Dumb Jump is an Emacs "jump to definition" package with support for 60+ programming languages that favors "just working". This means minimal -- and ideally zero -- configuration with absolutely no stored indexes (TAGS) or persistent background processes. Dumb Jump requires at least GNU Emacs 24.4 (the package uses subr-x helpers such as string-trim, string-blank-p, string-prefix-p, and string-suffix-p in dumb-jump.el).

Dumb Jump uses The Silver Searcher ag, ripgrep rg, or grep to find potential definitions of a function or variable under point. It uses a set of regular expressions based on the file extension, or major-mode, of the current buffer. The matches are run through a shared set of heuristic methods to find the best candidate to jump to. If it can't decide and you are using the legacy selector path, it will present the user with a list using completing-read, helm, or ivy via dumb-jump-selector. The xref UI is described separately later in this README.

For the currently supported languages it seems to do a good job of finding what you want. If you find a case where it does not work as expected do not hesitate to open an issue. It can be slow if it needs to use grep and/or a project is large. Although it can be sped up by installing ag or installing rg and/or creating a .dumbjump file in your project's root directory with paths that should be excluded (see configuration).

There is currently basic support for the following languages:

• Apex
• Bash
• C/C++
• C#
• Clojure
• COBOL
• CoffeeScript
• Common Lisp
• Coq
• Crystal
• Dart
• D
• Elixir
• Emacs Lisp
• Erlang
• F#
• Faust
• Fennel
• Fortran
• Go
• Groovy
• Haskell
• Jai
• Java
• JavaScript
• Julia
• Kotlin
• LaTeX
• Lua
• Matlab
• Nim
• Nix
• Objective-C
• OCaml
• Odin
• OpenSCAD
• Org mode
• Pascal
• Perl
• PHP
• Protocol Buffers
• PureScript
• Python
• R
• Racket
• Ruby
• Rust
• Sass
• Scala
• Scheme
• SML
• Solidity
• SQL
• Swift
• SystemVerilog
• Tcl
• Terraform / HCL
• TypeScript
• Vala
• VHDL
• Zig

If you have any issues with the existing languages, or you want support for another one, then please open an issue. PRs are also welcome. If you'd like to add a language these PRs for lua and rust are good examples.

The recommended way to install Dumb Jump is via package.el. It's available on MELPA: M-x package-install dumb-jump

If you're using an up-to-date Spacemacs, then you already have Dumb Jump by default just make sure you install ag or rg (see below) to ensure you have the best experience.

Dumb Jump performs best with The Silver Searcher ag (ag install instructions) or ripgrep rg (rg install instructions) installed on your system.

To enable the xref backend (new in version 0.5.4), evaluate

(add-hook 'xref-backend-functions #'dumb-jump-xref-activate)

or add it to your initialisation file. Using this, you can now use M-. (or gd when using Evil).

Xref can be customized to use completing-read to select a target. That way a completion framework of your choice (Icomplete, Helm, Ivy, ...) will be used instead of the default pop-up buffer. To do this, evaluate

(setq xref-show-definitions-function #'xref-show-definitions-completing-read)

Note that the function xref-show-definitions-completing-read requires at least Xref 1.1.0. This can either be downloaded from ELPA or is bundled with Emacs 28.1 or newer.

If you use Consult, you can set xref-show-definitions-function to consult-xref to get live preview of definition candidates while you cycle through them:

(setq xref-show-definitions-function #'consult-xref)

use-package example:

(use-package dumb-jump
  :ensure t
  :custom
  (dumb-jump-prefer-searcher 'rg)
  (xref-show-definitions-function #'consult-xref)
  :config
  (add-hook 'xref-backend-functions #'dumb-jump-xref-activate))

Dumb Jump will automatically look for a project root. If it's not finding one then either put a .dumbjump file in your project root and optionally add excluded directories to make it faster.

Project root directory denoters: .dumbjump .projectile .git .hg .fslckout .bzr _darcs .svn Makefile PkgInfo -pkg.el _FOSSIL_.

