dmd support for IDEs

[Ellery Newcomer]

Walter Bright wrote:
> 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.

I made it to the symbol table ..


> 
>> 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.
> 

ctfe. compile time (weird connection?). what do string mixins evaluate
to? can I look at their result from the ide? what do templates expand
to? what does this here alias/typedef represent? what does this here
typeof expand to? what does this here c-style type normalize to (in
d-style)?

As for other transformations, it seemed like Ary had some neat tricks in
descent that showed things like int i; going to int i = 0; etc. maybe
wistful thinking.

while we're at it,

when I see a symbol, can I find its type? can I find every symbol that
would follow it in a dot list/exp?
when I see a symbol, can I find everywhere it's used?
when I see a scope, can I see every symbol that's in it?
when I see a module, can I find everywhere it's imported?
can I see exactly what symbols are pulled in? Can I perform analysis to
show me where those dang cyclic dependencies are?
when I see source code, can I perform a simple walk over the xml to
format it?

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

How about the Intel D compiler? (It's going to happen. You know it will)

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

Weird users is the best answer I can offer. It happens.

Also, coming from the java IDEs, I'm feeling apprehensive about
integration on disparate platforms and whatnot. There's multiple ways
the compiler could not be there.

>> 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?

<g> sorry. my target is netbeans.

Although I could probably whip up something quick in ANTLR if I really
needed JSON in D.