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A simple ag frontend, loosely based on ack-and-half.el.
ag.el currently works on Linux, Mac and Windows (with a few minor issues1). Patches or bug reports for other platforms are welcome.
We currently support Emacs 23.4 or above, patches for other emacsen are also welcome.
First, install the ag
binary. See
the installation instructions
on ag GitHub repo. A
precompiled Windows binary is also available.
Afterwards, you can install ag.el from MELPA or
Marmalade. Just
run M-x package-install RET ag RET
. Functions are autoloaded, so
(require 'ag)
is unnecessary.
If you want to install it manually, add the following to your .emacs.d:
(add-to-list 'load-path "/path/to/ag.el")
(require 'ag)
You will now have the following interactive commands available for performing searches:
ag
ag-files
ag-regexp
ag-project
ag-project-files
ag-project-regexp
*-project
commands automatically choose the directory to search,
automatically detecting git, Subversion and Mercurial project roots.
*-regexp
commands allow you to specify a PCRE pattern for your
search term.
*-files
commands allow you to specify a PCRE pattern for file names
to search in. By default, ag searches in all files. Note that in both
cases, ag ignores files that are ignored by your VCS (e.g. things
mentioned in .gitignore).
In the search results buffer, you can move between results by pressing
n
and p
, and you can visit the file by pressing <return>
or
clicking.
You can run the search again by pressing g
, or close the buffer with q
.
You can activate next-error-follow-minor-mode
with C-c C-f
. With
this minor mode enabled, moving in the results buffer will make Emacs
automatically display the search result at point.
If you've configured wgrep you can use
C-c C-p
to make the buffer writable and edit the results inline.
Of course, C-h m
inside a results buffer witll show all the
keybindings available to you.
ag
supports an option -g
that lets you to list file names matching
PCRE patterns. It is analogical to find
, but comes with all the nice
features of ag
such as automatically ignoring all the vcs files. You
can search for files matching a pattern using functions
ag-dired
ag-dired-regexp
ag-project-dired
ag-project-dired-regexp
The results are presented as a dired-mode
buffer. The analogical
interface to find
in emacs is find-dired
.
ag.el supports highlighting results for ag 0.14 or later. Previous
versions of ag don't support the --color-match
argument.
If your version of ag is recent enough, you can add highlighting by adding the following to your Emacs configuration:
(setq ag-highlight-search t)
ag.el assumes that the ag executable is in one of the directories on
exec-path
. Generally, this is sufficient.
However, you may find that you can run ag in a terminal but ag.el
isn't finding the ag executable. This is common on Mac OS X. You'll
need to update exec-path
to match your terminal. The best way to do
this is to install
exec-path-from-shell
(available on both Marmalade and
MELPA).
Alternatively, you can do this yourself by putting the following code in your Emacs configuration:
(defun set-exec-path-from-shell-PATH ()
"Set up Emacs' `exec-path' and PATH environment variable to match that used by the user's shell.
This is particularly useful under Mac OSX, where GUI apps are not started from a shell."
(interactive)
(let ((path-from-shell (replace-regexp-in-string "[ \t\n]*$" "" (shell-command-to-string "$SHELL --login -i -c 'echo $PATH'"))))
(setenv "PATH" path-from-shell)
(setq exec-path (split-string path-from-shell path-separator))))
(set-exec-path-from-shell-PATH)
Finally, as a last resort, you can specify the path to ag explicitly. This might be the case if:
- you are are in an environment where, for whatever reason, you can't easily change the path to include ag
- you are on windows, where the executable name ends in `.exe'.
- you have multiple versions of ag or want to use some other executable that works the same as ag.
To change the ag executable used:
(setq ag-executable "C:/Wherever/I/Installed/Ag/ag.exe")
By default, ag.el will open results in a different window in the frame, so the results buffer is still visible. You can override this so the results buffer is hidden and the selected result is shown in its place:
(setq ag-reuse-window 't)
ag.el provides a customisable variable ag-arguments
.
For temporary changes to arguments, the search commands will prompt
you for arguments if you call them with a prefix argument. For
example, C-u M-x ag
.
ag.el provides ag-mode-hook
which is run when you start a search.
Ag.el provides the interactive commands for closing old search buffers:
ag-kill-buffers
ag-kill-other-buffers
Alternatively, you can make ag.el reuse the same *ag*
buffer for all
your searches:
(setq ag-reuse-buffers 't)
Projectile supports ag.el. If
you have Projectile installed, C-c p A
runs ag-regexp
on your project.
By default, ag-project
and ag-project-regexp
use the root of the
VCS repo as the directory to search in. You can override this by
setting or customising ag-project-root-function
.
