Jump to linker errors in quickfix

Question

How can I make linker errors jumpable in quickfix?

Example:

int foo(void);

int main(int argc, char* argv[]) {
    foo();
}

Start up vim and run :set makeprg=gcc\ % and try :make. This produces a linker error and gives a press enter prompt. If I then check :copen the linker error is there but prefixed with || and can't be jumped to. I want to be able to jump to the file, or even the reference itself if possible, when linker errors like this occur.

Answer 1

You're asking to set up a search from the quickfix which as far as I know isn't possible via errorformat. However you could write a function to do it and then map that function to a keymap or a command or something.

E.g.

function JumpToLinkerError()
    let l:matches = matchlist(getline('.'), '^[^:]*.o:\([^:]*\):.*'
                                         \. "undefined reference to '\\([^']*\\)'")
    sbuffer l:matches[1]
    search('\<' . l:matches[2] . '\>')
endfunction

Although this makes some assumptions, such as the idea that 'test.c' is a buffer that you can switch to. Hopefully you can tweak to suit. It also doesn't handle any error conditions... Instead of sbuffer maybe sfind will work for you but that requires that you have set your path correctly and it seems likely to me that if there's a new linker error it's probably in a file you were just editing.