Node:ecb-general, Next:, Previous:Customizable options, Up:Customizable options


Group ecb-general

This group contains general settings for the Emacs code browser:

activate-before-layout-draw-hook User Option
Normal hook run at the end of activating the ecb-package by running ecb-activate. This hooks are run after all the internal setup process but directly before(!) drawing the layout specified in ecb-layout (means before dividing the frame into several windows).

A senseful using of this hook can be maximizing the Emacs-frame for example, because this should be done before the layout is drawn because ECB computes the size of the ECB-windows with the current frame size! If you need a hook-option for the real end of the activating process (i.e. after the layout-drawing) look at ecb-activate-hook.

IMPORTANT: The difference between this hook and ecb-redraw-layout-before-hook is that the latter one is evaluated always before the layout is redrawn (for example after calling ecb-redraw-layout) whereas the former one (this hook) is only evaluated exactly once during the activation-process of ECB. So during the activation process there is the following sequence of hooks:

  1. ecb-activate-before-layout-draw-hook \(this one)
  2. ecb-redraw-layout-before-hook
  3. <Drawing the layout>
  4. ecb-redraw-layout-after-hook
  5. ecb-activate-hook

activate-hook User Option
Hook run at the end of activating ECB by ecb-activate. This hooks are run at the real end of the activating process, means after the layout has been drawn!. If you need hooks which are run direct before the layout-drawing look at ecb-activate-before-layout-draw-hook.

activation-selects-ecb-frame-if-already-active User Option
Trying to activate an already activated ECB selects the ECB-frame. If t then the ECB-frame is selected, if nil then it is not. If 'ask then ECB asks if the ECB-frame should be selected if the current-frame is not the ecb-frame.

auto-activate User Option
Automatically startup ECB when Emacs starts up. This should only be true if you always want to run ecb-activate.

auto-compatibility-check User Option
Check at ECB-startup if all ECB-options have correct values. If not nil then all ECB-options are checked if their current value have the correct type. It the type is incorrect the option is either auto. upgraded to the new type or reset to the default-value of current ECB if no upgrade is possible. This feature can also upgrade options which are renamed in current ECB and try to transform the old-value to the new named option. After startup all upgraded or reset options are displayed with their old (before upgrade/reset) and new values. See also the commands ecb-upgrade-options and ecb-display-upgraded-options. If this option is off then the user can perform the check and reset manually with ecb-upgrade-options. See Auto. option-upgrading.

before-activate-hook User Option
Normal hook run at the beginning of activating the ecb-package by running ecb-activate. These hooks run before any other tasks of the activating process are performed. If any of these hooks returns nil then ECB will not be activated!

This can be used to check some conditions and then only start ECB if all conditions are true. For example a function could be added which returns only nil if Gnus is running. Then calling ecb-activate or ecb-minor-mode will only start ECB if Gnus is not already running.

before-deactivate-hook User Option
Normal hook run at the beginning of deactivating ECB by running ecb-deactivate. These hooks run before any other tasks of the deactivating process are performed. If any of these hooks returns nil then ECB will not be deactivated! See also ecb-before-activate-hook.

bucket-node-display User Option
How ECB displays bucket-nodes in a ECB tree-buffer. Bucket-nodes have only one job: Nodes with similar properties will be dropped into one bucket for such a common property and all these nodes will be added as children to the bucket-node. Besides being expandable and collapsable a bucket-node has no senseful action assigned. Examples for bucket-nodes are "[+] Variables, "[+] Dependencies" etc. in the Methods-buffer or buckets which combine filenames with same extension under a bucket-node with name this extension.

This option defines how bucket-node should be displayed. The name of the bucket-node is computed by ECB but you can define a prefix, a suffix and a special face for the bucket-node

The default are empty prefix/suffix-strings and ecb-bucket-node-face. But an alternative can be for example '("[" "]" nil) which means no special face and a display like "[+] [<bucket-name>]".

clear-caches-before-activate User Option
Clear all ECB internal caches before startup. If t then ECB clears all its internal caches before starting up. Caches are used for files- and subdirs (see ecb-cache-directory-contents and ecb-cache-directory-contents-not) for semantic-tags and for the history-filter.

This caches are completely clean at load-time of the ECB-library!

Default is nil, because is makes sense not to clear these caches at start-time because ECB is often deacticated temporally especially in combination with window-managers like escreen.el. In these situations the internal state of ECB should be preserved for next activation.

current-buffer-sync-hook User Option
Normal hook run at the end of ecb-current-buffer-sync.

