Using compilation mode to run all the things

compile is an interactive function so we can call it with M-x compile and enter the command we want to execute.

In the following example we're compiling this blog using hugo binary:

compile is a emacs-lisp function so we call it from our code, we just need to take care about the default-directory when we call it, for example if we call it from lib/hello.ex buffer, default-directory will be lib and in some cases we want to use our project root, or a different directory, to run our command.

To fix this we need to setup default-directory before we call compile, for example let's build a custom function to run hlint in our entire project and then show its results in a compilation buffer:

(defun my/run-hlint ()
  "Run  hlint over the current project."
  (interactive)
  (let ((default-directory (projectile-project-root)))
    (compile "hlint .")))

In this case we're setting up default-directory with our project root (using projectile to get the root) and then when we call compile it will take default-directory correctly.

The compilation buffer has some preset key bindings that conflict with evil-mode, for example when we press g in a compilation buffer this will re-run the command, but this key binding is also used by evil-mode, to fix this we can disable the default key binding with:

(with-eval-after-load 'compile
  (define-key compilation-mode-map (kbd "g") nil)
  (define-key compilation-mode-map (kbd "r") 'recompile)
  (define-key compilation-mode-map (kbd "h") nil))

In this case h key binding is also disabled (also used by evil) and r is remapped to recompile for easy access now that we disabled g default key binding.

By default compilation-mode doesn't follow the output of the command so if our command result has a large output we'll need to scroll manually, to fix this we can change compilation-scroll-output to t

(with-eval-after-load 'compile
  ;; set cursor to follow compilation output
  (setq compilation-scroll-output t))

Some tools show results with colors for easy reading but compilation-mode won't show them by default, you can make them look better with:

(require 'ansi-color)

(defun colorize-compilation-buffer ()
  (let ((inhibit-read-only t))
    (ansi-color-apply-on-region (point-min) (point-max))))

(add-hook 'compilation-filter-hook 'colorize-compilation-buffer)

This was taken from this Stack Overflow answer

When we're making changes in our code we want to re-run our compilation process right after we save the changes but to do this we have to move to the compilation buffer to be able to re-run the compilation, a better approach to do this could be just call recompile by using a key binding, I use evil-leader to make this:

(evil-leader/set-key "R" 'recompile)

But it can be attached to any key binding, for example:

(global-set-key (kbd "C-c C-r") 'recompile)

I configured parrot-mode to animate the little parrot every time the compilation process is a success, to make this we need a small function that check if it was a success and then we need to attach it to 'compilation-finish-functions, this is a variable defined in compilation-mode.

(defun my/parrot-animate-when-compile-success (buffer result)
  (if (string-match "^finished" result)
      (parrot-start-animation)))

(use-package parrot
  :ensure t
  :config
  (parrot-mode)
  (add-to-list 'compilation-finish-functions 'my/parrot-animate-when-compile-success))