Re: Project detection and configuration (Was: IDE)

[Evgeniy Dushistov <dushistov@mail.ru>]

On Wed, Oct 14, 2015 at 05:58:21PM +0200, Lluís wrote:
> 
> As Eric pointed out, most of the user-facing features of an IDE depend on some
> underlying support to detect and configure projects.
> 
> Now, it is not clear what "detect and configure" really means, but it seems that
> EDE (CEDET's project management component) is not fully satisfying or simple
> enough to extend/configure at this point in time.
> 
> I've formed my own opinions on how this could be improved, but I would like to
> hear what others think before discussing how to do it. So, what is required from
> "project management"? A few things quickly come into mind:
> 
> * Repository
> ** Detect the root directory that conforms a checked-out repository
> ** Ignore repository-specific files on other components
> ** Interact with repo-management tools?
> 

"magit" detect repo root automatically, you just call "magit-status"
in buffer mapped to file/directory inside repo and it show right stuff,
may be just create "vc-status" that call "vc-dir" with relevant dir?

Anyway why do something about this, "vc-" and "magit-" good enough,
is any IDE do better stuff using information about project?

> * Project information
> ** Name, version, homepage, etc
> 

IMHO, never used this information in any IDE, except name.

> * Build system

Actually if we talk about C/C++ open source project this is a key for
all other features.

Almost all C/C++ open source project have makefile/cmake file/scons etc,
and thats all. IDE must parse them and exctract information about:

- how to compile exactly one source file (to get auto completion,
  refactoring, right syntax highlight, warning/errors during typing [like flymake] etc)
- what executable files was created (to make possible click Debug/Run,
  to run valgrind with it, excract gcov information etc)

And cedet have framework for this, it can parse makefile/cmake, plus
you can easily extend it to support new build system, writing something
like this:
(defclass my-ede-cpp-root-project (ede-cpp-root-project eieio-instance-tracker)
  (
   (custom_build_cmd :initarg :custom_build_cmd
		 :initform ""
		 :type string
		 :custom string
		 :documentation "Set this field to shell command for build your project")
   (path_to_exe :initarg :path_to_exe
		:initfrom ""
		:type string
		:custom string
		:documentation "This field hold path to your project")
   )
  "My class for ede projects"
  :method-invocation-order :depth-first
)

So it would be great to finish makefile/cmake support in EDE, plus
some easy way to get from EDE information about exact file: includes, defines, plus
flags like -std=c++11

-- 
/Evgeniy