spacemacs/contrib/auto-completion

Auto-Completion configuration layer for Spacemacs

Table of Contents

• Auto-Completion configuration layer for Spacemacs
  • Description
  • Install
  • Configuration
    • Key bindings
    • Tooltips
    • Sort results by usage
    • Enable company or auto-complete globally
    • Replacing company by auto-complete
    • Add auto-completion in a layer
  • Key Bindings
    • Company
    • Auto-complete
    • Yasnippet
    • Auto-yasnippet

Description

This layer provides auto-completion to Spacemacs.

The following completion engines are supported:

• company
• auto-complete

Snippets are supported via yasnippet and auto-yasnippet.

This layer also configures hippie-expand.

Install

To use this configuration layer add it to your ~/.spacemacs

(setq-default dotspacemacs-configuration-layers '(auto-completion))

Configuration

Key bindings

You can customize the user experience of auto-completion with the following layer variables:

auto-completion-return-key-behavior set the action to perform when the RET key is pressed, the possible values are:

• complete completes with the current selection
• nil does nothing

auto-completion-tab-key-behavior set the action to perform when the TAB key is pressed, the possible values are:

• complete completes with the current selection
• cycle completes the common prefix and cycle between candidates
• nil does nothing

auto-completion-complete-with-key-sequence is a string of two characters denoting a key sequence that will perform a complete action if the sequence as been entered quickly enough. If its value is nil then the feature is disabled.

The default configuration of the layer is:

(setq-default dotspacemacs-configuration-layers '(
  (auto-completion :variables
                   auto-completion-return-key-behavior 'complete
                   auto-completion-tab-key-behavior 'cycle
                   auto-completion-complete-with-key-sequence nil)
                   ))

"jk" is a good candidate for auto-completion-complete-with-key-sequence if you don't use it already.

Tooltips

To enable docstring tooltips set auto-completion-enable-help-tooltip to t

(setq-default dotspacemacs-configuration-layers
  '(auto-completion :variables
                    auto-completion-enable-help-tooltip t))

Sort results by usage

To enable sorting auto-completion results by their usage frequency set auto-completion-enable-sort-by-usage to t. This feature is provided by the company-statistics package when company is used. The variable has no effect when auto-complete is used.

(setq-default dotspacemacs-configuration-layers
  '(auto-completion :variables
                    auto-completion-enable-sort-by-usage t))

Enable company or auto-complete globally

By default Spacemacs enables auto-completion explicitly for each supported major-mode, it means that company and auto-complete are not enabled globally, it allows more flexibility to choose an auto-completion engine for a given mode.

You may want to enable company globally to get auto-completion everywhere even in the modes which are not configured by Spacemacs. To do so, you just have to add (global-company-mode) in the dotspacemacs/config function of your dotfile.

Note that if you want to enable auto-complete globally you will have to disable company first, see the next section to do so.

Replacing company by auto-complete

You can disable company by adding it to the dotspacemacs-excluded-packages variable, then you are free to enable auto-complete globally.

Add auto-completion in a layer

Here is an example to add company auto-completion to python buffer:

In config.el:

;; Define the buffer local company backend variable
(spacemacs|defvar-company-backends python-mode)

In packages.el:

;; Add the relevant packages to the layer
(setq python-packages
  '(...
    company
    company-anaconda
    ...))

;; Configure the packages
(when (configuration-layer/layer-usedp 'auto-completion)

  ;; Hook company to python-mode
  (defun python/post-init-company ()
    (spacemacs|add-company-hook python-mode))

  ;; Add the backend to the major-mode specific backend list
  (defun python/init-company-anaconda ()
    (use-package company-anaconda
      :if (configuration-layer/package-usedp 'company)
      :defer t
      :init (push 'company-anaconda company-backends-python-mode))))

Key Bindings

Company

Key Binding      |                 Description

---------------------|------------------------------------------------------------ C-j | go down in company dropdown menu C-k | go up in company dropdown menu C-/ | search in company dropdown C-M-/ | filter the company dropdown menu C-d | open minibuffer with documentation of thing at point in company dropdown

Auto-complete

Key Binding    |                 Description

-------------------|------------------------------------------------------------ C-j | select next candidate C-k | select previous candidate TAB | expand selection or select next candidate S-TAB | select previous candidate return | complete word, if word is already completed insert a carriage return

Yasnippet

Key Binding      |                 Description

---------------------|------------------------------------------------------------ M-/ | Expand a snippet if text before point is a prefix of a snippet SPC i s | List all current yasnippets for inserting

Auto-yasnippet

Key Binding      |                 Description

---------------------|------------------------------------------------------------ SPC i S c | create a snippet from an active region SPC i S e | Expand the snippet just created with SPC i y SPC i S w | Write the snippet inside private/snippets directory for future sessions