Re[2]: What IDE features are in CEDET?

["Eric M. Ludlam" <eric@siege-engine.com>]

>>> "Lennart Borgman (gmail)" <lennart.borgman@gmail.com> seems to think that:
>Eric M. Ludlam wrote:
>> 2) Code parsing / Code structure database
>...
>>    I'd say that the Semantic core is stable, the core languages with
>>    parsers are pretty good.  The C++ parser really needs to be ported
>>    from the old (semantic version 1) parser to the new bison based
>>    parser David Ponce wrote, and the gcc-xml thing I read about
>>    recently is another neat option that could be used.
>
>There are some good parsers that need some changes to fit into the 
>framework:
>
>- nxml-mode XML parser.

I use and like nxml mode, but I'm not really sure what the integration
path here is.  If you suspect nxml-mode should use one of the
parser-generator frameworks, then I would have to disagree.  If you
suspect the existing nxml parser output could be translated into the
same style of output as Semantic's tag structures, that can work, but
I'm not entirely sure what would be done with the results since xml
is flexible enough to cause every schema to need it's own translator
into Semantic tag format.

>- Steve Yegge's javascript parser.

Steve has expressed displeasure with the CEDET infrastructure.  In
addition, the semantic parser doesn't meet his goals.  He has some
good concepts that would be worthwhile in Semantic though, such as
handling colors and indentation, and allowing incremental first-time
parsing.

Semantic has incremental parsing also, but only have a full pass has
been done.

>It think that some parser also should be rewritten to work with parts of 
>a buffer so that all the languages for building XHTML (like PHP etc) can 
>be supported. A lot of programming is done with such languages today and 
>IMO it also has a democratic value since frameworks for exchanging 
>information (Drupal, WordPress etc) are built in those languages.

There was a long thread on this topic in the cedet-devel@sf.net
mailing list.  Semantic's mode targeting is done using
"mode-local.el" which is part of CEDET, which allows simple context
switching between language features in a single buffer.

>> * Parsers for indenting / coloring
>>   I get this question alot.  Can a Semantic parser be used for
>>   indentation or coloring?  Answer: yes.  I just haven't done it.  The
>>   more interesting question is, can a single parser provide data about
>>   the code, indentation, and coloring at the same time without making
>>   it too hard to maintain? 
>
>I am not sure what the benefits with a single parser would be. Instead I 
>believe that a framework that cooperates with Semantic in some way and 
>gives it chunks with different major modes would have benefits. (I hope 
>mumamo can provide this.)

The benefit to a single parser for multiple jobs against a single
language in a single buffer is that you only need to lex it and run
through the parser once.  You are talking about multiple languages in
a single buffer which is different.  Multiple parsers is fine in that
case since each character in the buffer would only be lex'd up once.

Eric

-- 
          Eric Ludlam:                       eric@siege-engine.com
   Siege: www.siege-engine.com          Emacs: http://cedet.sourceforge.net