Re: cc mode / font-lock help

[Alan Mackenzie <acm@muc.de>]

Hi, Paul!

On Tue, Aug 25, 2009 at 01:52:58PM -0700, Paul Ellis wrote:
> I recently upgraded from version 21.3.1 to version 23.1.1.

A good move.

> I am using the ctypes plugin to enhance the syntax highlighting in
> cc-mode and it appears to have stopped working in version 23.1.1.

I.e., you've changed from CC Mode 5.28 to CC Mode 5.31.7.  The
fontification ("syntax highliting") was rewritten from scratch for CC
Mode 5.30, so it's not too surprising that ctypes inow doesn't work.

Would you please tell me exactly what the "ctypes plugin" is.
Presumably it's a file called something like "ctypes.el".  Where can I
get a copy of this file from?

Have you configured CC Mode at all in your .emacs?  If so, would you
please dump your CC Mode's configuration (C-c C-b, followed by cutting and
pasting to an email buffer) and post it here.

Then please give me a (short) source file and an EXACT recipe to
reproduce the problem.  With any luck, it should be fairly easy to fix.

> I am not very familiar with lisp, but from what I can gather, it adds
> entries to the c-font-lock-extra-types variable in cc-mode, and that
> functionality still works.  Once the list is created, however, none of
> the items in the list for c-font-lock-extra-types are highlighted.

Hmm.  That sounds bad.  ;-(

> I have tried adding keywords using the font-lock-add-keywords function
> in my .emacs file and that seems to work just fine.  All of the
> default syntax highlighting in cc-mode also seems to work fine.  What
> seems to be broken for me is only the c-font-lock-extra-types list.

That sounds like it will be really easy to fix.  :-)

> As a side note, in trying to figure this out on my own, I noticed that
> the cc-mode that came with version 23.1.1 is much newer than the last
> released package on http://cc-mode.sourceforge.net/ .....

This is sadly true.  However, the CVS repository at SourceForge is still
the prime site for development, and the CVS HEAD and BRANCH_5_31 branch
contain all recent changes (mostly bug fixes), apart from specific GNU
EMACS adaptations.  There are several difficult bugs outstanding, and
I've been intending for some while to make another release when I've
fixed these.

But you're right.  Another CC Mode stand-alone release is long overdue.
Maybe I'll just release anyway.  I think I should clarify cc-mode.sf.net
too.  Sorry about all this.

> .... and it seems impossible to find an updated version of the ctypes
> plugin.  Does anyone happen to have a link to the up-to-date websites
> for these packages, if they exist?

Again, I don't know what the ctypes plugin is.  If you don't know a URL
for it, would you send the source to my personal email address, please.

-- 
Alan Mackenzie (Nuremberg, Germany).