Emacs' Flymake for Erlang with Distel

[Moritz Ulrich]

Hello,

I'm using Emacs for my daily Erlang programming. One tool I really
like is Flymake, which checks if the file compiles on-the-fly. It also
embeds the errors in the source-buffer as hidden comments.

The erlang distribution contains a file for this: erlang-flymake.el in
the lib/tools-*/ directory.

However, the implementation of flymake isn't perfect for the following reasons:
- It spawns a second process (erlc) after every save (this can be
tweaked in flymake, but better implementations would just make an rpc
to a running node)
- It isn't suited for self-containing erlang projects like nitrogen
(It doesn't handle special paths)


My idea for fixing both of these would be rather simple: Implement
erlang-flymake with Distel (Distributed Emacs Lisp)
Distel is an emacs package to make rpc calls to erlang nodes. It's
rather advanced and I think it can be used to implement this behavior.

I would like to implement this, but I need some starting points:

How can I compile a file with just an erlang command and get the
output erlc would give me? (erlang:compile(MyFile) or something like
this)
Are there pitfalls?

Oh, and please tell me if someone already implemented this :-)

Best regards,
Moritz Ulrich

-- 
Moritz Ulrich
Programmer, Student, Almost normal Guy

http://www.google.com/profiles/ulrich.moritz
BB5F086F-C798-41D5-B742-494C1E9677E8