If you want to stop a directory from registering as the project root (and have Dumb Jump keep looking) add an empty .dumbjumpignore file in that directory.

-tests
-node_modules
-build
-images
+../some-lib/src
+/usr/lib/src

NOTE When adding paths outside of the project (using +) ensure you use dumb-jump-force-searcher of either 'ag or 'rg (see below). This is required because the default searcher (git-grep) won't be able to search outside of the project root. This edge case will be fixed in a future release. That is, git-grep will NOT be set as the default searcher if a .dumbjump is present with a + path outside of the repo.

• (setq dumb-jump-default-project "~/code") to change default project if one is not found (defaults to ~)
• (setq dumb-jump-quiet t) if Dumb Jump is too chatty.
• To support more languages and/or definition types customize dumb-jump-find-rules variable.
• (setq dumb-jump-git-grep-search-args "") to set additional command line arguments when using git-grep for searching (defaults to "").
• (setq dumb-jump-ag-search-args "") to set additional command line arguments when using ag for searching (defaults to "").
• (setq dumb-jump-rg-search-args "") to set additional command line arguments when using rg for searching (defaults to "--pcre2").

Two user-options are used to select the search tool:

• dumb-jump-prefer-searcher: identifies the search tool normally used, unless it is nil or the value of dumb-jump-force-searcher overrides your preference.
• dumb-jump-force-searcher: identifies how the searcher selection is overridden:
  • If you want to force a specific tool like ag or rg set dumb-jump-force-searcher to that value.
  • If you want to use the tool selected by dumb-jump-prefer-searcher except for some directories where you prefer to use git-grep, then set dumb-jump-force-searcher to a list holding the path of these directories.
  • If you want more flexibility in the overriding, then write a function that takes the project directory and return a symbol identifying the search tool to sue for that project directory, or nil to honor dumb-jump-prefer-searcher choice.

When both dumb-jump-prefer-searcher and dumb-jump-force-searcher are nil, Dumb Jump selects the first tool found from this list, in that order:

• ag,
• rg,
• gnu grep,
• grep.

These can also all be set via Emacs customization. Once dump-jump is loaded, type: M-x customize-group dumb-jump to open the customization buffer.

Here's a code example for using ag in most cases, but overriding this choice to rg in monorepos where git-grep has poor hit-rate, use git grep in some known directories like ~/src/emacs:

;; Choose a default searcher for most projects:
(setq dumb-jump-prefer-searcher 'ag)

;; Conditionally override the searcher per-project.
(defun my/dumb-jump-force-searcher (project-dir)
  "Return a dumb-jump searcher symbol for PROJECT-DIR, or nil to not override."
  (cond
   ;; Example: force ripgrep in monorepos where git-grep has poor hit-rate
   ;; (adapt the predicate to your environment).
   ((string-match-p "/work/monorepo-" project-dir) 'rg)

   ;; Example: force git-grep in a handful of projects where it’s known-good.
   ((member (file-truename project-dir)
            (mapcar #'file-truename
                    '("~/src/emacs/"
                      "~/src/small-lib/")))
    'git-grep)

   ;; Otherwise: no override; use dumb-jump-prefer-searcher selection.
   (t nil)))

(setq dumb-jump-force-searcher #'my/dumb-jump-force-searcher)

You can also force an overriding in a specific directory by setting dumb-jump-force-searcher in its .dir-locals.el file:

  ((nil . ((dumb-jump-force-searcher . rg))))

git-grep does not work correctly on macOS as of git 2.39 and later. Between versions 2.37 and 2.39, git switched to using the platform's native BSD regex library instead of GNU grep, which breaks the \b word-boundary patterns that Dumb Jump relies on. Installing GNU grep does not fix this because it is git's internal regex engine that changed, not the system grep.

Workaround: force a different searcher on macOS:

(setq dumb-jump-force-searcher 'rg)  ; or 'ag

To learn more about how Dumb Jump picks a searcher see this issue and this pull request.