See documentation of ecb-current-buffer-sync for conditions when synchronization takes place and so in turn these hooks are evaluated.

Precondition for such a hook: Current buffer is the buffer of the current selected edit-window.

Postcondition for such a hook: Point must stay in the same edit-window as before evaluating the hook.

Important note: If ecb-window-sync is not nil ecb-current-buffer-sync is running either every time Emacs is idle or even after every command (see ecb-window-sync-delay). So these hooks can be really called very often! Therefore each function of this hook should/must check in an efficient way at beginning if its task have to be really performed and then do them only if really necessary! Otherwise performance of Emacs could slow down dramatically!

It is strongly recommended that each function added to this hook uses the macro ecb-do-if-buffer-visible-in-ecb-frame at beginning! See ecb-speedbar-current-buffer-sync and ecb-eshell-current-buffer-sync for examples how to use this macro!

deactivate-hook User Option
Normal hook run at the end of deactivating (but before the ecb-layout is cleared!) ECB by running ecb-deactivate.

debug-mode User Option
If not nil ECB displays debug-information in the Messages-buffer. This is done for some critical situations concerning semantic-tags and their overlays (or extends for XEmacs). Normally you should not need this switched on! But if you get errors like "destroyed extend" for XEmacs or "wrong-argument-type" concerning overlays for GNU Emacs then you should switch on this option and submitting a bug-report to the ecb-mailing-list (ecb-submit-problem-report) after getting the error again!

grep-function User Option
Function used for performing a grep. The popup-menu of the tree-buffers "Directories", "Sources" and "History" offer to grep the "current" directory:
  • Directory-buffer: The grep is performed in the current popup-directory after clicking the right mouse-button onto a node.
  • Sources-buffer: The grep is performed in the current selected directory.
  • History-buffer: The grep is performed in the directory of the current popup-source after clicking the right mouse-button onto a node.

grep-find-function User Option
Function used for performing a recursive grep. For more Details see option `ecb-grep-function' and replace "grep" with "recursive grep".

key-map User Option
Specifies all keybindings for the ECB minor-mode key-map. The value is a cons-cell where the car is a common-prefix key for all the keybindings. The cdr is a list of keybindings each of them a list again. A key-binding has the following form: 
'(<common-prefix-flag> <keysequence> <function>) where
<common-prefix-flag>
If t then the common-prefix-key defined as car of the value (see above) is used.
<keysequence>
If the common prefix-key is used then the final key-binding is the concatenation of the common-prefix-key (see above) and this keysequence.
<function>:
The function to bind to the key. This can also be a lambda-expression .

It is highly recommended to use one of the standard keys C-c or C-x as first key of your common-prefix-key!

You MUST change this option via customize to take effect!

All keysequences must be inserted as a string and must follow the syntax needed by read-kbd-macro or kbd. This means you can insert the key in the same manner C-h k displays keysequences. Here is the summary of the syntax:

Text is divided into "words" separated by whitespace. Except for the words described below, the characters of each word go directly as characters of the keysequence. The whitespace that separates words is ignored. Whitespace in the macro must be written explicitly, as in C-c SPC.

  • The special words RET, SPC, TAB, DEL, LFD, ESC, and NUL represent special control characters. The words must be written in uppercase.
  • A word in angle brackets, e.g., <return>, <down>, <left> or <f1>, represents a function key. (Note that in the standard configuration, the function key <return> and the control key RET are synonymous.). You can use angle brackets on the words RET, SPC, etc., but they are not required there.
  • Keys can be written by their ASCII code, using a backslash followed by up to six octal digits. This is the only way to represent keys with codes above ÿ.
  • One or more prefixes M- (meta), C- (control), S- (shift), A- (alt), H- (hyper), and s- (super) may precede a character or key notation. For function keys, the prefixes may go inside or outside of the brackets: C-<down> = <C-down>. The prefixes may be written in any order: M-C-x = C-M-x. Prefixes are not allowed on multi-key words, e.g., C-abc, except that the Meta prefix is allowed on a sequence of digits and optional minus sign: M-123 = M- M-1 M-2 M-3.
  • The ^ notation for control characters also works: ^M = C-m.

major-modes-show-or-hide User Option
List of major-modes which show or hide the ecb-windows. The value is a cons-cell where the car contains all major-mode-symbols which should show the special ecb-windows and the cdr contains all major-mode-symbols which should hide the special ecb-windows. If the symbol of a major-mode is neither contained in the car-"show-list" nor in the cdr-"hide-list" then the visibility-state of the ecb-windows does not change.

minor-mode-text User Option
String to display in the mode line when ECB minor mode is active. (When the string is not empty, make sure that it has a leading space.)

