r
76	and errors from the build process buffer or by using the <span class="monospaced">first-error</span>\r
77	and <span class="monospaced">next-error</span> commands.\r
78	</p>\r
79	</li>\r
80	<li>\r
81	<p>\r
82	When a build fails, bg-build mode can optionally execute a user\r
83	specified command. By default, bg-build mode executes <span class="monospaced">first-error</span>.\r
84	</p>\r
85	</li>\r
86	<li>\r
87	<p>\r
88	When starting a build of a particular project, a possible previous\r
89	live build of the same project is interrupted first.\r
90	</p>\r
91	</li>\r
92	<li>\r
93	<p>\r
94	A project configuration file specifies the commands required to\r
95	build a project.\r
96	</p>\r
97	</li>\r
98	<li>\r
99	<p>\r
100	Multiple projects can be loaded into bg-build mode and bg-build mode\r
101	can build a given maximum number of projects concurrently.\r
102	</p>\r
103	</li>\r
104	<li>\r
105	<p>\r
106	Supports both <a href="http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/">Gnu Emacs</a> and\r
107	<a href="http://www.xemacs.org">XEmacs</a>.\r
108	</p>\r
109	</li>\r
110	</ul></div>\r
111	</div>\r
112	</div>\r
113	<div class="sect1">\r
114	<h2 id="_download">Download</h2>\r
115	<div class="sectionbody">\r
116	<div class="paragraph"><p>There is no package for the mode at the moment. To install the mode you\r
117	need to fetch the Emacs Lisp, <span class="monospaced">*.el</span>, files from the MLton repository:\r
118	<a href="https://github.com/MLton/mlton/tree/master/ide/emacs"><span class="monospaced">emacs</span></a>.</p></div>\r
119	</div>\r
120	</div>\r
121	<div class="sect1">\r
122	<h2 id="_setup">Setup</h2>\r
123	<div class="sectionbody">\r
124	<div class="paragraph"><p>The easiest way to load the mode is to first tell Emacs where to find the\r
125	files. For example, add</p></div>\r
126	<div class="listingblock">\r
127	<div class="content"><div class="highlight"><pre><span class="p">(</span><span class="nv">add-to-list</span> <span class="ss">'load-path</span> <span class="p">(</span><span class="nv">file-truename</span> <span class="s">"path-to-the-el-files"</span><span class="p">))</span>\r
128	</pre></div></div></div>\r
129	<div class="paragraph"><p>to your <span class="monospaced">~/.emacs</span> or <span class="monospaced">~/.xemacs/init.el</span>. You’ll probably also want\r
130	to start the mode automatically by adding</p></div>\r
131	<div class="listingblock">\r
132	<div class="content"><div class="highlight"><pre><span class="p">(</span><span class="nb">require</span> <span class="ss">'bg-build-mode</span><span class="p">)</span>\r
133	<span class="p">(</span><span class="nv">bg-build-mode</span><span class="p">)</span>\r
134	</pre></div></div></div>\r
135	<div class="paragraph"><p>to your Emacs init file. Once the mode is activated, you should see\r
136	the <span class="monospaced">BGB</span> indicator on the mode line.</p></div>\r
137	<div class="sect2">\r
138	<h3 id="_mlton_and_compilation_mode">MLton and Compilation-Mode</h3>\r
139	<div class="paragraph"><p>At the time of writing, neither Gnu Emacs nor XEmacs contain an error\r
140	regexp that would match MLton’s messages.</p></div>\r
141	<div class="paragraph"><p>If you use Gnu Emacs, insert the following code into your <span class="monospaced">.emacs</span> file:</p></div>\r
142	<div class="listingblock">\r
143	<div class="content"><div class="highlight"><pre><span class="p">(</span><span class="nb">require</span> <span class="ss">'compile</span><span class="p">)</span>\r
144	<span class="p">(</span><span class="nv">add-to-list</span>\r
145	<span class="ss">'compilation-error-regexp-alist</span>\r
146	<span class="o">'</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="s">"^\\(Warning\\\|Error\\): \\(.+\\) \\([0-9]+\\)\\.\\([0-9]+\\)\\.$"</span>\r
147	<span class="mi">2</span> <span class="mi">3</span> <span class="mi">4</span><span class="p">))</span>\r
148	</pre></div></div></div>\r
149	<div class="paragraph"><p>If you use XEmacs, insert the following code into your <span class="monospaced">init.el</span> file:</p></div>\r
150	<div class="listingblock">\r
151	<div class="content"><div class="highlight"><pre><span class="p">(</span><span class="nb">require</span> <span class="ss">'compile</span><span class="p">)</span>\r
152	<span class="p">(</span><span class="nv">add-to-list</span>\r
153	<span class="ss">'compilation-error-regexp-alist-alist</span>\r
154	<span class="o">'</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="nv">mlton</span>\r
