Rascal Mode for Emacs

Introduction

This is an implementation of a Rascal language major mode for Emacs. The current implementation is based on CC Mode.

Features

• almost decent syntax highlighting and indentation
• auto-completion for language keywords, built-in primitive and parametric types, the standard Prelude library, along with “hover” help
• auto-completion for words appearing in open Rascal Mode buffers (as implemented by Auto Complete Mode)

Prerequisites and Recommendations

The Emacs packages that are recommended for use with Rascal Mode are:

CC Mode (required)

http://cc-mode.sourceforge.net/

Required. Is part of Emacs, but the c-fill-paragraph function appears broken in some older versions. If you get incorrect formatting of Rascal block comments with M-q, consider upgrading to a more recent version.

Auto Complete Mode (recommended)

http://www.cx4a.org/software/auto-complete/

Not a strict requirement, but you won’t get auto completion for Rascal keywords, primitives, and standard library without this. This is also required for “hover” help. Typically not bundled with Emacs—refer to the homepage for installation instructions.

pos-tip.el (recommended)

http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs-en/PosTip

Not strictly required, but strongly recommended for nice-looking “hover” help. Typically not bundled with Emacs—refer to the homepage for installation instructions.

YASnippet (suggested)

https://github.com/capitaomorte/yasnippet

Useful for making commonly used code snippets available as code templates. None are currently included as part of Rascal Mode itself, but it is easy enough to create your own collection to suit your tastes. You probably already have a good enough version of YASnippet installed.

Installation

First, download Rascal Mode by using git clone.

Byte compilation of the Rascal Mode source files is recommended. Simply go to the Rascal Mode source directory and type make to do this.

To install, you need to edit your ~/.emacs configuration. To tell Emacs where to find Rascal mode, you can write something like

(add-to-list 'load-path "/my/path/to/rascal-emacs-mode")

and then, to tell Emacs to load the mode as required, you may write

(setq auto-mode-alist
  (cons '("\\.rsc" . rascal-mode) auto-mode-alist))
(autoload 'rascal-mode "rascal-mode-cc"
  "mode for editing Rascal source files" t)

Assuming you have Auto Complete Mode, you should also tell Emacs to enable it with Rascal Mode as follows

(add-to-list 'ac-modes 'rascal-mode)

You may also want to assign keys for accessing help associated with the last (Auto Complete Mode) completed keyword, e.g.

(define-key ac-mode-map (kbd "C-c h") 'ac-last-quick-help) ;; hover
(define-key ac-mode-map (kbd "C-c H") 'ac-last-help) ;; buffer

Customizing Auto Completion

To specify new words for auto completion in Rascal Mode, a quick and easy way to do this is to (in the Rascal Mode source directory), issue the commands

mkdir -p ac-dict
echo my_new_word >> ac-dict/rascal-mode

and then use M-x ac-clear-dictionary-cache in Emacs to refresh the dictionary.

Bugs

Not created by a Rascal language lawyer, and hence there will be mistakes such as missing or spurious or miscategorized keywords.

Known bugs:

• @doc annotations are not displayed as part of “hover” help, although they would provide valuable information indeed.
• When using statements such as visit as expressions, it is necessary to end with a semicolon to get correct indentation.
• Auto-completion stops upon encountering a hyphen character (e.g. in the keyword top-down-break).