Re: Emacs contributions, C and Lisp

[David Engster <deng@randomsample.de>]

Óscar Fuentes writes:
> Actually, it doesn't implement the C++ language as it was used in the
> mid 1980s, much less so the old 1998 standard. But that was already
> stated multiple times, to no avail.

It is more complicated than that; the support differs wildly between
different areas. I could go into details, but you're not going to help
out anyway, so what's the point.

> CEDET is much more than a C++ parser. Regardless the value of its C++
> parser, CEDET remains useful. CEDET can use Clang (and it already has
> some support for it, AFAIK) for the C++ analysis and then bring in the
> associated features into Emacs.

Semantic's goal is to be a framework to support different programming
languages. Improving the C++ parser often improves Semantic ability to
parse other languages as well. For instance, if you'd be so kind and
implemented storing of overloads in the Semantic database, any language
which has a similar concept will profit from that.

> You saw real examples where CEDET failed to handle basic cases,

Things that look basic can be incredibly complicated to implement, and
vice versa. For instance, in my personal branch, I taught Semantic to
parse

 std::vector<somestruct> foo;
 foo[0]. // complete 'somestruct' members

Looks simple enough, but since you are a C++ language expert, I'm sure
you know all that stuff this involves, like allocator::rebind.

You saw Semantic cannot deal with overloads, which however has almost
nothing to do with the C++ parser. It's a database problem; I already
told you that, but you chose to ignore that bit.

> Hopefully other members on this community got the idea that what you
> propose is not such a great idea.

And then what? Are *you* contributing to some of the clang-based
projects out there? Or do you simply want others to do the work for you,
and you're not happy they're "wasting" their time on CEDET?

I'm not promising anything regarding what features Semantic will be able
to support in the future. I don't have to sell anything here; this is
not work. I do this because it's fun, and because I learn a *ton* of
stuff. Don't discourage others from experiencing that.

-David