155	<span class="p">(</span><span class="s">"^\\(Warning\\\|Error\\): \\(.+\\) \\([0-9]+\\)\\.\\([0-9]+\\)\\.$"</span>\r
156	<span class="mi">2</span> <span class="mi">3</span> <span class="mi">4</span><span class="p">)))</span>\r
157	<span class="p">(</span><span class="nv">compilation-build-compilation-error-regexp-alist</span><span class="p">)</span>\r
158	</pre></div></div></div>\r
159	</div>\r
160	</div>\r
161	</div>\r
162	<div class="sect1">\r
163	<h2 id="_usage">Usage</h2>\r
164	<div class="sectionbody">\r
165	<div class="paragraph"><p>Typically projects are built (or compiled) using a tool like <a href="http://www.gnu.org/software/make/"><span class="monospaced">make</span></a>,\r
166	but the details vary. The bg-build mode needs a project configuration file to\r
167	know how to build your project. A project configuration file basically contains\r
168	an Emacs Lisp expression calling a function named <span class="monospaced">bg-build</span> that returns a\r
169	project object. A simple example of a project configuration file would be the\r
170	(<a href="https://github.com/MLton/mltonlib/blob/master/com/ssh/async/unstable/example/smlbot/Build.bgb"><span class="monospaced">Build.bgb</span></a>)\r
171	file used with smlbot:</p></div>\r
172	<div class="listingblock">\r
173	<div class="content"><div class="highlight"><pre><span class="p">(</span><span class="nv">bg-build</span>\r
174	<span class="ss">:name</span> <span class="s">"SML-Bot"</span>\r
175	<span class="ss">:shell</span> <span class="s">"nice -n5 make all"</span><span class="p">)</span>\r
176	</pre></div></div></div>\r
177	<div class="paragraph"><p>The <span class="monospaced">bg-build</span> function takes a number of keyword arguments:</p></div>\r
178	<div class="ulist"><ul>\r
179	<li>\r
180	<p>\r
181	<span class="monospaced">:name</span> specifies the name of the project. This can be any\r
182	expression that evaluates to a string or to a nullary function that\r
183	returns a string.\r
184	</p>\r
185	</li>\r
186	<li>\r
187	<p>\r
188	<span class="monospaced">:shell</span> specifies a shell command to execute. This can be any\r
189	expression that evaluates to a string, a list of strings, or to a\r
190	nullary function returning a list of strings.\r
191	</p>\r
192	</li>\r
193	<li>\r
194	<p>\r
195	<span class="monospaced">:build?</span> specifies a predicate to determine whether the project\r
196	should be built after some files have been modified. The predicate is\r
197	given a list of filenames and should return a non-nil value when the\r
198	project should be built and nil otherwise.\r
199	</p>\r
200	</li>\r
201	</ul></div>\r
202	<div class="paragraph"><p>All of the keyword arguments, except <span class="monospaced">:shell</span>, are optional and can be left out.</p></div>\r
203	<div class="paragraph"><p>Note the use of the <span class="monospaced">nice</span> command above. It means that background\r
204	build process is given a lower priority by the system process\r
205	scheduler. Assuming your machine has enough memory, using nice\r
206	ensures that your computer remains responsive. (You probably won’t\r
207	even notice when a build is started.)</p></div>\r
208	<div class="paragraph"><p>Once you have written a project file for bg-build mode. Use the\r
209	<span class="monospaced">bg-build-add-project</span> command to load the project file for bg-build\r
210	mode. The bg-build mode can also optionally load recent project files\r
211	automatically at startup.</p></div>\r
212	<div class="paragraph"><p>After the project file has been loaded and bg-build mode activated,\r
213	each time you save a file in Emacs, the bg-build mode tries to build\r
214	your project.</p></div>\r
215	<div class="paragraph"><p>The <span class="monospaced">bg-build-status</span> command creates a buffer that displays some\r
216	status information on builds and allows you to manage projects (start\r
217	builds explicitly, remove a project from bg-build, …) as well as\r
218	visit buffers created by bg-build. Notice the count of started\r
219	builds. At the end of the day it can be in the hundreds or thousands.\r
220	Imagine the number of times you’ve been relieved of starting a build\r
221	explicitly!</p></div>\r
222	</div>\r
223	</div>\r
224	</div>\r
225	<div id="footnotes"><hr></div>\r
226	<div id="footer">\r
227	<div id="footer-text">\r
228	</div>\r
229	<div id="footer-badges">\r
230	</div>\r
231	</div>\r
232	</body>\r
233	</html>\r