Re: IDE

[Eric Ludlam]

On 10/27/2015 10:16 PM, Dmitry Gutov wrote:
> On 10/22/2015 03:58 PM, Eric Ludlam wrote:
>
> > In addition, by going through the semantic version, there are a range of
> > different formatting options to use that the user can select from.  That
> > doesn't require idle-summary-mode, but is a side effect of using
> > semantic to extract contextual information.
>
> The formatting options depend on using some rich structure like 
> Semantic tags. So it would make sense to port that only after we 
> standardize on some tag format universally across Emacs (are Semantic 
> tags optimal? I don't know).

What is optimal?  For me, it was about pulling all the datatype 
information out of the syntax, and differentiating between different tag 
classes, and having something that was Emacs friendly, and extensible to 
any language, no matter how strange.  For me, Semantic's tag structure 
is pretty good.  It has 5 slots:

* The name, as 'car' so you can use assoc and other friendly things.
* The class of the tag is next, as all languages have different kinds of 
tags.
* plist of attributes, extensible to use anything, but with some common 
attribute names defined for use via API.
* plist of properties, or bits of data needed by the tooling, which is 
arbitrary and extensible for whatever a tool might need.
* Buffer binding information - either the [start end] of the tag, or an 
overlay.

That makes the tag extensible for almost any situation, and keeps TAG 
data and OPERATIONAL data separate, saveable, and searchable.

> > It was deemed optional when Yidong merged CEDET into Emacs.  You will
> > probably need to use Emacs24 to make it work.  To try it out do this:
>
> Step 6 is broken for me.
>
> > 1) Install graphviz (it uses that for the layout engine)
> > 2) Start emacs 24
> > 3) Use CEDET from it's git repository
> > 4) M-x find-library RET cogre RET
> > 5) find cogre-element-peer in the code
> > 6) M-x cogre-uml-quick-class RET
>
> I only get a "Class:" prompt, without a default value or completions. 
> Typing "cogre-element-peer" gives me "Could not find class ...", even 
> though cogre is obviously loaded. That's in Emacs 24.5.

Did you enable semantic-mode?  The buffer would need to be parsed for 
the data to be available, and for the prompt to have completion.

> > When thinking about CEDET, it isn't about a
> > bullet list of user facing features but about how it can enable someone
> > working on said feature to have their work leveraged to a wider 
> > audience.
>
> People working on said features should be encouraged, of course. 
> Unfortunately, the two more interesting projects that I've seen 
> utilize CEDET are language-specific:
>
> - SRefactor only does anything useful for C/C++.
> - Oleh Krehel's function-args even mentions C/C++ in its summary.
>
> Perhaps, if there were more broadly applicable examples, it would lead 
> to broader adoption. Maybe we should wonder why prefer making tools 
> for CEDET that only target C and C++.
> .

This is a good point.  I always have thought about language independence 
and extensibility, but most folks are just trying to solve a problem and 
may not be interested in extending to anything else.

I've built many little tools over the years, but perhaps they are 
observed as parts of CEDET core, and not as examples.  The semantic-ia 
functions were supposed to be examples for how to use the 
infrastructure, but users have ended up using them as their interface 
and they became more complex.

Eric