This blogpost is inspired by the approach found here.

One of the things that used to annoy me about programming in emacs with SLIME mode (common lisp), is that SLIME would frequently choose to open up a popup buffer in one of the windows I was trying to use for some other task. For instance, various actions in SLIME will open up a Completion Buffer, Debugger Pane or an Inspection Buffer. I eventually realized that what I really wanted was to designate a given window where all emacs popups would open by default, so my train of thought in the other windows can remain undisturbed. Below is some Emacs Lisp code that enables this functionality:

(defun berry-choose-window-for-popups ()
  "run with your cursor in the window which you want to use to open up 
   all popups from now on!"
  (interactive)
  (set-window-parameter (selected-window) 'berrydesignated t)
  (berry-setup-popup-display-handler))

(defun berry-setup-popup-display-handler ()
  "adds an entry to display-buffer-alist which allows you to designate a window 
   for emacs popups. If the buffer is currently being displayed in a given 
   window, it will continue to use that window. Otherwise, it will choose your 
   designated window which should have been already set."
  (interactive)
  (add-to-list 'display-buffer-alist
	       `(".*" .
		 ((display-buffer-reuse-window
		   berry-select-window-for-popup
		   display-buffer-in-side-window
		   )
		  .
		  ((reusable-frames     . visible)
		   (side                . bottom)
		   (window-height       . 0.50)))
		 )))

(defun berry-select-window-for-popup (buffer &optional alist)
  "Searches for the a window which the 'berrydesignated parameter set.
    Returns the first such window found. If none is found, returns nil."
  (cl-block berry-select-window-for-popup
    (let* ((winlist (window-list-1 nil nil t))
	   (outindex 0))
      (while (< outindex (length winlist))
	(let ((candidate (elt winlist outindex)))
	  (if (eql t (window-parameter candidate 'berrydesignated))
	      (progn
		(set-window-buffer candidate buffer)
		(cl-return-from berry-select-window-for-popup candidate)))
	  (cl-incf outindex)
	  ))
      nil)))

(defun berry-clear-popup-setting ()
  "clears the 'berrydesignated flag on all windows, thus removing the designation 
   of any given window to host popups. also removes the popup handler registration"
  (interactive)
  (cl-loop for window in (window-list-1 nil nil t) do
	   (set-window-parameter window 'berrydesignated nil))
  (pop display-buffer-alist)
  )

My usual window layout when programming in Emacs looks like the following (note that in emacs a window is more like a frame in most other environments):

+-----------------+
|        | second |
|        | code   |
|primary | window |
|code    |--------|
|window  | REPL & |
|        | POPUPS |
|        |        |
+-----------------+

So what I do after opening all the windows I want is I put my cursor in the "REPL & POPUPS" window and run berry-choose-window-for-popups. The content of my other windows remains undisturbed by IDE functions unless I tell the computer to change buffers in one of those windows.