5 Flymake Implementation

Syntax check is started by calling flymake-start-syntax-check-for-current-buffer. Flymake first determines whether it is able to do syntax check. It then saves a copy of the buffer in a temporary file in the buffer’s directory (or in the system temp directory, for java files), creates a syntax check command and launches a process with this command. The output is parsed using a list of error message patterns, and error information (file name, line number, type and text) is saved. After the process has finished, Flymake highlights erroneous lines in the buffer using the accumulated error information.