Re: "Perfect Setup" for hacking on Nix?

[Thomas Danckaert <post@thomasdanckaert.be>]

From: ludo@gnu.org (Ludovic Courtès)
Subject: Re: "Perfect Setup" for hacking on Nix?
Date: Sun, 02 Apr 2017 11:33:16 +0200

>> I have sometimes found myself looking at the Nix source code that 
>> is
>> embedded in the Guix repository.  However, I don't have a lot of
>> experience with C++, so I don't really know how I should set up my
>> development environment for hacking on (or just browsing) that 
>> code.
>>
>> So, what's the "Perfect Setup" for hacking on Nix?
>
> Good question!  :-)  I use Emacs without any of the fancy things.  
> M-x
> compile, M-x grep, M-x rgrep, xgtags.el (for GNU GLOBAL tags) are 
> good
> enough for me.
>
> That said, I’d be happy to hear about new tricks!  Does Semantic 
> work
> well these days?

I'm quite happy with it (have been, for a number of years already!).
It's code analysis is not perfect (e.g. it doesn't always distinguish
different symbols with the same name), but helps a lot.  It can take
you to function definitions and declarations, show all uses of a
function or variable, display function signatures etc.

I did have to disable Semantic for Scheme buffers, like this:

(add-to-list 'semantic-inhibit-functions
              (lambda () (member major-mode '(scheme-mode))))

Otherwise, I get constant debugger prompts from the semantic parser
when working with (Guile) Scheme files.  I didn't submit a bug report
so far, because I'm not sure if it's purely a bug in Semantic, or if
there's some interference with Geiser.

For really excellent code analysis of even very messy C and C++ code,
I recommend KDevelop (I tend to use it just to explore and find my 
way around a code base, and then use Emacs for actual editing).

Thomas