Descent 0.5.3 released

[Jacob Carlborg]

Ary Borenszweig wrote:
> The Descent plugin for Eclipse provides an IDE for writing, launching 
> and debugging code in D.
> 
> Explanations on how to get it from within Eclipse are here:
> 
> http://www.dsource.org/projects/descent
> 
> (There's no need to do the nightly-build manual stuff for this. If you 
> previously had a nightly-build, you must need to remove it before 
> updating. Anyway, the current nightly-build reflects this release, so 
> you can just do it manually if it turns out easier for you.)
> 
> This release is just an accumulation of small features and bug fixes 
> since the last (official, not nightly-build) version. But since I don't 
> want everyone to think "Aww, nothing new, just a new number", this 
> release also includes support for array "extension methods" in 
> autocompletion. For this to work, the function that you want to use as 
> an extension must be in the current module, or already imported (so for 
> example you won't get methods from std.algorithm, tango.core.Array or 
> tango.text.Util until you have an import for them in the module you are 
> currently typing in).
> 
> Here's a video that shows this functionality: 
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FBj0wu9dbnA
> 
> And a question: what would you like to see next in Descent?
> 
> Any suggestion, critic or bug report is welcome. You can use:
> - the forums: http://www.dsource.org/forums/viewforum.php?f=107
> - trac: http://www.dsource.org/projects/descent/report?action=new
> - irc: at freenode, #d.descent
> 
> Enjoy!

First I have to say that you're doing a great job with descent. Here are 
a few suggestions:

Remove "." as insertion of autocompletion. Yes I know that it's like 
that in JDT, BUT Java doesn't have slicing ".." and variadic functions "..."


Add an option, when enabled, if you're in a slice [|] and pressing "." 
don't show the autocompletion list (| is cursor). Ctrl+Space is still 
available.


"Go to definition" using Ctrl+click doesn't work in Eclipse 3.4 and 
newer, ticket #106


Add "Libraries" for project properties, including "User Library". See 
JDT, right click on project -> Properties -> Java Build Path -> 
Libraries -> Add Library ... -> User Library. This is a must after 
removing "Installed Compilers" in one of the latest nightly builds.


If not too much work, getting Descent to parse command line output from 
dmd/gdc/ldc and jump to errors in the source file.


Not so important, creation of dsss.conf file in project


It would be really great if the semantic analyzer could get better 
performance, it works great in files with around 200-300 lines of code. 
If the files are larger than that it can get really slow.


For some reason, I haven't found out yet, many features like "go to 
definition", highlighting class fields in blue, highlight same 
occurrences of variable and so on stops working in larger files, it's 
probably something specific in the code that makes it not working. For 
example in this file, 
http://www.dsource.org/projects/dwt-mac/browser/dwt/widgets/Display.d , 
everything works as it should until line 766, after that line none of 
the above mentioned features work.




The semantic analyzer highlights this piece of code as an error:

System.arraycopy (contexts, 0, newContexts, 0, contexts.length);

Error message: Function expected before (), not 'arraycopy'
File: http://www.dsource.org/projects/dwt-mac/browser/dwt/widgets/Display.d
Line: 397
Included from file: 
http://www.dsource.org/projects/dwt-mac/browser/dwt/dwthelper/System.d
Line: 126



Pleas let me know if I should make a ticket for any of these 
suggestions, problems