You can use ag
, ag-project
and so on from an elisp
function. ag/FOO
functions are private and are more likely to
change. Please file a bug if you find a use for internal functions
that you can't do otherwise.
wgrep has support for
ag.el. If you install wgrep-ag
(available on MELPA), you can
simply run wgrep-change-to-wgrep-mode
and edit the *ag*
buffer. Press C-x C-s
when you're done to make the changes to
buffers.
When passing a prefix argument, ag.el now presents you with the whole command so you can edit any part, as a string. See #38.
Documentation and docstring improvements, mostly around clarifying what regular expression syntax ag.el expects.
Added a setting ag-executable
which allows you to override the name
or path of the ag executable.
Added support for Emacs 23.4.
Buffers created by ag.el are now always named *ag: FOO*
.
ag-dired
now respects the value of ag-reuse-buffers
.
ag-project-regexp
now defaults to the escaped value at point, as an
escaped regular expression. For example, if point is at foo-bar
,
then the suggested search regexp is foo\-bar
.
ag-regexp-project-at-point
is now just an obsolete alias for ag-project-regexp
.
The commands ag
, ag-files
, ag-regexp
, ag-project
,
ag-project-files
and ag-project-regexp
can now take a prefix
argument. For example, C-u M-x ag
. If given a prefix argument, you
are also prompted for the flags to pass ag itself.
ag-dired
and ag-project-dired
should now work on Mac OS X
(previously we assumed xargs supported GNU extensions).
Added ag-dired
and ag-project-dired
to search for files matching a
pattern.
Fixed a bug in ag-regexp
and ag-project-regexp
due to an internal
API change (ag/search
now uses keyword arguments).
Added the ag-files
and ag-project-files
commands.
Note that the internal API changed in this release: ag/search
now
takes regexp
as a keyword argument instead of a positional
argument. I'm not aware of any external packages depending on this, so
I'm not incrementing the major version.
Specifying the path as an argument to ag, allowing ag.el to do searches on Windows.
Fixed a bug with ag.el not searching if shell-command-switch
had
been modified by the user.
Adding ag-project-root-function
which allows users to override how
ag.el finds the root of a project.
Ag.el faces (which are ag-match-face
and ag-hit-face
x) are defined
with defface
, so you can use customize-face
on them.
Improved quoting of arguments passed to ag.
Added customisable variable ag-reuse-window
. If set to t
(defaults
to nil
) then selecting a search result hides the results buffer and
shows the match, rather than using a different window in the frame.
-project
functions now handle the case of multiple nested VCS
repositories. Ag.el now takes the most deepest subdirectory, so if
/foo/bar
is a subversion repo that contains a git repo
/foo/bar/baz
, ag.el will search /foo/bar/baz
.
Ag.el autopopulates the minibuffer with the text at point, or the active selection. If this text was read-only, the minibuffer text would also be read-only. It's now always possible to edit the text in the minibuffer.
Fixed a crash when refreshing a search buffer by pressing g
.
Added commands ag-kill-buffers
and ag-kill-other-buffers
to
close old search result buffers. Also added a customisable variable
ag-reuse-buffers
so users can optionally stop ag.el creating
multiple buffers.
Search results buffers now take the form *ag text:something dir:~/some/path*
, so new searches will create new buffers.
ag.el now detects the project root for Mercurial repositories in the
ag-project*
commands.
The keys n
and p
now move between matches, similar to the
behaviour of dired.
Added a new face ag-hit-face
to distinguish from ag-match-face
.
Fixed next-error
and previous-error
not working with ag.el (broken
in v0.18).
ag
now has a default search term of the symbol at point.
Search results are now highlighted as information, rather than errors. The ag output is now more consistent with grep.el.
The interactive functions provided by ag.el are now autoloaded.
Removed the unused variable ag-last-buffer
Fixed ag-project
and ag-project-regexp
not working in buffers that
aren't associated with a specific file, such as dired and magit buffers.
The compilation mode regexp is now more accurate, so you should no longer get 'compilation-next-error: No error here' when trying to open a file in the results list.
Current stable ag (0.13.1) doesn't support --color-match
, ag.el now
only highlights when ag-highlight-search
is non-nil (the default is nil).
If you're upgrading ag.el and your ag version is 0.14 or higher, you need to explicitly enable highlighting:
(setq ag-highlight-search t)
- There's an ag plugin for helm: https://github.com/syohex/emacs-helm-ag
- Remove
*-at-point
commands in favour of always defaulting to the symbol at point. - Add aliases for the old command names to ensure backward compatibility.
- Modify
ag-regexp-project-at-point
to quote the default search string, otherwise"foo.bar"
will match other things.