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5.4 Menu Items

The main menus that give access to extended functionalities related to source editing are described in this section.

5.4.1 The File Menu

New
Open a new untitled source editor. No syntax highlighting is performed until the file is saved, since GPS needs to know the file name in order to choose the programming language associated with a file.

When you save a new file for the first time, GPS will ask you to enter the name of the file. In case you have started typing Ada code, GPS will try to guess based on the first main entity in the editor and on the current naming scheme, what should be the default name of this new file.

New View
Create a new view of the current editor. The new view shares the same contents: if you modify one of the source views, the other view is updated at the same time. This is particularly useful when you want to display two separate parts of the same file, for example a function spec and its body.

A new view can also be created by keeping the <shift> key pressed while drag-and-dropping the editor (see Moving Windows). This second method is preferred, since you can then specify directly where you want to put the new view. The default when using the menu is that the new view is put on top of the editor itself.

Open...
Open a file selection dialog where you can select a file to edit. Under Windows, this is the standard file selector. Under other platforms, this is a built-in file selector described in The File Selector.
Open From Project...
Open a dialog where you can easily and rapidly select a source file from your project.

open-from-project.jpg

The first text area allows you to type a file name. You can start the beginning of a file name, and use the <Tab> key to complete the file name. If there are several possible completions, the common prefix will be displayed, and a list of all possible completions will be displayed in the second text area.

You can then either complete the name by typing it, or continue hitting the <Tab> key to cycle through the possible completions, or click on one of the completions in the list displayed.

If you press the down arrow key, the focus will move to the list of completions, so that you can select a file from this list without using the mouse.

Once you have made your choice, click on the OK button to validate. Clicking on Cancel or hitting the <Esc> key will cancel the operation and close the dialog.

This dialog will only show each file once. If you have extended projects in your hierarchy, some files may be redefined in some extending project. In this case, only the files from the extending project are shown, and you cannot have access through this dialog to the overridden files of the extended project. Of course, you can still use the project explorer or the standard File->Open menu to open these files.

Recent
Open a sub menu containing a list of the ten most recent files opened in GPS, so that you can reopen them easily.
Save
Save the current source editor if needed.
Save As...
Same current file under a different name, using the file selector dialog. See The File Selector.
Save More
Give access to extra save capabilities.
All
Save all items, including projects, etc...
Desktop
Save the desktop to a file. The desktop includes information about files, graphs, ... and their window size and position in GPS. The desktop is saved per top level project, so that if you reload the same project you get back to the same situation you were in when you left GPS. Instead, if you load a different project another desktop will be loaded (or the default desktop).
Default Desktop
Save the current desktop as the default desktop. The next time you start GPS, if there is no saved desktop associated with the chosen project, then this desktop will be used. If you haven't saved explicitely a default desktop, GPS will use its own default desktop from prefix/share/gps/desktop.xml in its installation directory.

This default desktop is never overidden automatically by GPS.


Change Directory...
Open a directory selection dialog that lets you change the current working directory.
Messages
This sub menu gives access to functionalities related to the Messages window. See The Messages Window.
Clear
Clear the contents of the Messages window.
Save As...
Save the contents of the Messages window to a file. A file selector is displayed to choose the name and location of the file.
Load Contents...
Open a file selector to load the contents of a file in the Messages window. Source locations are identified and loaded in the Locations Tree. See The Locations Tree.

Close
Close the current window. This applies to all GPS windows, not only source editors.
Print
Print the current window contents, optionally saving it interactively if it has been modified. The Print Command specified in the preferences is used if it is defined. On Unix this command is required; on Windows it is optional.

On Windows, if no command is specified in the preferences the standard Windows print dialog box is displayed. This dialog box allows the user to specify the target printer, the properties of the printer, which pages to print (all, or a specific range of pages), the number of copies to print, and, when more than one copy is specified, whether the pages should be collated. Pressing the Cancel button on the dialog box returns to GPS without printing the window contents; otherwise the specified pages and copies are printed on the selected printer. Each page is printed with a header containing the name of the file (if the window has ever been saved). The page number is printed on the bottom of each page. See Print Command.

Exit
Exit GPS after confirmation and if needed, confirmation about saving modified windows and editors.

5.4.2 The Edit Menu

Undo
Undo previous insertion/deletion in the current editor.
Redo
Redo previous insertion/deletion in the current editor.
Cut
Cut the current selection and store it in the clipboard.
Copy
Copy the current selection to the clipboard.
Paste
Paste the contents of the clipboard to the current cursor position.
Paste Previous
GPS stores a list of all the text that was previously copied into the clipboard through the use of Copy or Cut.

