IMPORTANT NOTE

The original author of prosjekt is not likely to actively maintain it. He's moved over to using projectile, and unless that proves to be really unsuitable (not the case so far) he'll stick with it and abandon prosjekt.

Prosjekt: A software project tool for emacs

Prosjekt is an emacs package for managing software projects. A project in Prosjekt is defined as:

• A top-level project directory
• Files under that directory which are part of the project
• Commands which can be executed on the project

The files in a project are generally just the source files for your software: headers, implementation, resources, makefiles, etc. Prosjekt places no limitations on what you can associate with a project. The commands are generally things like compilation, test execution, and source control interaction. Prosjekt currently supports executing both shell commands and emacs functions as commands, leveraging emacs' existing capabilities as much as possible.

Lineage

Prosjekt was originally based on, and still has many parallels to, the wonderful eproject emacs package. Prosjekt aims to maintain the elegance and simplicity of eproject while extending it and approaching some of the design details differently.

Quickstart

First install Prosjekt by copying prosjekt.el and helm-prosjekt.el to your emacs load path.

Next, require prosjekt and helm-prosjekt in your emacs config and enable helm integration:

(require 'prosjekt)
(require 'helm-prosjekt)

(Note that the use of helm with prosjekt is entirely optional. If you don't want to use it then just don't use the lines with the string helm in them.)

Now you can create a project with M-x prosjekt-new. You will be asked for a top-level directory and an optional project name. Prosjekt creates a .prosjekt file for every project it manages, and the optional name is prepended to that filename. You typically only need a name if you're putting more than one project in a directory. The project is immediately opened after creation.

Now that you have an open project, you can add files to it with M-x prosjekt-add which will prompt you for a file name.

Once you've got files in your project, you can access them via the helm interface. Likewise, you can open projects via helm as well.

To configure your project, you can run M-x prosjekt-setup. This will open a buffer allowing you to edit the emacs s-expression defining your project. After editing, press ESC to save the edits (or use CTRL-ESC to save without killing the buffer.) See the sections below for more information on defining commands for your project.

You can save the state of your project at any time with M-x prosjekt-save. (Though for the most part this is done for you automatically.)

Finally, when you done working on your project, run M-x prosjekt-close.

Basics

A project in Prosjekt is essentially:

• A name
• A directory representing the top level of your project
• A collection of files in your project
• A set of commands that can be run on your project

To work on a project, you must first open it with prosjekt-open (or via the helm interface, generally with C-u). Opening a project closes any other project you had open, and makes the files in the project available through the helm interface. Likewise, the commands for a project are only active when a project is open.

As you work with a project, you might edit it in various ways, for example:

• Add or remove files
• Add, remove, or edit the commands
• Modify the project's include and ignore lists

At any time you can save the state of a project with prosjekt-save.

Finally, when you're done working on a project, use prosjekt-close to close it.

Creating a new project: prosjekt-new

You create a new project with the prosjekt-new command. This will ask you for a project name and a root directory for the project. This command will create a new project file you and update the master project list. New projects are immediately opened, closing any other projects you currently have open.

Opening an existing project: prosjekt-open

You can open an existing project with the prosjekt-open command. This will ask you for the file containing a project description. If you're using prosjekt's helm integration, you can open projects via helm; helm is generally bound to C-u.

Opening a project will save and close any other projects you have open.

Saving a project: prosjekt-save

At any time you can save the contents of your current project with project-save. This writes the current state of your project to the project file.

Closing a project: prosjekt-close

You can close a project with prosjekt-close. This will first save the contents of your project, and then close it. This deactivates your projects command and key bindings, and the files in your project will no longer be accessible through prosjekt's helm integration.

Configuring a project: prosjekt-setup

The state of a project is represented with a single emacs-lisp assoc-list. Each entry in the list represents some element of the project definition: name, files, commands, etc. You can edit this expression directly with the prosjekt-setup command.

When you execute this command, the configuration expression will be brought up in an editable buffer. You can then edit the expression as you like. You can press ESC to save the configuration and kill the buffer. Or, you can use CTRL-ESC to save the configuration without killing the buffer.

Note that the prosjekt-setup buffer initially displays a pretty-printed version of the emacs expression defining your project. You are free to stray from the particular formatting of this buffer as long as you keep a valid and structurally correct expression. That is, the exact spacing and indentation of the buffer contents don't matter as long as the contents parse as a proper emacs list expression. Also note that any formatting you apply will not be remembered; the buffer contents are recreated each time you execute prosjekt-setup.

Project commands

Project commands are emacs functions that you can execute from within your project with project-specific keybindings. Each project can have any number of commands, each with its own keybindings.

You can configure your commands with the prosjekt-setup command. The commands are all under the "tools" key in the project expression. For example, commands in prosjekt-setup might look something like this:

(...
 (:tools
  ((:keys "[f5]")
   (:command . git-status)
   (:name . "git status"))
  ((:keys "[f6]")
   (:command compile "scons -j12")
   (:name . "compile"))
  ((:keys "[f7]")
   (:command gdb "gdb --annotate=3 my_program")
   (:name . "run gdb"))
  ((:keys "[f8]")
   (:command shell-command "ctags -f TAGS -e -R .")
   (:name . "ctags"))
 ...
)

This defines four command. The first binds the interactive emacs function git-status to the key f5. The second bind a scons compilation command to f6. The third binds f7 to the non-interactive emacs function invocation for launching gdb on a particular program and assigns it the name "run gdb". The fourth binds f8 to a shell command for rebuilding a ctags index.

