Re: Emacs as an IDE

[Francis Belliveau <f.belliveau@comcast.net>]

I admit that the original question was a bit open.  It assumed that some of us readers knew how a specific pair of IDE's work.
A poor assumption since emacs wizards are more likely to use emacs as their IDE with things customized as they desire.

So it seems that the answer to the basic question is: Yes, emacs can be configured to be used in manner similar to an IDE.

I am not such a user, but would like to know how to configure such a thing.  I do have some specific questions below.

As I understand it emacs triggers such things via "mode" that is normally tied to file extension, so as long as all of your source files have a properly uniques extension that identifies language, you get the correct mode automatically.  For instance, I expect that you have already discovered that your .java files come up in Java-Mode with a default set of coding-style rules.

The next problems are:
  How do I customize the coding style to my match desires?
and
  How do I get "code-finding" and "code-completion" to work?

I have been coding in C++ for a long time and am reasonably happy with how those modes work, but I do not know the answer to my second question.  I also use Java and could use help with the first question in that regard.
Again, I admit that the first question is way too general for a specific answer, but a pointer regarding how to find where to start reading in the documentation would be helpful.  Navigating the documentation requires one to be able to follow the mind-set of the writer, and I just cannot seem to find my way to what I need very easily.

Although a documentation pointer would also be a useful answer to the second question, I expect that it would also be possible to provide an outline of the basic steps so that I could better search the documentation for "how to" information.  Clearly emacs would need some sort of symbol-table to tell it which file a particular object/method exists in so that it can find its way to said method and/or auto-complete a partial entry.

Some help with where to start would be useful.

Thanks,
Fran