Emacs C++ Develop Environment

I choose Intellij IDEA as my programming IDE. It is a perfect IDE, but currently it doesn’t support C++ which is supposed coming soon. But until that, I will use Emacs as the editor for writing C++ programs.

Following I will describe how to configure Emacs as a C++ specified editor.

Basic configuration

Add following code into the .emacs:

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;;; enable C++ mode when opening a file with extension .h, .c, .cc and so on.
(require 'cc-mode)
;;; make Emacs to indent code correctly
(setq-default c-basic-offset 4 c-default-style "linux")
(setq-default tab-width 4 indent-tabs-mode t)
(define-key c-mode-base-map (kbd "RET") 'newline-and-indent)
;;; load Autopair for auto-pairing brackets and parenthesis
(require 'autopair)
(autopair-global-mode 1)
(setq autopair-autowrap t)

In order to use autopair, you need to install it with the emacs package managder. Reload the init file with M-x eval-region RET to make the changes take effect.

Install ECB

See this post: Emacs With Emacs Code Brawser.

Code Snippets and Autocompletetion

See this post: Emacs With Yasnippet And Autocompletion.

Autocomplete source for C Header files

Install the auto-complete-c-headers with the emacs package managder. Add the following code into the .emacs:

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(defun my:ac-c-headers-init ()
    (require 'auto-complete-c-headers)
    (add-to-list 'ac-sources 'ac-source-c-headers))

(add-hook 'c++-mode-hook 'my:ac-c-headers-init)
(add-hook 'c-mode-hook 'my:ac-c-headers-init)

Expand member function for C++ class

Install the member-function with the emacs package managder. Add the following code into the .emacs:

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(require 'member-function)
(setq mf--source-file-extension "cpp")

This package can help expand the function headers defined in .h file into a .cc file.

Check Syntax on the fly

Now, the flymake is part of Emacs, so just add the following code to enable it upon opening files with syntax checking available:

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(require 'flymake)
(add-hook 'find-file-hook 'flymake-find-file-hook)

The flymake requires the MakeFile with the file name Makefile. To use flymake with C++ programs, add the following MakeFile code into the Makefile:

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check-syntax:
    g++ -o nul -S ${CHK_SOURCES}