Python Code Completion

Question

After using C# for long time I finally decided to switch to Python. The question I am facing for the moment has to do about auto-complete. I guess I am spoiled by C# and especially from resharper and I was expecting something similar to exist for Python.

My editor of choice is emacs and after doing some research I found autocomplete.pl, yasnippet and rope although it is not clear to me if and how they can be installed in a cygwin based system which is what I use since all the related documentation appears to be linux specific...

The version of emacs I currently use is 23.2.1 which bundles the python mode that although useful is far behind from whatever research has to offer.

My question to python users has to do about how common is autocomplete vs manual typing (using M-/ where possible) ?

I am thinking about just memorizing python build-in functions like len, append, extend etc. and revert close to a pre-autocomplete editing mode. How different such an approach is from what other pythonistas are doing?

Answer 1

I found this post

My Emacs Python environment

to be the most useful and comprehensive list of instructions and references on how to setup a decent Python development environment in Emacs regardless of OS platform. It is still a bit of work to setup but at least it covers the popular packages and components generally recommended for Python in Emacs that provide auto-completion functionality.

I loosely used this post as a guide to do the setup on my Windows machine with Emacs 23.2.1 and Python 2.6.5. Although, I also have Cygwin installed in some cases instead of running the *nix shell commands mentioned in the post, I just download the packages via a web browser, unzip them with 7zip, and copy them to my Emacs' plugin directory.

Also, to install Pymacs, Rope, and Ropemacs, I used Python's EasyInstall package manager. To use it, I downloaded and installed the setuptools package using the Windows install version. Once installed, at the command line, cd to their respective download locations and run the command

easy_install .

instead of the shell commands shown in the post.

Generally, I saved any *.el files in my ~\.emacs.d\plugins (e.g. in %USERPROFILE%\Application Data\.emacs.d\) and then updated my .emacs file to reference them as documented in the post.

Despite all this, on occasion, I've used DreamPie since it does have overall better auto-completion out of the box than my Emacs setup.