Dirswitch for Emacs
This package adds fish-style, in-line directory switching much in
the same way that M-r grants in-line history searching in M-x
shell.
You cycle through directories you've visited in shell-mode by
pressing C-M-n or C-M-p. Dirswitch will automatically choose
the selected item after a short timeout interval or you can press
RET to accept the choice immediately.
Important Installation Instructions
dirswitch uses dirtrack to track the current directory and record
each directory switch you do in an internal ring that, much like
the mark or kill ring, will let you cycle through past directories.
You must use dirtrack-mode and dirtrack-mode needs to be
configured first; to do this, alter dirtrack-list with a regular
expression that matches the type of prompt you use.
By default shell-dirtrack-mode is used; dirtrack and
shell-dirtrack-mode are at odds with one another and you must
disable shell-dirtrack-mode. See the example below.
Example Dirtrack Configuration
For instance, the default Debian/Ubuntu prompt is:
username@hostname:/my/directory/here$
And a matching dirtrack regex is:
(setq dirtrack-list '("^[^:\\n]+@[^:\\n]+:\\(.+\\)[$#]" 1))
You must also disable the built-in `shell-dirtrack-mode' which monitors `cd' commands to determine your current directory. A complete and working example to put in your init.el would be:
(require 'dirswitch)
(defun enable-dirswitch ()
(dirtrack-mode 1)
(setq dirtrack-list '("^[^:\\n]+@[^:\\n]+:\\(.+\\)[$#]" 1))
(shell-dirtrack-mode -1)
(dirswitch-mode 1))
(add-hook 'shell-mode-hook 'enable-dirswitch)
Restart M-x shell and dirtracking should now work. You can then
cycle through past directories with C-M-p and C-M-n; press
RET to switch to the displayed directory or ESC or C-g to
abort.
Known Issues
This won't work right in Terminal Emacs. It's probably related to
overriding-terminal-local-map.
It also won't work in eshell. Why? Because eshell does not use
comint; that's not to say it can't be made to support it, but
currently it does not.