Because for ECB it is quite obvious if it is active or not when the ECB-windows are visible this text is only display in the modeline if the ECB-windows are hidden.

mouse-click-destination User Option
Destination of a mouse-button click. Defines in which edit-window (if splitted) ECB does the "right" action (opening a source, jumping to a method/variable etc.) after clicking with the primary mouse-button (see ecb-primary-secondary-mouse-buttons) onto a node. There are two possible choices:
  • left-top: Does the "right" action always in the left/topmost edit-window.
  • last-point: Does the "right" action always in that edit-window which had the point before.
This is if the user has clicked either with the primary mouse-button or has activated a popup-menu in the tree-buffer.

If the edit-area is not splitted this setting doesn't matter.

A click with the secondary mouse-button (see again ecb-primary-secondary-mouse-buttons does the "right" action always in another edit-window related to the setting in this option: If there are two edit-windows then the "other" edit-window is used and for more than 2 edit-windows the "next" edit-window is used (whereas the next edit-window of the last edit-window is the first edit-window).

Note: If the tree-buffers are used with the keyboard instead with the mouse then this option takes effect too because RET is interpreted as primary mouse-button and C-RET as secondary mouse-button!

run-ediff-in-ecb-frame User Option
Run ediff-sessions in the same frame as ECB is running. If not nil then ECB ensures that ediff runs in the same frame as ECB and ECB restores exactly the "before-ediff"-window-layout after quiting ediff. If nil then ediff decides in which frame it will run - depending on the current window-layout (e.g. if the ecb-windows are currently hidden) this can be the ecb-frame but this can also be a newly created frame or any other frame.

stealthy-tasks-delay User Option
Time Emacs must be idle before ECB runs its stealthy tasks. Currently ECB performes the following stealthy tasks:
Prescann directories for emptyness
Prescann directories and display them as empty or not-empty in the directories-buffer. See the documentation of the option ecb-prescan-directories-for-emptyness for a description.
File is read only
Check if sourcefile-items of the directories- or sources-buffer are read-only or not. See documentation of the option ecb-sources-perform-read-only-check.
Version-control-state
Checks the version-control-state of files in directories which are managed by a VC-backend. See the option ecb-vc-enable-support.

Here the interval is defined ECB has to be idle before starting with these stealthy tasks. It can be a floating-point value in seconds. The value can also be changed during running ECB.

tip-of-the-day User Option
Show tip of the day at start time of ECB.

tip-of-the-day-file User Option
File where tip-of-the-day cursor is stored.

use-recursive-edit User Option
Tell ECB to use a recursive edit. If set then it can easily be deactivated by (keyboard-escape-quit).

version-check User Option
Checks at start-time if the requirements are fulfilled. It checks if the required versions of the libraries semantic, eieio and speedbar are installed and loaded into Emacs.

It is strongly recommended to set this option to not nil!

window-sync User Option
Synchronize the ECB-windows automatically with current edit window. If always then the synchronization takes place always a buffer changes in the edit window, if nil then never. If a list of major-modes then only if the major-mode of the new buffer belongs NOT to this list.

But in every case the synchronization only takes place if the current-buffer in the current active edit-window has a relation to files or directories. Examples for the former one are all programming-language-modes, Info-mode too, an example for the latter one is dired-mode. For all major-modes related to non-file/directory-buffers like help-mode, customize-mode and others never an autom. synchronization will be done!

It's recommended to exclude at least Info-mode because it makes no sense to synchronize the ECB-windows after calling the Info help. Per default also dired-mode is excluded but it can also making sense to synchronize the ECB-directories/sources windows with the current directory in the dired-buffer.

IMPORTANT NOTE: Every time the synchronization is done the hook ecb-current-buffer-sync-hook is evaluated.

window-sync-delay User Option
Time Emacs must be idle before the ECB-windows are synchronized with current edit window. If nil then there is no delay, means synchronization takes place immediately. A small value of about 0.25 seconds saves CPU resources and you get even though almost the same effect as if you set no delay.