Make and Integrated Environments


From within emacs, you can control make
"M-x compile" runs an external command ("make -k" by default)
"C-x `" (next-error) parses the command's output
Grep can be called similarly ("M-x grep")

The same mechanism is used by all other IDEs
They call an external process and capture its stdout/stderr
They run a regexp con captured strings, to find errors
They know of success/failure from the process' return value

Every program should report errors in the same way, for interoperability
A good simple way is: <prgname>: <inputfile>: <line>: <error>