More generally, each command definition is an alist of ((:keys . . .) (:command . . .) (:name . "name")). The keybindings must be strings suitable as the second argument to the standard define-key function. The command type must be an emacs command that can be called with zero arguments. The name can be used to invoke the command by name with the prosjekt-run-tool-by-name function.

Command examples

Here are a few example commands that you might find useful. The first executes make from the root of the project in a compilation buffer when f5 is pressed:

((:keys "[f5]")
 (:command compile "make")
 (:name "compile"))

This next one runs the ahg-status emacs function (for querying the status of a mercurial repository) when control-shift-f7 is pressed:

((:keys "[C-S-f7]")
 (:command . ahg-status)
 (:name . "hg"))

This example first switches to a new directory and then executes a test suite. Note that this assumes bash-like syntax:

((:keys "[C-f6]")
 (:command shell-command "cd tests && ./test_suite")
 (:name . "tests"))

This final example is an interesting and powerful tool. It prompts the user for a command to run and executes that command at the project root:

((:keys "[f9]")
 (:command . shell-command)
 (:name . "shell command"))

In your prosjekt-setup buffer these might look like this:

((:name . name)
 (:tools
  ((:keys "[f5]")
   (:command compile "make")
   (:name "compile"))
  ((:keys "[C-S-f7]")
   (:command . ahg-status)
   (:name . "hg"))
  ((:keys "[C-f6]")
   (:command shell-command "cd tests && ./test_suite")
   (:name . "tests"))
  ((:keys "[f9]")
   (:command . shell-command)
   (:name . "shell command")))
 (:include "\\.py$" "\\.rst$")
 (:ignore ".*~")
)

Hooks

Prosjekt supports a number of hooks that you can use to run functions at specific times. To add your own hook functions, simply put them on the appropriate hook list:

(add-to-list 'prosjekt-hook-name 'my_hook_function)

prosjekt-open-hooks

The prosjekt-open-hooks are run whenever any project is opened. The hooks are run after the project is fully opened, i.e. at the end of the open logic.

prosjekt-close-hooks

The prosjekt-close-hooks are run whenever any project is closed. The hooks are run before any other processing takes places, i.e. at the start of the close logic.

Embedded hooks

You can also embed project-specific hooks in a project configuration with the open-hooks and close-hooks entries. These hooks are defined entirely in your project configuration (though they can, of course, call other functions), and unlike the global hooks they are only executed for the project in which they're defined.

For example, you can define a project-specific open-hook in a project configuration like this:

(...
 (:open-hooks
  (lambda () (message "my embedded open hook")))
 ...
)

The various embedded hooks are executed immediately after their corresponding global hooks, i.e. the embedded "open-hooks" are run right after the prosjekt-open-hooks.

Project population

While you can add files to your projects via the prosjekt-add command, this can be tedious for larger projects. To address this, Prosjekt supports the notion of "populating" a project. This essentially means finding all of the files under a directory and adding those files to you project.

The first command for project population is prosjekt-populate. This asks you for a directory and a list of regular expressions, looking for files under that directory which do not match any of the regular expressions, recursively, and adding the matches to your project. You invoke it like this:

(prosjekt-populate "/my/project" '(".*~"))

The regular expressions should be suitable as the first argument to the string-match function.

includes, ignores, and prosjekt-repopulate

Another way to populate your project is by defining an :ignores and :includes list in your project config and then running prosjekt-repopulate. Both are in your project configuration assoc-list, the cdr of which are lists of regular expressions.

The prosjekt-repopulate first clears the project's file list. It then simply scans each specified directory for files that match an entry in the includes. Any of these matches which doesn't also match an entry in ignores is added to the project.

For example, to ignore all .pyc and .so files under the project root you would set your :includes and :ignores like this:

(...
 (:includes ".*")
 (:ignores "\\.pyc$" "\\.so$")
)

prosjekt-repopulate was initially designed for new projects under heavy development where the contents of a project can change quickly, and it's very useful for keeping a project definition up to date with changes coming from other developers.

helm integration

Prosjekt can integrate with the brilliant helm package via helm-prosjekt.el. Generally all you need to do to enable helm integration is to load helm-prosjekt.el:

(require 'helm-projekt)

This adds two sources to helm. The first is your list of Prosjekt projects by name. You can open a Prosjekt project just by specifying it to helm.

The second source is the list of files in your current project (if any.) As with projects, you can open project files just by invoking helm.

Files used by prosjekt

Prosjekt uses two types of files to keep track of your various projects. The first is the global configuration file, "<home directory>/.emacs.d/prosjekt.lst". This is primarily just a list of your projects definition files. There is only one global configuration file.

The second type of file used by prosjekt is a project description. Each of your projects has its own project description, and the file is named "<project root directory>/<project name>.prosjekt". This file contains the list of files in a project, the command definitions for the project, the project's populate spec, and various other bits of information.