Including header files recursively for syntastic

Question

I'm working with a C++ project and trying to configure it to use syntastic. In my project I have a nested directory structure of header files (The actual nested structure is much worse, this is an example).

--libs    
    |---dir1
         |---foo1.h    
    |---dir2
         |---foo2.h
         |---foo3.h
         |---dir3
               |---foo4.h

I have included the lib files in my .vimrc file using:

let g:syntastic_cpp_include_dirs = [ 'libs/']

I assumed this would take all the header files recursively, but it doesn't. In the code, syntastic complains with the error 'no such file or directory found'.

When I explicitly change the variable to refer to a specific directory:

let g:syntastic_cpp_include_dirs = [ 'libs/dir2/dir3/']

it works.

My questions:

1. How do you configure syntastic so that it includes header files of a set of directories recursively?
2. How do you do this for multiple projects? Always editing the .vimrc as I switch the project I'm working on doesn't sound right. I believe there must be a better way.

EDIT:

I didn't mention that in my .vimrc, the following options are present for syntastic:

let g:syntastic_check_on_open=1
let g:syntastic_enable_signs=1
let g:syntastic_cpp_include_dirs = ['libs/dir2/dir3', 'libs/dir2 ]
let g:syntastic_cpp_check_header = 1
let g:syntastic_cpp_remove_include_errors = 1

Answer 1

You can include all the directories to be searched for header files per project in the project root directory in a file .syntastic_cpp_config . The format for doing so would the same as providing the -I directives to the compiler.

For your case it means:

• Create a file .syntastic_cpp_config under sources (assuming that's where your code is and sources is at a same depth level in the directory hierarchy as libs ).

• Put the following lines in it:

  -Ilibs/dir1

  -Ilibs/dir2

  -Ilibs/dir2/dir3

• Note the the flags are 1 per line.

• This way you don't have to have all the include directories in your .vimrc .

You can have a different file to hold this custom configuration per project, specified by the .vimrc global variable g:syntastic_cpp_config_file , eg

let g:syntastic_cpp_config_file = '.my_custom_include_file_for_syntastic'

Syntastic will check each source directory and upwards until it finds this file and then use it for producing its output.

See the Syntastic wiki page , Old link for more details.

Answer 2

I've had the same question with little luck. However, I've found that if I use the quotation mark style header includes, syntactic will appropriately check the folders and not issue warnings. For example, if you're working on foo2.cpp,

#include "dir3/foo4.h"
#include "../dir1/foo1.h"

Save bracket includes for standard libs and any libs you feel like hardcoding into vim.