By default, if you press Paste, the newest text will be copied at the current position. But if you select Paste Previous immediately after (one or more times) you can instead paste text that was copied previously in the clipboard.

For instance, if you copy through Edit->Copy the text "First", then copy the text "Second", you can then select Edit->Paste to insert "Second" at the current location. If you then select Edit->Paste Previous, "Second" will be replaced by "First".

Selecting this menu several times will replace the text previously pasted by the previous one in the list saved in the clipboard. When reaching the end of this list, GPS will started from the beginning, and insert again the last text copied into the clipboard.

The size of this list is controlled by the Clipboard Size preference.

For more information, See The Clipboard View.

Select All
Select the whole contents of the current source editor.
Insert File...
Open a file selection dialog and insert the contents of this file in the current source editor, at the current cursor location.
Create Bookmark
Creates a new Bookmark at cursor position. For more information, See Bookmarks.
Comment Lines
Comment the current selection or line based on the current programming language syntax.
Uncomment Lines
Remove the comment delimiters from the current selection or line.
Smart Completion
Complete the identifier prefix under the cursor, and list the results in a pop-up list. This command can take advantage of the cross-reference information database and offer entity completions from the entire project, along with documentation extracted from comments surrounding declarations. To take full advantage of this feature, the cross-reference information must be loaded in memory. This can be done manually using the menu Build->Load xref info in memory, or this can be done automatically on GPS startup via a preference. The first time you use this feature, GPS will ask you wether you want this enabled or not.

In order to use this feature, open any Ada file, and begin to type an identifier. It has to be an identifier declared either in the current file (and accessible from the cursor location) or in one of the packages of the project loaded. Move the cursor right after the last character of the incomplete identifier and hit the completion key (which is <ctrl+space> by default). GPS will open a popup displaying all the known identifiers beginning with the prefix you typed. You can then browse among the various proposals by clicking on the <up> and <down> keys, or using the left scrollbar. For each entity, a documentation box is filled. If the location of the entity is known, it's displayed as an hyperlink, and you can jump directly to its declaration by clicking on it.

Typing new letters will reduce the range of proposal, as long as there remain solutions. Once you've selected the expected completion, you can validate by pressing <Enter>.

GPS is also able to complete a dotted notation. For example, if you type

          with Ada.

and then hit the completion key, you will be offered all the child and nested packages of Ada. You can also write the beginning of the package, e.g.:

          with Ada.Text

will offer you Text_IO.

If you are in a code section, you will be able to complete the fields of a record, or the contents of a package, e.g.:

             type R is record
                Field1 : Integer;
                Field2 : Integer;
             end record;
          
             V : R;
          
          begin
          
             V.

Completing V. will propose Field1 and Field2.

smart-completion.jpg

Limitations:

GPS is not able to complete identifiers declared in the private part of
a package.
Completion does not work with generics
This feature is current only available for Ada

Complete Identifier
Complete the identifier prefix under the cursor. This command will cycle through all identifiers starting with the given prefix.
Complete Block
Close the current statement (if, case, loop) or unit (procedure, function, package). This action works only on an Ada buffer.
Refill
Refill text on the selection or current line according to the right margin as defined by the right margin preference. see The Preferences Dialog.
Sort Descending
Sort the selected lines in reverse alphabetical order
Sort Ascending
Sort the selected lines alphabetically. This is particularly useful when editing non source code, or for specific parts of the code, like with clauses in Ada.
Fold all blocks
Collapse all the blocks in the current file.
Unfold all blocks
Uncollapse all the blocks in the current file.
Generate Body
Generate Ada body stub for the current source editor by calling the external tool gnatstub.
Pretty Print
Pretty print the current source editor by calling the external tool gnatpp. It is possible to specify gnatpp switches in the switch editor. See The Switches Editor.
Unit Testing
This sub menu gives access to dialogs that make it easy to generate AUnit stubs. AUnit is an Ada unit testing framework.
New Test Case...
Create a new test case. See AUnit documentation for more details.
New Test Suite...
Create a new test suite. See AUnit documentation for more details.
New Test Harness...
Create a new test harness. See AUnit documentation for more details.

Aliases
Display the Aliases editor. See Defining text aliases.
Key shortcuts
Give access to the key manager dialog, to associate commands with special keys. See The Key Manager Dialog.
Preferences
Give access to the preferences dialog. See The Preferences Dialog.