If you have Hydra installed, the following is an example hydra for easily using Dumb-Jump and not needing to remember the bindings or function names:

(defhydra dumb-jump-hydra (:color blue :columns 3)
    "Dumb Jump"
    ("j" dumb-jump-go "Go")
    ("o" dumb-jump-go-other-window "Other window")
    ("e" dumb-jump-go-prefer-external "Go external")
    ("x" dumb-jump-go-prefer-external-other-window "Go external other window")
    ("i" dumb-jump-go-prompt "Prompt")
    ("l" dumb-jump-quick-look "Quick look")
    ("b" dumb-jump-back "Back"))

It can be explicitly bound or used inside another hydra (if you already use something like Avy/Ace or similar for general "jumping").

1. M-x set-variable dumb-jump-debug t
2. try to jump
3. go to buffer *Messages*

More details here. Thanks to @cweiske and @Glumanda99

Versions of dumb jump older than 0.5.4 didn't use xref, and instead had custom commands. These, while marked obsolete, can still be used:

• dumb-jump-go (former) core functionality. Attempts to jump to the definition for the thing under point. This has been replaced in the new interface with xref-find-definitions (M-.).
• dumb-jump-back jumps back to where you were when you jumped. These are chained so if you go down a rabbit hole you can get back out or where you want to be. This has been replaced with xref-pop-marker-stack (M-,), but is mostly equivalent.
• dumb-jump-quick-look like dumb-jump-go but only shows tooltip with file, line, and context it does not jump.
• dumb-jump-go-other-window exactly like dumb-jump-go but uses find-file-other-window instead of find-file
• dumb-jump-go-prefer-external like dumb-jump-go but will prefer definitions not in the current buffer
• dumb-jump-go-prefer-external-other-window expected combination of dumb-jump-go-prefer-external and dumb-jump-go-other-window
• dumb-jump-go-prompt exactly like dumb-jump-go but prompts user for function to jump to

A few user options only have an effect when used with the legacy interface. These are:

• dumb-jump-after-jump-hook (use xref-after-jump-hook instead)
• dumb-jump-before-jump-hook (use xref-after-return-hook instead)
• dumb-jump-selector
• dumb-jump-aggressive
• dumb-jump-use-visible-window
• dumb-jump-confirm-jump-to-modified-file

The minor mode dumb-jump-mode binds a few of these commands by default.

If you still use Emacs 24 or older, you won't have xref, and have to use the legacy interface instead. In that case, there will also be no "obsolete" warnings.

I wanted "jump to definition" functionality to "just work" in emacs. I use IntelliJ for Java and this functionality is basically the only thing I miss when I switch back to emacs for work in other languages. There are certainly other packages that offer this type of functionality, but they all require significantly more configuration and are often limited to a particular language. An alternative may be worth setting up if you are in a specific project or language often (see alternatives).

Feedback is very welcome via GitHub issues. I will consider supporting other languages either via issue request or PR. If submitting a PR then please add tests as well.

Opening a PR will use GitHub Actions to run all the tests against all supported Emacs versions on Linux and macOS.

There are a lot of options for running the tests locally:

requires Cask using your local emacs

cd /path/to/dumb-jump
make test

The first time you run this it will also run cask to setup your directory.

is the same as before but use the test-this target followed by one or several full or partial test names. For example, to run all tests that have 'clojure' or 'org' in their test function name do this:

cd /path/to/dumb-jump
make test-this clojure org

requires golang and Cask using your local emacs

cd /path/to/dumb-jump
make test-concurrent

only requires Docker; runs tests against the default Emacs version (29.4)

cd /path/to/dumb-jump
make test-docker

To run against a specific Emacs version:

make test-docker EMACS_VERSION=28.2

To run a subset of tests in Docker (GNU Make only):

make test-this-docker clojure org

Supported versions: 26.3 27.2 28.2 29.4 30.2

Here is a list of potential alternative packages for emacs:

• Tags supports multiple languages
• GNU Global supports multiple languages
• Tern for JavaScript
• elpy for Python
• robe for Ruby

Most of these were sourced from this emacs StackExchange answer.