Nameframe provides utility functions to manage frames by their names.

It’s primary goal is to be used with project.el (or Projectile) and/or perspective.el. When opening a project, it will either switch to an existing frame of the project, or create a new frame for the project.

Nameframe is now available on MELPA. The project.el and perspective.el integrations are distributed separately (and thus will need to be installed separately).

• M-x package-install RET nameframe RET
• M-x package-install RET nameframe-project RET
• M-x package-install RET nameframe-perspective RET

Copy nameframe.el into your Emacs load path.

Optionally, copy nameframe-project.el and nameframe-perspective.el into your load path as well. See Usage section below for details.

Nameframe provides project.el integration to open projects in their own frames. To enable project.el integration, add the following line to your init file:

(nameframe-project-mode t)

With project.el integration enabled, an advice is added to create/switch to a project’s frame when switching projects with project-switch-project.

Nameframe provides Projectile integration to open projects in their own frames. To enable Projectile integration, add the following line to your init file:

(nameframe-projectile-mode t)

With Projectile integration enabled, a hook is added to create/switch to a project’s frame when switching projects.

Nameframe also provides perspective.el integration, so each frame has its own perspective (and thus have its own list of buffers).

To enable perspective integration, add the following line to your init file:

(nameframe-perspective-mode t)

With perspective integration enabled, calling nameframe-create-frame will now create a perspective.

Although the project.el and perspective.el integrations are optional, nameframe really shines when used in conjunction with both packages. Here is a snippet on how to use nameframe to its full potential:

;; Assuming project.el and perspective.el are already installed

(persp-mode)

(nameframe-project-mode t)
(nameframe-perspective-mode t)

;; If your OS can't switch between applications windows by default *cough* OS X *cough*
;; you can have a shortcut to switch between existing frames by name
(global-set-key (kbd "M-P") 'nameframe-switch-frame)

With this setup, switching to a project will open it in its own dedicated frame with isolated buffers.

• Only (thoroughly) tested on GUI Emacs 24.5 on OS X
  • but seems to work fine on terminal Emacs
• Does not work with Helm (I personally don’t use Helm. Pull-requests welcome.)

See LICENSE.txt.