flymake – nurikabe.blog

This has been bugging me for awhile. Recent versions of Emacs save _flymake files “inplace”, meaning in the same directory as the source file. Problem is, Flymake has a tendency to crash, leaving behind the corpses of various _flymake files, which in turn cause version control annoyances, automated build issues, unusual problems with caching in web frameworks, etc.

There’s an obscure FlymakeRuby entry on the EmacsWiki with a suggested fix, repeated here:

(defun flymake-create-temp-intemp (file-name prefix)
  "Return file name in temporary directory for checking FILE-NAME.
This is a replacement for `flymake-create-temp-inplace'. The
difference is that it gives a file name in
`temporary-file-directory' instead of the same directory as
FILE-NAME.

For the use of PREFIX see that function.

Note that not making the temporary file in another directory
\(like here) will not if the file you are checking depends on
relative paths to other files \(for the type of checks flymake
makes)."
  (unless (stringp file-name)
    (error "Invalid file-name"))
  (or prefix
      (setq prefix "flymake"))
  (let* ((name (concat
                (file-name-nondirectory
                 (file-name-sans-extension file-name))
                "_" prefix))
         (ext  (concat "." (file-name-extension file-name)))
         (temp-name (make-temp-file name nil ext))
         )
    (flymake-log 3 "create-temp-intemp: file=%s temp=%s" file-name temp-name)
    temp-name))

(defun flymake-create-temp-intemp (file-name prefix)

"Return file name in temporary directory for checking FILE-NAME.

This is a replacement for `flymake-create-temp-inplace'. The

difference is that it gives a file name in

`temporary-file-directory' instead of the same directory as

FILE-NAME.

For the use of PREFIX see that function.

Note that not making the temporary file in another directory

\(like here) will not if the file you are checking depends on

relative paths to other files \(for the type of checks flymake

makes)."

(unless (stringp file-name)

(error "Invalid file-name"))

(or prefix

(setq prefix "flymake"))

(let* ((name (concat

(file-name-nondirectory

(file-name-sans-extension file-name))

"_" prefix))

(ext (concat "." (file-name-extension file-name)))

(temp-name (make-temp-file name nil ext))

)

(flymake-log 3 "create-temp-intemp: file=%s temp=%s" file-name temp-name)

temp-name))

Add this to lisp/progmodes/flymake.el in your Emacs distro, and then call it from the init method corresponding to your target language. PHP, for example:

;;;; php-specific init-cleanup routines
(defun flymake-php-init ()
  (let* ((temp-file   (flymake-init-create-temp-buffer-copy
                       'flymake-create-temp-intemp))
	 (local-file  (file-relative-name
                       temp-file
                       (file-name-directory buffer-file-name))))
    (list "php" (list "-f" local-file "-l"))))

;;;; php-specific init-cleanup routines

(defun flymake-php-init ()

(let* ((temp-file (flymake-init-create-temp-buffer-copy

'flymake-create-temp-intemp))

(local-file (file-relative-name

temp-file

(file-name-directory buffer-file-name))))

(list "php" (list "-f" local-file "-l"))))

Note that 'flymake-create-temp-inplace has been replaced with 'flymake-create-temp-intemp. Be sure to remove or recompile the corresponding flymake.elc file.

Now _flymake junk will be saved to where you have defined temporary-file-directory in .emacs. In my case:

(setq temporary-file-directory "~/.emacs.d/tmp/")

Yay. Much less annoying.

If you develop in PHP on Emacs, then you’ve probably got a hook setup to run flymake-mode on PHP files. And if so, then you’ve also probably noticed that this doesn’t work with nXhtml, which will often return an error like “mumamo can’t find the file” (or some such), causing flymake-mode to disable itself.

The culprit is likely to be a bind like this:

(add-hook 'php-mode-hook (lambda () (flymake-mode t)))

which says, “turn on flymake-mode when php-mode is started”. (Sacha Chua has a post that recommends using this from couple of years back.) The problem, as far as I can tell, is that nXhtml tries to process the fleetingly available _flymake file rather than the original PHP script whenever it toggles into php-mode.

A better hook to use is the find-file-hook, like this:

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

With this, Flymake will properly validate PHP chunks in nXhtml mode, as well as any other files that Flymake is smart enough to process.

nurikabe.blog

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nurikabe.blog

Tag: flymake

Save _flymake files in a temporary directory

Getting Flymake to work with Emacs nXhtml

Defeating the flymake configuration error in Emacs php-mode