Open an emacs org-mode file from C++ source code and automatically create an item

Question

I'm working on a C++ project. Suppose I have the following directory structure:

project/
project/src

And I have the following files:

project/ChangeLog
project/todo.org
project/src/foo.cpp

I can work on the C++ source code in foo.cpp and then add a line into the ChangeLog file just with C-x 4 a as this page describes.

How can I achieve that same kind of functionality with org-mode on the file todo.org. I would like to keep a to do list relative to the source code. So if in foo.cpp I need to finish a function void Foo::bla() I would like an entry to be added to todo.org that mentions this function and the file it resides in much like C-x 4 a does for ChangeLog.

I would also like to be able to have the backward link from the org file to the foo.cpp file in which the to-do task is.

Answer 1

While org-mode is documented extensively, I do find the online manual to be very dense. Luckily, there are many good tutorials online, but it's sometimes hard to find the answer to a specific problem.

I suggest reading the org-mode manual section on Capture. You'll need to do a little setup and the specifics depend on what version of org-mode you have. (I recommend using 7.x. If you're stuck on 6.x, none of the capture setup I describe below will work.)

Here's a simple snippet from my emacs setup:

;;; capture mode

(setq org-default-notes-file (concat org-directory "/capture.org"))
(define-key global-map "\C-cc" 'org-capture)

(setq org-capture-templates
      '(("t" "Todo" entry (file+headline org-default-notes-file "Tasks")
     "** TODO %?\n  %i\n  %a")
        ("j" "Journal" entry (file+headline "~/journal/journal.org" "Today")
     "** %?\nEntered on %U\n  %i\n  %a")))

Now I hit C-c c when I'm in my source file. Org-mode lets me select a template ([t]odo or [j]ournal in the example above), and fills it in including a link to the line I was on when I initiated the capture.

---

Updated with info about Refiling: If you have multiple projects and want to keep separate todo lists, you should also learn about Refiling. The simplest setup is to have org-refile-targets contain a list of your todo.org files. During the capture process, you can "refile" the task directly into any of your refile targets.

(setq org-refile-targets 
  '((nil :maxlevel . 2) 
    ("~/project/todo.org" :level . 1)))

There's a nice walkthrough of capture and refiling on this page about org-mode.