#+title: Project.el

* Why use project management?

  Project management simplifies people's workflow across multiple
  projects.

  Multi-project workflow without project management is confusing
  
  - Each project can contain files with the same name (=Makefile=,
    =README=)
  - One emacs frame could contain a mix of buffers from multiple
    projects
  - Managing a separate emacs frame per project can be disadvantageous
    + No global search across projects buffers

* Options

** Projectile

   Developped by Bozhidar Batsov since 2011, [[https://projectile.mx/][Projectile]] is the popular
   option for project management in Emacs.

** Project.el

   Project.el has been part of emacs since emacs 25! No installation
   is required if your emacs is recent enough.
   
* Tutorial

** Project registration

   Projects cand either be registered one-by-one or and entire
   directory can be searched for projects that will be automatically
   registered.

*** Register projects one-by-one

    Running =C-x p p= (switch project) will display a =... Choose a
    dir= option, which allows the manual registration of a project
    directory.

*** Search a directory for projects to register

    Use =M-x project-remember-projects-under= to crawl a directory and
    register projects found in child directories.

*** Completion
    
    The list of known projects is fed to the standard emacs completion
    system. It is therefore usable with most completion systems
    (vertico in my case).

** Basic management

   Use =C-x p f= to open up a project file. Once files are open,
   buffers can be listed with =C-x p b=. Mini-buffer completion works
   for all these commands, making them easy to use.

   The current project can be closed, with all associated buffers by
   using the =C-x p k= keybind. Alternatively, the project can be
   switched to another using the =C-x p p= shortcut.

** Project-wide search

   Searching through projects is an important. /Project.el/ provides
   the default keybinding =C-x p g= to allow grepping through the
   entire project folder. Moving through matches is quick and easy.

** Search and replace

   Basic refactoring operations often rely on project-wide
   search-and-replace. This is handle with the keychord =C-x p r=,
   which switches to the interactive search-and-replace interface. In
   that interface, you can interactively choose what matches to skip
   or replace or perform replacements in entire files.

** Compilation

   Invoke =C-x p c=, the command will run from the project's root.

** Version control

*** Magit

    Magit can be opened with =C-x g= and uses the current project root.

*** VC-mode

    VC-mode is integrated in project.el and opened with =C-x p v=.

** Open up a shell

   A shell can be opened with =C-x p s=

** Registered projects



* Comparison to projectile

   - Not as polished
   - Not as much support from 3rd party libs (ripgrep for ex.)