Node:Setting up semantic, Next:Non-semantic files, Previous:General hints, Up:Setting up Emacs

Setting up semantic

To ensure ECB and semantic are working correctly for all by semantic supported languages you have to pay attention to the following aspects concerning your Emacs-setup:

1. Setting up semantic itself

   For all semantic-supported file-types parsing files is done completely by semantic. ECB just displays the parsing results. For all needs of ECB semantic is completely setup by ECB itself, i.e. ECB sets up semantic for you! You have only to add the installation directory of semantic to your load-path (in an appropriate way)!

   Please note: If you setup semantic for yourself following the recommendations in the installation instructions of semantic then you have probably added code to your startup-file like:
   

   (setq semantic-load-turn-everything-on t)
   (require 'semantic-load)
   

   Be aware that this also enables the minor-modes semantic-show-dirty-mode and semantic-show-unmatched-syntax-mode where the former one highlights all code which has to be reparsed with dark background (which results in large portions of dark background ;-) and the latter one underlines all syntax which can not be parsed. Especially the former one can be really annoying.

   To switch off these modes you can add to your startup-file:
   

   (global-semantic-show-dirty-mode -1)
   (global-semantic-show-unmatched-syntax-mode -1)
   

2. Checking your hooks

   If you have already checked point (1.) and if you have still problems getting ECB/semantic working properly for your sources you should check the related major-mode hook. Every major-mode X has a hook with name "X-hook" which is evaluated after activating the major-mode (see above, 2.), e.g. the hook for the major-mode c++-mode is c++-mode-hook.

   Semantic adds automatically during load-time a special "semantic-setup" to these major-mode hooks¹ in form of a "setup-function". Example: For c and c++ modes semantic adds semantic-default-c-setup to c-mode-hook and c++-mode-hook.

   If your own Emacs-setup (e.g. in .emacs or site-lisp/site-start.el) overwrites such a major-mode-hook then semantic can not be activated for this major-mode and in consequence ECB can not work properly too!

   Check if your Emacs-setup uses somewhere setq for adding code to a major-mode-hook. IMPORTANT: Use add-hook instead of setq²!

If your source-files are "running" with correct major-mode and correct major-mode hooks ECB and semantic will do what you expect them doing!

Footnotes

1. Of course only for major-modes supported by semantic!

2. setq replaces/overwrites the current value of a hook with the new value whereas add-hook adds the new value to the old-value of the hook!