5.3 Locating a master file

Master file is located in two steps.

First, a list of possible master files is built. A simple name matching is used to find the files. For a C++ header file.h, Flymake searches for all .cpp files in the directories whose relative paths are stored in a customizable variable flymake-master-file-dirs, which usually contains something like ("." "./src"). No more than flymake-master-file-count-limit entries is added to the master file list. The list is then sorted to move files with names file.cpp to the top.

Next, each master file in a list is checked to contain the appropriate include directives. No more than flymake-check-file-limit of each file are parsed.

For file.h, the include directives to look for are #include "file.h", #include "../file.h", etc. Each include is checked against a list of include directories (see Getting the include directories) to be sure it points to the correct file.h.

First matching master file found stops the search. The master file is then patched and saved to disk. In case no master file is found, syntax check is aborted, and corresponding status (!) is reported in the mode line.