company-plsense

company-mode completion back-end for Perl using Plsense.

Installation

You can install this package from Melpa

M-x package-install RET company-plsense RET

Usage

once installed add the following to your .emacs

(add-to-list 'company-backends 'company-plsense)
(add-hook 'perl-mode-hook 'company-mode)
(add-hook 'cperl-mode-hook 'company-mode)

Features

provides completions for

• variables
• Methods
• Modules
• Class Initializers
• LIST of Use/Require statements
• Key of Hashes

use company-doc-buffer to view perldoc and other information

Configuration

company-plsense-executable: location of PlSense executable

company-plsense-config-path: location of .plsense config file

company-plsense-ignore-compile-errors: ignore PlSense errors related to compiling an imported module.

How do I verify the PlSense server is setup?

(note all of these steps are optional except the first one)

1. Download PlSense from github and follow the installation steps.
2. Pick a test file to verify config is correct.
3. Start PlSense with plsense -i, which should start an interactive PlSense session.
4. Start the PlSense server with > serverstart
5. Verify server started with > serverstatus it should show all servers running.
6. Open your test file with > open /path/to/test/file
7. verify that the file is loaded with > ready /path/to/test/file. If everything went well it should reply Yes.
8. Attempt file completion by giving a partial symbol name > assist $foo. If you file had a variable called $foo_bar you should see that suggestion in the reply.
9. close the server with > serverstop and > exit.
10. You're good to go!

How do I include external Perl libraries?

PlSense does not currently analyze use lib statements so all libraries must be locatable in either @INC or $PERL5LIB. If you have a project specific library use PlSense's ProjectInfoFile.

How do I resolve server problems?

1. Run company-plsense-executable-version to verify Emacs can find the executable.
2. The command company-plsense-server-status will show the current status of the servers. In order to work, all three servers (Main, Work, and Resolve) need to be running. If not, start the server with company-plsense-start-server.
3. If all the servers are running but completion candidates are still not being generated, use the command company-plsense-buffer-ready. If the buffer failed to compile cleanly it will return "Not Found", in which case you will need to run perl -c on the file to see what the problem is. If the reply is "Yes" that means the file loaded properly.
4. If company-plsense is still not working, open an issue in the issue tracker.

Limitations

No Perl6 support

PlSense only supports Perl5.

Tied to a file

company-plsense can only provide completion candidates for buffers tied to files.

Clean compile

PlSense cannot analyze files that do not compile cleanly. To verify if a file is free of errors, run perl -c /path/to/file.

Update completion candidates

completion candidates are only updated upon buffer save and open.