Pragma marks are XCode’s way of browsing through large Objective-C source code files, showing the functionality of a set of methods.

For example check this screenshot:

It shows a set of methods associated with TextView, another set with TableView and so on, and the methods themselves. This is very convenient, if you are trying to read and understand the code.

Here’s my Emacs config for setting up pragma-marks:

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(require 'anything)
(require 'anything-config)

(defvar anything-c-source-objc-headline
  '((name . "Objective-C Headline")
    (headline  "^[-+@]\\|^#pragma mark")))

(defun objc-headline ()
  (interactive)
  ;; Set to 500 so it is displayed even if all methods are not narrowed down.
  (let ((anything-candidate-number-limit 500))
    (anything-other-buffer '(anything-c-source-objc-headline)
                           "*ObjC Headline*")))

And I have bound the function to the key Ctrl-x p

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(global-set-key "\C-xp" 'objc-headline)

So whenever I am editing a source code file and I press Ctrl-x p here’s what I see in a separate buffer:

Selecting a method and pressing enter takes you to that particular method.

ETAGS or Emacs Tags is a facility for recording names and their definitions and later looking up the definitions. Here’s how to record the names and definitions of any project that your are using. You should have a binary called etags in your Mac OS X installation. Go to the root of your project directory and do.

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$ find . -name '*.[hm]' | xargs etags
$ find IPHONE_SDK_FRAMEWORKS_DIR -name '*.[h]' | xargs etags -a

This will generate a TAGS file in that directory. Visit that file using M-x visit-tags-table and it’s done.

Now you can browse through class definitions and your source code functions. Just go to a class name in your source code like say NSUserDefaults, and press M-. and you will be presented with the complete class definition, methods, etc. that can be found in the Framework headers.

Press M-* to go back to where you were before.

Check out more about Emacs TAGS here http://emacswiki.org/emacs/EmacsTags

If you have w3m installed for use from within your Emacs, then you can view and search XCode docsets. There’s nifty little tool that you can get from here https://github.com/roupam/emacs-xcode-document-viewer

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(require 'xcode-document-viewer)
(setq xcdoc:document-path "/Users/rpg/Library/Developer/Shared/Documentation/DocSets/com.apple.adc.documentation.AppleiOS5_1.iOSLibrary.docset")
(setq xcdoc:open-w3m-other-buffer t)

You will also need to modify the xcode-document-viewer.el and point to the right docsetutil command

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(defun xcdoc:docsetutil-command ()
  (or (executable-find "docsetutil")
      (and (file-executable-p "/Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/usr/bin/docsetutil") "/Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/usr/bin/docsetutil")
      (error "docsetutil command is not found. Perhaps you dont have Xcode man.")))

To search you can just do M-x xcdoc:search. For example a search on NSString leads to this.

Get fruitstrap from here https://github.com/roupam/fruitstrap

Clone this git://github.com/roupam/fruitstrap.git Get into the cloned directory and do

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make fruitstrap

Get the Mac OS X 10.8 version with XCode 4.4 support from here https://github.com/phonegap/ios-sim After building just make the executable aviablable in your path

Open an Emacs shell. Press Ctrl-x m To run on device go to your project root and do

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$ xcodebuild -sdk iphoneos build
$ fruitstrap -d -b QNote/build/Release-iphoneos/YOUR_APP.app

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$ xcodebuild -sdk iphonesimulator5.1 build
$ ios-sim launch build/Release-iphonesimulator/YOUR_APP.app --sdk 5.1

There’s a tool called xcs, but somewhat limited in its functionality, but still gets the job done. But still I think its an awesome piece of code, considering the fact that Apple is clumsy when it comes to developer support outside of Xcode.

You can get xcs from here https://github.com/gonzoua/xcs

Add this to you emacs init file if you would like to jump quickly between .h and .m files. Use Ctrl-C t

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;; --- Obj-C switch between header and source ---

(defun objc-in-header-file ()
  (let* ((filename (buffer-file-name))
         (extension (car (last (split-string filename "\\.")))))
    (string= "h" extension)))

(defun objc-jump-to-extension (extension)
  (let* ((filename (buffer-file-name))
         (file-components (append (butlast (split-string filename
                                                         "\\."))
                                  (list extension))))
    (find-file (mapconcat 'identity file-components "."))))

;;; Assumes that Header and Source file are in same directory
(defun objc-jump-between-header-source ()
  (interactive)
  (if (objc-in-header-file)
      (objc-jump-to-extension "m")
    (objc-jump-to-extension "h")))

(defun objc-mode-customizations ()
  (define-key objc-mode-map (kbd "C-c t") 'objc-jump-between-header-source))

(add-hook 'objc-mode-hook 'objc-mode-customizations)

Thanks to Kiran Kulkarni for this switching code.

Hope you enjoyed this post, and believe me Emacs is more than you could expect, much much more.

Please feel free to email me at roupam dot ghosh at gmail dot com.

That’s all folks.