10.9.1. Edit-Compile Speedup

Table 10.10. elvis Program Development Commands

The cc command recompiles an individual source file. You run it from the colon command line. For example, if you are editing the file hello.c, and you type :cc, elvis will compile hello.c for you.

If you supply additional arguments to the :cc command, those arguments will be passed on to the C compiler. In this case, you need to supply all the arguments, including the filename.

The :cc command works by executing the text of the ccprg option. The default value is "cc ($1?$1:$2)". elvis sets $2 to the name of the current source file, and $1 to the arguments you give to the :cc command. The value of ccprg thus uses your arguments if they are present; otherwise, it just passes the current file's name to the system cc command. (You can, of course, change ccprg to suit your taste.)

Similarly, the :make command is intended to recompile everything that needs recompiling. It does this by executing the contents of the makeprg option, which by default is "make $1". Thus, you could type :make hello to make just the hello program, or just :make to make everything.

elvis captures the output of the compile or make, and looks for things that look like filenames and line numbers. When it finds likely candidates, it treats them as such, and moves to the location of the first error. The :errlist command moves to each successive error location, in turn. elvis displays the error message text in the status line as you move to each location.

If you supply a filename argument to :errlist, elvis will load a fresh batch of error messages from that file, and move to the location of the first error.

The vi mode command * (asterisk) is equivalent to :errlist. This is more convenient to use when you have a lot of errors to step through.

Finally, one really nice feature is that elvis compensates for changes in the file. As you add or delete lines, elvis keeps track, so that when you go to the next error, you end up on the correct line, which is not necessarily the one with the same absolute line number as in the compiler's error message.

10.9.2. Syntax Highlighting

# Awk.  This is actually for Thompson Automation's AWK compiler, which is
# somewhat beefier than the standard AWK interpreter.
language tawk awk
extension .awk
keyword BEGIN BEGINFILE END ENDFILE INIT break continue do else for function
keyword global if in local next return while
comment #
function (
string "
regexp /
useregexp (,~
other allcaps

The format is mostly self-explanatory, and is fully documented in the elvis online documentation.