Logo by David Ponce

Semantic is an infrastructure for parser based text analysis in Emacs. It is a lexer, parser-generator, and parser. It is written in Emacs Lisp and is customized to the way Emacs thinks about language files, and is optimized to use Emacs' parsing capabilities.

Semantic's goal is to provide an intermediate API for authors of language agnostic tools who want to deal with languages in a generic way. It also provides a simple way for Mode Authors who are expert's in their language, to provide a parser for those tool authors, without knowing anything about those tools.

Lexical Analyzer & Preprocessor

Converts a language into a token stream. Preprocessor support with lexical macro replacement (C/C++).

Parser

Converts a lexical token stream into a table of tags defined by the language.

Parser Generator with Bison

David Ponce has ported Bison to Emacs Lisp. New languages can be supported via the wisent parser.

Language Parsers

Parsers that have already been implemented:
Emacs Lisp, Java, C/C++, C#, Python, Erlang, awk, Makefile, Scheme, HTML, Texinfo, Javascript, dot.
Also: Semantic's own grammar format (.by or .wy)

Database

Persistent storage of parsed information. Speeds load time and provides standard way of cross referencing files. The database backend supports alternate parsers and file formats.

Incremental parser

Reparses minimal parts of a buffer as you edit.

Idle service manager

Reparses buffers in idle time, and also call other services.

Complexity of semantic.el

Smart Completion

Completes symbols actually available in a given context. Some tools call this intellisense.

Idle Summary and Completion

Show function help, or offer up smart completions in idle time.

Speedbar Browser

Code for browsing tag lists with Speedbar.

Documentation Generator

Identifies inline documentation in source code, and can convert it to texinfo. It can also create inline documenation.

Stickyfunc mode

Locks the function declaration you are editing in the header line. (Emacs only).

Imenu

Create hierarchical imenu menus from parsed files.

Navigator

Senator is a navigator that permits simple navigation through the parsed language. It also includes token highlighting, and magic cut & paste.

Decoration Modes

Decorate buffers using more than regular expressions, such as overlines for functions, highlight header files Emacs can't find.

Smart Bookmarking

Emacs tracks what you edit, and allows quick navigation by name.

Highlight bad code

text which does not fit the language is underlined.

Charting

Draw a chart of some things semantic can quantify.

Analyzer

Examines code, and references those names against a database of pre-parsed files to provide detailed information.

Semantic's potential scope is quite large. If you would like to help Semantic push forward, consider participating in one of these fields:

• Write a language agnostic tool that uses semantic.
• Write a language definition for an unsupported language.
• Maintain one of the language definitions already in Semantic, like scheme or C++.
• Test Semantic and send in bugs.
• Help with documentation
• Keep Semantic compatible with the many versions of [X]Emacs

Join the mailing list to ask question, or help develop semantic.

Other Tools that use Semantic

Java Development Environment (JDE) is a full development environment for Java. It uses Semantic to provide useful Java specific features.

Emacs Code Browser (ECB) lets you browse your files' contents. Uses the Semantic package.

COGRE (pronounced cougar) is a COnnected GRaph Editor for Emacs. As it matures, it will use semantic to reverse-engineer sources into UML diagrams.

SRecode The Semantic Recoder is a template management system that generates code from Semantic tags.

Notes

Semantic works with Emacs 21, 22 & 23, XEmacs 20.x, and 21.x.

Semantic is always developed with Emacs from CVS, but I strive for compatiblity with as many versions of Emacs as I can. Please report bugs if it doesn't support your version of Emacs.

CEDET tools including EIEIO, Semantic, Speedbar, EDE, and COGRE are now distributed together in a single file. This simplifies installation and version management.

While Some individual CEDET packages have active stable releases, the CEDET bundle is currently only available in Beta or Pre release. CEDET Betas are the only place to get the latest versions of individual tools.

PRE RELEASES

CEDET is currently driving toward a 1.0 release, and small changes are going onto each pre-release. Try out a pre-release and send in bug reports on the build process, or anything else.

Try out cedet-1.0pre4.tar.gz.

Try out cedet-1.0pre3.tar.gz.

If semantic kills font-lock, you need to get and use overlay-fix.el Thanks to David Ponce for creating this fix.