Mercurial > org > blog / draft/outlines.org

 #+title: outlines
 * Overview
 Source code files are hard to manage. They can get unwieldly quickly and making the
 wrong assumption about your whereabouts in the code tree can have unintended
 consequences.
 
 There are many ways to solve this problem to different degrees. We'll be talking about
 one strategy in particular which I use and recommend for any software project.
 
 Looking through the source code in the NAS-T repository you'll find some common
 commenting patterns:
 
 - every file start with at least one comment line for example:
 #+begin_src lisp
 ;;; file-name.lisp --- file description
 #+end_src
 
 - Before you see any code in a file, you'll likely encounter this line:
 #+begin_src lisp
 ;;; Code:
 #+end_src
 
 - etc
 
 What's the deal here? To be clear, I'm of the mind that comments should be
 significant. They should express to the reader something that is of a non-trivial nature
 and 'where the code starts' doesn't quite qualify. Indeed, these comments don't fit that
 model at all.
 
 The deal is that these comments aren't for the reader, they're for the developer. More
 specifically, for the developer to treat as a special meta-language to describe the
 structure of a source code file.
 
 * Outlines
 Like all my good ideas, this one is credited entirely to Emacs. In this case, the
 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
 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]].
 
 I've grown quite fond of it. Here's the summary:
 
 #+begin_quote
 Outline mode is a major mode derived from Text mode, which is specialized for editing
 outlines. It provides commands to navigate between entries in the outline structure, and
 commands to make parts of a buffer temporarily invisible, so that the outline structure
 may be more easily viewed.
 #+end_quote
 -- [[https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/emacs/Outline-Mode.html][GNU]]
 
 ** Quickstart
 If you want to jump in right away, I recommend using these keybinds in Emacs:
 
 #+tblname: outline-keys
 | <backtab> | outline-cycle-buffer             |
 | M-TAB     | outline-cycle                    |
 | M-n       | outline-next-visible-heading     |
 | M-p       | outline-previous-visible-heading |
 
 Here's a snippet which will enable the keybinds I use:
 
 #+name: enable-outline-keys
 #+begin_src emacs-lisp
 (let ((keys
       '(("<backtab>" #'outline-cycle-buffer)
 	      ("M-TAB" #'outline-cycle)
 	      ("M-n" #'outline-next-visible-heading)
 	      ("M-p" #'outline-previous-visible-heading))))
   (cl-loop for (k fn) in keys
 	   do (keymap-set outline-minor-mode-map k fn)))
 #+end_src
 
 Now open a file in the [[../../src/][src]] directory, like [[../../src/fs/btrfs/btrfs.lisp][this]] one, enable =outline-minor-mode= and
 move around the file with the new keybinds above.
 
 ** Outlines4All
 Not all programming modes have outline support built-in. The good news is that it's easy
 to enable it.
 
 You only need to modify one variable: =outline-regexp= and enable a minor-mode:
 =outline-minor-mode=.
 
 *** Using dir-locals
 The way it's done in the NAS-T codebase is with a [[../../.dir-locals.el][.dir-locals.el]] file.
 
 You just need to add this form for the mode of your choice, replacing the string
 with a regular expression which matches on a /heading/. In this case we treat lines
 starting with three comment chars or more as a new heading.
 #+begin_src lisp-data
 (makefile-mode . ((outline-regexp . "###+")))
 #+end_src
 
 =outline-regexp= is declared as a safe local var, so no prompts will appear asking if
 you trust these values. You will need to configure your keybinds and enable the
 minor-mode separately though. For project-level support, that's all there is to it.
 
 *** Using init.el
 You may also modify your config to enable =outline-minor-mode= for select major-modes at
 startup. Here's a quick example from my config:
 
 #+begin_src emacs-lisp
 ;;; Code:
 (require 'default 'rw/fu)
 
 (defun outline-hook (rx)
   "Enable `outline-minor-mode' and set `outline-regexp'."
   (setq-local outline-regexp rx)
   (outline-minor-mode t))
 
 (defun add-outline-hook (mode rx)
     (let ((sym (symb mode "-hook")))
       (add-hook sym (lambda () (outline-hook rx)))))
 
 (defmacro outline-hooks (&rest pairs)
   `(mapc (lambda (x) (add-outline-hook (car x) (cadr x))) ',pairs))
 
 (outline-hooks (asm-mode ";;;+")
 	       (nasm-mode ";;;+")	       
 	       (rust-mode "\\(//!\\|////+\\)")
 	       (sh-mode "###+")
 	       (sh-script-mode "###+")
 	       (makefile-mode "###+"))
 
 (provide 'outline-cfg)
 ;;; outline-cfg.el ends here
 #+end_src
 ** Default Sections
 Our default sections should look familiar - they're just Emacs Lisp defaults, with a few
 choice extensions.
 *** Source Header
 First line of every source code file.
 
 Here is the prototype in lisp:
 #+begin_src lisp
 ;;; filename --- description -*- vars -*-
 #+end_src
 
 In Rust we use:
 #+begin_src rust
 //! filename --- description -*- vars -*-
 #+end_src
 
 etc.
 **** Metadata                                                   :optional:
 Some files may insert a blank line and start the =Code= heading, while others will
 include some additional information about the file such as a long-description, version,
 list of exports, etc.
 *** Commentary                                                   :optional:
 An optional programmer commentary included in source code files after the =Source
 Header= but before the =Code=. The contents are unpredictable but may include notes,
 todos, diagrams, stack notations, test results, links, tips, etc.
 *** Code
 The =Code= heading should be the final toplevel heading of any source code file. You
 may see a number of sub-headings, starting with four or more comment chars.