30Chapter2 • Working With Editors

2.2.6Compiling

Emacs has the facility to call external compilers, parse their output and display the results

in a buffer. As the results are displayed, the programmer can then move forward and backward

through any error or warnings. As each error or warning is displayed, the appropriate line in the

code is displayed and may be edited.

To invoke the compiler from Emacs, type

M-X compile

; in response, Emacs will ask

you for the command to use to compile the program for application. You can either specify

make

or the command line compiler with all the options. The default is to invoke

make

with the

–k option in order to continue as far into the

make

as it can when encountering errors.

For example, assume that the following (broken) bit of code is in a buffer entitled ‘main.c’.

#include

int main ()

{

printf(‘Hello World\n’);

}

The compiler may be invoked by typing:

M-X compile

Compile command: gcc –o main main.c

If the buffer being compiled has not been saved, the editor will prompt you to save it. The

results of the compilation will appear in the *compilation* buffer as seen in Figure 2-5.

Figure2-5 The results of M-X compile.

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