47 lines
1.9 KiB
Markdown
47 lines
1.9 KiB
Markdown
---
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layout: post
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title: "Emacs package to generate GObject boilerplate"
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date: 2016-09-28 15:40:15
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tags: [gnome, development]
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published: true
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author:
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name: Gergely Polonkai
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email: gergely@polonkai.eu
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---
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Before I started using Vala (and sometimes even after that) I often
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needed to generate new classes based
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on [GObject](https://developer.gnome.org/gobject/stable/).
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If you have ever worked with GObject in C, you know how tedious it can
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be. You need a pretty long boilerplate just to register your class,
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and, if you want to be introspectable (and readable, actually), your
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function names can grow really long.
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To overcome this problem back in my ViM days, I used template files,
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where I could replace class prefixes and names with a few keyboard
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macros. As I never really dug into ViM scripting other than using some
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plugins, I never got farther than
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that. [Then came Emacs]({% post_url 2014-09-17-nyanmacs %}).
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I use Emacs for about two years now very extensively, up to and
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including GLib-based development. I tried the template approach, but
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it felt to be a really poor experience, especially given that I made
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my feet wet with Emacs Lisp. So I dug deeper, and created a package
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for that.
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GobGen has its own buffer with some widgets, a bit similar to
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`customize`. You can enter the name of your new object and its parent,
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specify some settings. Then you press Generate, and you are presented
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with two new buffers, one for the `.c` and another for the `.h`
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boilerplate.
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There are a lot of things to do, actually. There is already an open
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issue for creating a major mode for this buffer, and there are some
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minor switches I’d like to add, but it is already usable. You can grab
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it from [MELPA](https://melpa.org/#/gobgen) (my first package there;
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woo!) or from
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my [GitHub account](https://github.com/gergelypolonkai/gobgen.el).
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