Question

When I start working on a project in emacs, I use M-x cd to get into the project root directory. But every time I use C-x C-f to open a file in one of the subdirectories (like app/model/Store.rb) emacs changes current directory to that of the file. Is there a way to make emacs stay at the root?

Answer 1

How about this? It replaces the regular find-file command with your own which always starts in some “root” directory (customize the find-file-root-dir variable):

(defvar find-file-root-dir "~/"
  "Directory from which to start all find-file's")
(defun find-file-in-root ()
  "Make find-file always start at some root directory."
  (interactive)
  (let ((default-directory find-file-root-dir))
    (call-interactively 'find-file)))
(global-set-key (kbd "C-x C-f") 'find-file-in-root)