dmd support for IDEs

[Walter Bright]

Ellery Newcomer wrote:
> Well, that's a better solution than reimplementing semantic analysis in
> the ide. If you make it, I will stop trying to do the latter.

That's what I wanted to hear.

> In the xml, will we see ct stuff and other transformations that DMD
> performs on the source expanded?

ct stuff? What is that? Won't see dmd operations on the source expanded. 
What you'll see is basically what ddoc generates, but in a machine 
readable format. I.e. you'll see function names, with their types, line 
number, comment, etc. Essentially what intellisense would pop up.

> [very very minor] concerns:
> 
> standardized? DMD derivatives will have it, what about hypothetical
> other D implementations?

It would be part of the dmd front end, so all D compilers based on it 
would have it.

> If your ide can't see or doesn't have compiler, it won't be able to do
> much (erm duh)

Yeah, but without a compiler why edit D source? <g>

> All in all, I think it would be the bomb. I'd even volunteer to help
> implementing it if I thought my code contributions would do less harm
> than good.

I don't think it would be hard to implement.

But if you want to contribute, how about a JSON parser for phobos? 
You'll need one anyway for your IDE.

BTW, JSON parsing comes for free with javascript. Why not incorporate 
dmdscript into your IDE as its extension language?