2 #+setupfile: ../../clean.theme
3 #+property: header-args :eval no-export
6 :ID: f49fa8a0-39a6-4a5f-8fb6-8d4086ea5476 8 Source code files are hard to manage. They can get unwieldly quickly and making the
9 wrong assumption about your whereabouts in the code tree can have unintended
12 There are many ways to solve this problem to different degrees. We'll be talking about
13 one strategy in particular which I use and recommend for any software project.
15 Looking through the source code in the NAS-T repository you'll find some common
18 - every file start with at least one comment line for example:
20 ;;; file-name.lisp --- file description
23 - Before you see any code in a file, you'll likely encounter this line:
30 What's the deal here? To be clear, I'm of the mind that comments should be
31 significant. They should express to the reader something that is of a non-trivial nature
32 and 'where the code starts' doesn't quite qualify. Indeed, these comments don't fit that
35 The deal is that these comments aren't for the reader, they're for the developer. More
36 specifically, for the developer to treat as a special meta-language to describe the
37 structure of a source code file.
41 :ID: 651aa74f-e634-4eac-8292-95efbe2aab9c 43 Like all my good ideas, this one is credited entirely to Emacs. In this case, the
44 excellent
[[https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/emacs/Outline-Mode.html][Outline mode]]. If you are an Emacs user you've probably already used it without
45 knowing -- Org mode, for example, is
[[https://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/emacs/org-mode.git/tree/lisp/org.el?h=release_9.6.9#n4789][derived from outline-mode]].
47 I've grown quite fond of it. Here's the summary:
50 Outline mode is a major mode derived from Text mode, which is specialized for editing
51 outlines. It provides commands to navigate between entries in the outline structure, and
52 commands to make parts of a buffer temporarily invisible, so that the outline structure
53 may be more easily viewed.
55 --
[[https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/emacs/Outline-Mode.html][GNU]] 59 :ID: 8e1927c5-5e2b-470a-9249-5fe0e375451c 61 If you want to jump in right away, I recommend using these keybinds in Emacs:
63 #+tblname: outline-keys
64 | <backtab> | outline-cycle-buffer | 65 | M-TAB | outline-cycle | 66 | M-n | outline-next-visible-heading | 67 | M-p | outline-previous-visible-heading | 69 Here's a snippet which will enable the keybinds I use:
71 #+name: enable-outline-keys
72 #+begin_src emacs-lisp 74 '(("<backtab>" #'outline-cycle-buffer)
75 ("M-TAB" #'outline-cycle)
76 ("M-n" #'outline-next-visible-heading)
77 ("M-p" #'outline-previous-visible-heading))))
78 (cl-loop for (k fn) in keys
79 do (keymap-set outline-minor-mode-map k fn)))
82 Now open a file in the
[[../../src/][src]] directory, like
[[../../src/fs/btrfs/btrfs.lisp][this]] one, enable
=outline-minor-mode= and
83 move around the file with the new keybinds above.
87 :ID: 0751feb7-7e44-44d3-befd-905d365d05a1 89 Not all programming modes have outline support built-in. The good news is that it's easy
92 You only need to modify one variable:
=outline-regexp= and enable a minor-mode:
97 :ID: cf39a556-fc2c-46e3-a2f7-e659213a915f 99 The way it's done in the NAS-T codebase is with a
[[../../.dir-locals.el][.dir-locals.el]] file.
101 You just need to add this form for the mode of your choice, replacing the string
102 with a regular expression which matches on a
/heading/. In this case we treat lines
103 starting with three comment chars or more as a new heading.
104 #+begin_src lisp-data 105 (makefile-mode . ((outline-regexp . "###+")))
108 =outline-regexp= is declared as a safe local var, so no prompts will appear asking if
109 you trust these values. You will need to configure your keybinds and enable the
110 minor-mode separately though. For project-level support, that's all there is to it.
114 :ID: c76e4c71-c77a-43b6-811c-0a83981a1dc5 116 You may also modify your config to enable
=outline-minor-mode= for select major-modes at
117 startup. Here's a quick example from my config:
119 #+begin_src emacs-lisp 121 (require 'default 'rw/fu)
123 (defun outline-hook (rx)
124 "Enable `outline-minor-mode' and set `outline-regexp'."
125 (setq-local outline-regexp rx)
126 (outline-minor-mode t))
128 (defun add-outline-hook (mode rx)
129 (let ((sym (symb mode "-hook")))
130 (add-hook sym (lambda () (outline-hook rx)))))
132 (defmacro outline-hooks (&rest pairs)
133 `(mapc (lambda (x) (add-outline-hook (car x) (cadr x))) ',pairs))
135 (outline-hooks (asm-mode ";;;+")
137 (rust-mode "\\(//!\\|////+\\)")
139 (sh-script-mode "###+")
140 (makefile-mode "###+"))
142 (provide 'outline-cfg)
143 ;;; outline-cfg.el ends here
147 :ID: c912d356-9688-4d48-91a8-ae234b410d46 149 Our default sections should look familiar - they're just Emacs Lisp defaults, with a few
153 :ID: 6e5856f0-3d75-4a4d-b44d-35e9015a63ab 155 First line of every source code file.
157 Here is the prototype in lisp:
159 ;;; filename --- description -*- vars -*-
164 //! filename --- description -*- vars -*-
168 **** Metadata :optional: 170 :ID: 56e5ccd3-b98a-4ba0-aaaa-eef49bc3fac7 172 Some files may insert a blank line and start the
=Code= heading, while others will
173 include some additional information about the file such as a long-description, version,
174 list of exports, etc.
175 *** Commentary :optional: 177 :ID: a8e36d82-4788-422c-af83-3374f23f9dc9 179 An optional programmer commentary included in source code files after the
=Source 180 Header= but before the
=Code=. The contents are unpredictable but may include notes,
181 todos, diagrams, stack notations, test results, links, tips, etc.
184 :ID: 7422d382-450b-46d6-898f-42daae455a47 186 The
=Code= heading should be the final toplevel heading of any source code file. You
187 may see a number of sub-headings, starting with four or more comment chars.