bbatsov/projectile

Project Interaction Library for Emacs

Source code at GitHub https://docs.projectile.mx

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  "createdAt": "2011-07-31T19:12:31Z",
  "defaultBranch": "master",
  "description": "Project Interaction Library for Emacs",
  "fullName": "bbatsov/projectile",
  "homepage": "https://docs.projectile.mx",
  "language": "Emacs Lisp",
  "name": "projectile",
  "pushedAt": "2025-07-16T14:05:30Z",
  "stargazersCount": 4150,
  "topics": [
    "emacs",
    "emacs-lisp",
    "project-management",
    "projectile"
  ],
  "updatedAt": "2025-11-25T00:22:57Z",
  "url": "https://github.com/bbatsov/projectile"
}

Projectile

![License GPL 3][badge-license]

Synopsis

Projectile is a project interaction library for Emacs. It provides a powerful set of features operating at the project level, as well as simple heuristics to identify projects.

Here are some of essential Projectile’s features:

jump to a file in project
jump to a project buffer
jump to a test in project
toggle between files with same names but different extensions (e.g. .h <-> .c/.cpp, Gemfile <-> Gemfile.lock)
toggle between code and its test (e.g. main.service.js <-> main.service.spec.js)
jump to recently visited files in the project
switch between projects you have worked on
kill (close) all project buffers
grep (search) in project
replace in project
find references in project (using xref internally)
run shell commands in a project (e.g. make, lein)
support for multiple minibuffer completion/selection libraries (ido, ivy, helm, and the default completion system)
automatic project discovery (see projectile-project-search-path)
integration with the built-in project.el library

There’s also a rich ecosystem of third-party Projectile extensions that add even more features.

I’ve been developing Projectile for over a decade now (since 2011). While it’s a fun project to work on, it still requires a lot of time and energy to maintain.

You can support my work on Projectile via PayPal, Patreon and GitHub Sponsors.

Projectile in Action

Here’s a glimpse of Projectile in action (using ivy):

![Projectile Demo]!(doc/modules/ROOT/assets/images/projectile-demo.gif)

In this short demo you can see:

finding files in a project
switching between implementation and test
switching between projects

Quickstart

The instructions that follow are meant to get you from zero to a running Projectile setup in a minute. Visit the online documentation for (way) more details.

Installation

package.el is the built-in package manager in Emacs.

Projectile is available on all major package.el community maintained repos - NonGNU ELPA, MELPA Stable and MELPA.

You can install Projectile with the following command:

M-x package-install [RET] projectile [RET]

Alternatively, users of Debian 9 or later or Ubuntu 16.04 or later may simply apt-get install elpa-projectile.

Finally add this to your Emacs config:

(projectile-mode +1)
;; Recommended keymap prefix on macOS
(define-key projectile-mode-map (kbd "s-p") 'projectile-command-map)
;; Recommended keymap prefix on Windows/Linux
(define-key projectile-mode-map (kbd "C-c p") 'projectile-command-map)

Those keymap prefixes are just a suggestion. Feel free to put there whatever works best for you.

Basic Usage

Enable projectile-mode, open a file in one of your projects and type a command such as C-c p f.

See the online documentation for more details.

To get the most of Projectile you also need to enable (and potentially install) some minibuffer completion framework (e.g. ido, ivy or vertico). See this section of the documentation for more details.

[!CAUTION]

Historically projectile-completion-system defaulted to ido, but this was changed in version 2.3. You may need to enable ido-mode in your Emacs configuration if updating from an older version of Projectile.

Design Goals

In this section you’ll find some notes on Projectile’s design goals, that have been upheld since the earliest days of the project.

Portability

Projectile provide a nice set of features operating on a project level without introducing external dependencies (when feasible). For instance - finding project files has a portable implementation written in pure Emacs Lisp without the use of GNU find (but for performance’s sake an indexing mechanism backed by external commands exists as well).

Simplicity

This library provides easy project management and navigation. The concept of a project is pretty basic - just a folder containing some special file (e.g. a VCS marker or a project descriptor file like pom.xml or Gemfile). Projectile will auto-detect pretty much every popular project type out of the box and you can easily extend it with additional project types.

Easy to Use

The configuration defaults are pretty reasonable and most users will probably never feel a strong need to change them.

All commands are easily discoverable and are unlikely to surprise you with their behavior.

Practicality

Projectile tries to be practical - portability is great, but if some external tools could speed up some task substantially and the tools are available, Projectile will leverage them.

Flexibility

In the classic spirit of Emacs almost every aspect of Projectile’s behavior is configurable.

Caveats

Some operations like search (grep) depend (presently) on external utilities such as find or fd (version 8.3.0+).
- for older fd version add (setq projectile-generic-command "fd . -0 --type f --color=never") to your init-file
Commands depending on external utilities might misbehave on the fish shell.
Using Projectile over TRAMP might be slow in certain cases.
Some commands might misbehave on complex project setups (e.g. a git project with submodules).
Projectile was mostly tested on Unix OS-es (e.g. GNU/Linux and macOS), so some functionality might not work well on Windows.
In Git repositories, deleted files are still shown in projectile-find-file until their deletions are staged, due to a limitation of git ls-files. If you install fd then it is automatically used instead, and does not have this problem. (You can inhibit the use of fd by setting projectile-git-use-fd to nil.)

Known issues

Check out the project’s issue list a list of unresolved issues. By the way - feel free to fix any of them and send me a pull request. :-)

Contributors

Here’s a list of all the people who have contributed to the development of Projectile (a.k.a. Projectile’s Hall of Fame).

Joining this esteemed group of people is only a commit away!

Changelog

A fairly extensive changelog is available [here]!(CHANGELOG.md).

[badge-license] !: https://img.shields.io/badge/license-GPL_3-green.svg

License

Distributed under the GNU General Public License, version 3