* Organizing snippets

** Loading snippets

Snippet definitions are stored in files in the filesystem. Unless you
use the simpler [[index.html@installation][bundle version]]), these are
arranged so that YASnippet can load them into /snippet tables/. The
triggering mechanisms (see [[snippet-expansion.html][Expanding
snippets]]) will look up these snippet tables and (hopefully) expand the
snippet you intended.

The non-bundle version of YASnippet, once unpacked, comes with a full
directory of snippets, which you can copy somewhere and use. You can
also create or download more directories.

Once these directories are in place reference them in the variable
=yas-root-directory= and load them with =yas-load-directory=:

The point in using =yas-root-directory= (as opposed to calling
=yas-load-directory= directly) is considering "~/emacs.d/mysnippets" for
snippet development, so you can use commands like =yas-new-snippet= and
others described in section [[snippet-development.html][Writing
Snippets]].

You can make this variable a list and store more items into it:

In this last example, the all the directories are loaded and their
snippets considered for expansion. However development still happens in
the first element, "~/emacs.d/mysnippets".

** Organizing snippets

Once you've setup =yas-root-directory= , you can store snippets inside
sub-directories of these directories.

Snippet definitions are put in plain text files. They are arranged by
sub-directories, and the snippet tables are named after these
directories.

The name corresponds to the Emacs mode where you want expansion to take
place. For example, snippets for =c-mode= are put in the =c-mode=
sub-directory.

*** The =.yas.parents= file

It's very useful to have certain modes share snippets between
themselves. To do this, choose a mode subdirectory and place a
=.yas-parents= containing a whitespace-separated list of other mode
names. When you reload those modes become parents of the original mode.

*** The =.yas-make-groups= file

[[images/menu-groups.png]]

If you place an empty plain text file =.yas-make-groups= inside one of
the mode directories, the names of these sub-directories are considered
groups of snippets and [[snippet-menu.html][The YASnippet Menu]] is
organized much more cleanly, as you can see in the image.

Another alternative way to achieve this is to place a =# group:=
directive inside the snippet definition. See
[[snippet-development.html][Writing Snippets]].

** YASnippet bundle

The most convenient way to define snippets for YASnippet is to put them
in a directory arranged by the mode and use =yas-load-directory= to load
them.

However, this might slow down the Emacs start-up speed if you have many
snippets. You can use =yas-define-snippets= to define a bunch of
snippets for a particular mode in an Emacs-lisp file.

Since this is hard to maintain, there's a better way: define your
snippets in directory and then call =M-x yas-compile-bundle= to compile
it into a bundle file when you modified your snippets.

The release bundle of YASnippet is produced by =yas-compile-bundle=. The
bundle uses =yas-define-snippets= to define snippets. This avoids the IO
and parsing overhead when loading snippets.

Further more, the generated bundle is a stand-alone file not depending
on =yasnippet.el=. The released bundles of YASnippet are all generated
this way.

See the internal documentation for these functions

-  =M-x describe-function RET yas-define-snippets RET=
-  =M-x describe-function RET yas-compile-bundle RET=.

** Customizable variables

*** =yas-root-directory=

Root directory that stores the snippets for each major mode.

If you set this from your .emacs, can also be a list of strings, for
multiple root directories. If you make this a list, the first element is
always the user-created snippets directory. Other directories are used
for bulk reloading of all snippets using =yas-reload-all=

*** =yas-ignore-filenames-as-triggers=

If non-nil, don't derive tab triggers from filenames.

This means a snippet without a =# key:= directive wont have a tab
trigger.