Shortcuts to put in .emacs to compile and locate errors "instantaneously":

;;; pressing F5 initiates the compilation session
(global-set-key [f5] 'compile)
;;; pressing F6 restarts the current compilation
(global-set-key [f6] 'recompile)
;;; pressing F7 locates the compilation errors
(global-set-key [f7] 'next-error)

Script named makecoq to put in the path to compile Coq from any subdirectory and without recomputing the dependencies (you need first to remove the space before '#!')

#!/bin/sh

# ensure make messages are in English so that Emacs parse them correctly export LC_ALL=C

case "$@" in -f) true;; -C) true;; *) while [ ! ( -e GNUmakefile -o -e Makefile -o -e makefile -o "$PWD" = "/" ) ]; do cd .. done if [ ! ( -e GNUmakefile -o -e Makefile -o -e makefile ) ]; then echo No makefile found exit 1 fi

esac

exec make NO_RECALC_DEPS=1 GOTO_STAGE_N=2 $@ | grep -v '********'

Then, as soon emacs is open on some file, for example pretyping/unification.ml :

Press F5 and, in the minibuffer, give either the following command:

makecoq bin/coqtop.byte

or

makecoq theories

or, to test only the first files of the library

makecoq BEST=byte theories

Then, if the compilation fails, press F7 which moves the cursor at the exact error location. When the error is fixed, press F6 to restart the compilation, then F7, fix, F6, etc. until the compilation eventually succeeds.

The NO_RECALC_DEPS=1 GOTO_STAGE=2 are here to shortcut the computation of dependencies. In practice, if the compilation fails for a dependency problem, I start a make stage2 in a side terminal, just to redo the dependencies before continuing with F6. If no .ml4 is used to parse other .ml4, the computation of dependencies can be done using make GOTO_STAGE=2 dummy.

There are some errors that F7 cannot locate. This is e.g. the case of Values do not match and this is due to ocaml which does not send a location for this error.

(thanks to JCF, PL and LM)

To compile specific target of the documentation, start on Makefile.stage3, as in:

make -f Makefile.stage3 doc/refman/Reference-Manual.ps