Using Emacs for big big projects

Question

Maybe is a often repeated question here, but i can't find anything similar with the search. The point is that i like to use Emacs for my personal projects, usually very small applications using C or python, but i was wondering how to use it also for my work, in which we have project with about 10k files of source code, so is veeeery big (actually i am using source insight, that is very nice tool, but only for windows), questions are:

• Searching: Which is the most convenient way to search a string within the whole project?
• Navigating throught the function: I mean something like putting the cursor over a function, define, var, and going to the definition
• Refactoring

Also if you have any experience with this and want to share your thoughts i will consider it highly interesting.

Br

Answer 1

Regarding searches in the whole project, I find extremely useful the rgrep command.

Also, imenu is quite handy to jump to a function definition in the same file.

These are my 2p.

Answer 2

My projects typically live in git, so I put this together to quickly search them:

;; There's something similar (but fancier) in vc-git.el: vc-git-grep
;; -I means don't search through binary files
(defcustom git-grep-switches "--extended-regexp -I -n --ignore-case"
  "Switches to pass to `git grep'."
  :type 'string)

(defun git-grep (command-args)
  (interactive
   (list (read-shell-command "Run git-grep (like this): "
                             (format "git grep %s -e "
                                     git-grep-switches)
                             'git-grep-history)))
  (let ((grep-use-null-device nil))
    (grep command-args)))