What to do with Descent?

[Jacob Carlborg]

On 5/5/10 21:29, Arlo White wrote:
> I just played with dmd 2.045 and Descent yesterday for the first time.
> Yes Descent is a bit buggy (couldn't get builds or context-assist
> working), but I still stuck with it because I'm familiar with Eclipse
> and none of the other D editors looked that mature either (or weren't
> available for Linux).

You can build a project (with external tools). Context-assist should work.

> As someone mentioned, it's much easier for people to learn a new
> language if they don't have to learn a new IDE at the same time. Eclipse
> is a pretty solid platform to build on and a lot of people are familiar
> with it. If D expects to be a popular programming language an Eclipse
> plugin is almost a necessity.
>
> True, not many people use Descent now, but if/when D becomes popular a
> lot of people will want a good Eclipse plugin, and you'll want to be
> ready for them, which means having Descent ready when D2 is.
>
> I'm surprised that the language updates can't be automated, but I'm not
> familiar with how Eclipse does language syntax under the hood.

For Java Eclipse uses the built in incremental java compiler as far as I 
know. For D the DMD frontend is translated into Java and somewhat 
modified, adding caches and similar, the DMD frontend is not made for 
this kind of things. Then the frontend also needs to integrated with the 
existing Eclipse APIs

> If the task is really that menial maybe it could be automatically
> divided up and farmed out to volunteers?
>
> Could you add a page to your wiki describing the problem you're having
> keeping up with the language and some examples of how a D language
> change translates to a Descent change. Also, show why it's hard to
> automate. Then post a link here and maybe some people can look at the
> problem and give you ideas on how to automate it or divide up the task.

I've answer most of this in the above answer, you can also look at: 
http://www.dsource.org/projects/descent/wiki/Development

> I would be willing help you out if you can describe what I need to do
> and where the code is. I downloaded the descent.core source, but there's
> a lot in there and I'm not even sure where the D language stuff is.
>
>
> -Arlo