tldr; the fragmentation in the D community is shocking at times, and the IDEs should at least inter-operate elegantly.

While trying different IDE packages on Windows, I've slowly figured out that Mono-D is a better editing experience, and Visual-D is a better debugging experience.

It would seem logical that Visual-D and Mono-D would both be able to open the same .dproj files, but they can't. After inspecting the .dproj files generated by both, it becomes very obvious why they can't.

Mono-D generates some fairly standard looking project files, while Visual-D generates a completely custom project file.. Why? Why can't the two Windows IDE use the same, mostly standard looking project files?

If I want to use Mono-D to edit, and Visual-D to debug (which, by the way, is a pain in the ass in itself) then I have to make /2/ project files, and rename one of them (they both use the .dproj extension).

I realize at this point, that changing the format of the Visual-D project files will cause a lot of project files to simply break, which might cause a lot of backlash. But in my opinion, this needs to be done sooner than later.

Side note: The syntax highlighting options in Visual-D are almost comical. Why should I have to tell it which types to highlight? Shouldn't this be automatically deduced by a semantic parser?

Side note 2: Why does the "add folder" menu in Visual-D add a filter? As near as I can tell, filters do absolutely nothing, aside from confusing the user. Mono-D just adds a folder to the file system, as you'd expect. Since D's file scanning functionality is based on paths, doesn't it make sense that the "add folder" menu should actually add a folder?

On Friday, 2 October 2015 at 21:12:26 UTC, beannaich wrote:
> tldr; the fragmentation in the D community is shocking at times, and the IDEs should at least inter-operate elegantly.
>
> [...]

Go for the dub package format as a common denominator: http://code.dlang.org/package-format

dub as a tool can generate visual-d projects (sln etc.) and mono-d can already natively load dub files (the json version of the format at least)

--Stephan

On 02.10.2015 23:12, beannaich wrote:
> Mono-D generates some fairly standard looking project files, while
> Visual-D generates a completely custom project file.. Why? Why can't the
> two Windows IDE use the same, mostly standard looking project files?

Mono-D seems to be using msbuild-project files, while Visual D predates VS2010 which introduced these for C++. You might have been familiar with these before that time if you were using C#, but not me.

>
> If I want to use Mono-D to edit, and Visual-D to debug (which, by the
> way, is a pain in the ass in itself) then I have to make /2/ project
> files, and rename one of them (they both use the .dproj extension).

The project files for Visual D have extension .visualdproj, so they are different.

> I realize at this point, that changing the format of the Visual-D
> project files will cause a lot of project files to simply break, which
> might cause a lot of backlash. But in my opinion, this needs to be done
> sooner than later.
>
> Side note: The syntax highlighting options in Visual-D are almost
> comical. Why should I have to tell it which types to highlight?
> Shouldn't this be automatically deduced by a semantic parser?

Getting any semantic analysis correct for D is not a small task. Mono-D and Visual-D share the same semantic analyzer, though, so VD could get the same highlighting, but that never got high priority. I notice identifier highlighting when coding C++, but it always seems pretty random to me...

>
> Side note 2: Why does the "add folder" menu in Visual-D add a filter? As
> near as I can tell, filters do absolutely nothing, aside from confusing
> the user. Mono-D just adds a folder to the file system, as you'd expect.
> Since D's file scanning functionality is based on paths, doesn't it make
> sense that the "add folder" menu should actually add a folder?

There will be two new-item commands available "Add Filter" (that's for the current functionality which is also what happens with C++ projects) and "Add Package" (that's what you and C# people expect) in the next release, but it was not as easy as you might expect because there is no official information how to change entries in that specific sub-menu.

On Sunday, 4 October 2015 at 07:34:54 UTC, extrawurst wrote:
>
> Go for the dub package format as a common denominator: http://code.dlang.org/package-format
>
> dub as a tool can generate visual-d projects (sln etc.) and mono-d can already natively load dub files (the json version of the format at least)
>

Thanks for the heads-up! Up until now, I've used dub to create and build projects. I didn't know that it also acted as a sort of "CMake" for D. I also actively refuse to use the SDL dub files, so JSON is perfect for me. :P

On Sunday, 4 October 2015 at 17:41:02 UTC, Rainer Schuetze wrote:
>
> Mono-D seems to be using msbuild-project files, while Visual D predates VS2010 which introduced these for C++. You might have been familiar with these before that time if you were using C#, but not me.
>

Microsoft is moving to a more unified project system soon (One more breaking release before stability is claimed): http://blogs.msdn.com/b/visualstudio/archive/2015/06/02/introducing-the-project-system-extensibility-sdk-preview.aspx

Perhaps it would be easier to make a D project system once this is stable?

Also, most people who use visual studio are using it for .NET languages and web development. Having project files that look similar to the project files for those project types definitely wouldn't hurt your extension. It also would help for those rare times when you have to do some manual project file surgery.

>
> The project files for Visual D have extension .visualdproj, so they are different.
>

I could have sworn I was using Mono-D and the person I work with was using Visual-D and couldn't open the solution files I created in monodevelop. Could be that the solution file was referencing the *.dproj and Visual-D couldn't open that. I'm sorry for jumping the gun on this one.

However, if that's the case, then *.dproj support should be added for Visual-D, and *.visualdproj support should be added to Mono-D (Or one format should be agreed upon). The fact that there isn't a common project format really locks you in to one editor or another, and that's never good for open source projects.

I could maintain 2 project files, but adding/removing files then becomes really annoying, and raises the chances that one is out of date and/or broken.

>
> Getting any semantic analysis correct for D is not a small task. Mono-D and Visual-D share the same semantic analyzer, though, so VD could get the same highlighting, but that never got high priority. I notice identifier highlighting when coding C++, but it always seems pretty random to me...
>

C++ semantic parsing/highlighting has gotten much better with each new version of Visual Studio, and highlighting overall is definitely part of the VS experience. I would think it would be pretty easy to add support for, since there's already a way to match tokens with type names and colorize them. It seems all you'd have to do is point Visual-D at a different location for the "type name bucket".

If I knew more about how Visual-D parses the source files then I'd clone the code and try to add this myself. I might just do this anyway, since the only real way to learn a code base is to play around with it.

>
> There will be two new-item commands available "Add Filter" (that's for the current functionality which is also what happens with C++ projects) and "Add Package" (that's what you and C# people expect) in the next release, but it was not as easy as you might expect because there is no official information how to change entries in that specific sub-menu.
>

Having made VS extensions in the past, I totally understand the lack of documentation.

I really think the menu should be called "Add Folder" because under the hood, that should be all it's doing. How do filters and folders exist side-by-side in the solution explorer? Do filters have a different icon? I could see that being very confusing, especially if you're loading up someone else's project.

I know the way C++ projects handle this discrepancy, and that isn't very pretty either.


PS: I don't want to come off like I'm ragging on Visual-D, it's a great (and very necessary) extension. Just the fact that it and Mono-D don't play well together is very unfortunate, but it's something that can be fixed.