Re: Open compilation window only on errors?

[Kevin Rodgers]

Matthew Calhoun wrote:

> When I compile using M-x compile, Emacs opens a new window for the 
> compilation buffer when it's finished.


Really?  I think it displays the *compilation* buffer immediately.  You can see
that with `M-x compile RET C-a C-k sleep 10 RET'.

> This is great when there are 
> warnings or errors, but when there aren't I would like to prevent Emacs 
> from opening the new window, and instead maybe just put a message in the 
> minibuffer indicating that compilation was successful. Is there a 
> variable I can set for this, or does anyone have elisp code that does 
> something similar?

Well, you could undisplay the window when the compilation finishes by calling
delete-window or bury-buffer inside your own compilation-finish-function.  You
can access the EXIT-STATUS arg of compilation-handle-exit (which should be 0 for
a successful command), since Emacs variables have dynamic scope.

Or maybe you could do that inside
        (defadvice compile (after delete-window activate) ...)
and then (re)display the buffer within your compilation-finish-function.

--
Kevin Rodgers