Doc Emacs Support

On-the-fly Syntax Checking

Install flycheck from the Package Manager.

Use flycheck-mode in your Rust buffer and it will highlight syntax errors on the fly. It uses the default rustc on your machine.

To make it use a particular rustc binary, you have to create your own syntax-checker. Like this one, for Servo.

(flycheck-define-checker servo-rust
  "A Rust syntax checker using the Rust compiler in Servo."
  :command ("/path/to/servo/rustc"
            "--parse-only"
            source)
  :error-patterns
  ((error line-start (file-name) ":" line ":" column ": "
          (one-or-more digit) ":" (one-or-more digit) " error: "
          (message) line-end))
  :modes rust-mode)

(add-hook 'rust-mode-hook (lambda () (flycheck-select-checker 'servo-rust)))

Simple Auto-Completion

For basic auto-completion of symbols available in open buffers, use M-/ (dabbrev-expand)

Auto-Complete mode

This lets you view the potential completions in a pop-up right after point. You can choose among the candidates using M-n / M-p

Imenu: Finding definitions within a file

Use M-x imenu to choose from a list of all the items in a file (e.g., functions, structs, traits, etc.).

Idomenu

Install the package idomenu from the Package Manager.

Now M-x idomenu will let you choose from the items in a file, using Ido completion (fuzzy completion).

Tags

To create the Tags table for Emacs

Assuming RUST_ROOT is where the Rust source is, and PROJECT_DIR is your project

    RUST_ROOT=~/rust
    RUST_OPTIONS_FILE=$RUST_ROOT/src/compiler/rust/src/etc/ctags.rust
    PROJECT_DIR=~/project
    ctags-exuberant -e -f TAGS.emacs --languages=rust --options=$RUST_OPTIONS_FILE -R $PROJECT_DIR

will build the tags table in TAGS.emacs (may take a couple of seconds if it is a big project like Servo or Rust itself).

Note that this only creates tags for Rust files (--languages=rust). Otherwise, there are too many name clashes with random structs in C or C++ files.

You can then jump to the definition of any function or struct or enum by using M-. (Alt + .)

Moving around the buffer

Emacs motions like C-M-a and C-M-e (beginning-of-defun and end-of-defun) work out of the box.

So does C-M-h (mark-defun).

You can use them to manipulate Rust items - functions, structs, enums, etc.