23.19 Filesets

If you regularly edit a certain group of files, you can define them as a fileset. This lets you perform certain operations, such as visiting, query-replace, and shell commands on all the files at once. To make use of filesets, you must first add the expression (filesets-init) to your ‘.emacs’ file (see section The Init File, ‘~/.emacs’). This adds a ‘Filesets’ menu to the menu bar.

The simplest way to define a fileset is by adding files to it one at a time. To add a file to fileset name, visit the file and type M-x filesets-add-buffer RET name RET. If there is no fileset name, this creates a new one, which initially creates only the current file. The command M-x filesets-remove-buffer removes the current file from a fileset.

You can also edit the list of filesets directly, with M-x filesets-edit (or by choosing ‘Edit Filesets’ from the ‘Filesets’ menu). The editing is performed in a Customize buffer (see section Easy Customization Interface). Filesets need not be a simple list of files—you can also define filesets using regular expression matching file names. Some examples of these more complicated filesets are shown in the Customize buffer. Remember to select ‘Save for future sessions’ if you want to use the same filesets in future Emacs sessions.

You can use the command M-x filesets-open to visit all the files in a fileset, and M-x filesets-close to close them. Use M-x filesets-run-cmd to run a shell command on all the files in a fileset. These commands are also available from the ‘Filesets’ menu, where each existing fileset is represented by a submenu.