A common flaw with things like code-d and (in my limited experience) Visual-D, these plugins are unable to resolve even simple things like:

struct S(T)
{
    T a;
}

...

S!int.init.// No autocompletion from this point.

I was wondering if functionality can be added onto the compiler (DMD at least, due to its speed) which allows for external tooling to gain accurate information about the code?

Take the above struct for example, maybe when the plugin detects the following:

S!int myS;

It could make a call to the compiler like: dmd myapp.d -reflect "myapp.S!(int)", where the compiler would return all the info it can (It's a struct, it has a member of int called a, etc.)

It's just a rough idea, but I hope you can see what I'm trying to suggest, and why I feel it's at least worth asking about.

In other words, build some much needed language service functionality into the compiler, to allow the actual language servers to provide a much higher quality experience. Naively assuming it's as simple as that :3

On Friday, 16 July 2021 at 10:02:06 UTC, SealabJaster wrote:

S!int myS;

That's absolutely possible. DMD is available as a library. You basically take the source code feed it to the engine, apply whatever compiler passes you want, and accept the results using a visitor of your choice. There are already visitors available; I'd suggest starting with SemanticTimeTransitiveVisitor because it's a transitive visitor (less boiler-plate) that should be applied after all the semantic phases has been applied.

I suggest you first get in contact with the developers of Visual-D (Rainer Schutze) code-d, DCD (D completion daemon) and others to see what's already been done. They likely have similar visions.

Good luck!

On Friday, 16 July 2021 at 14:38:07 UTC, Per Nordlöw wrote:

I wasn't quite suggesting doing it myself. While I could try I know I wouldn't be able to get anywhere, at least for quite a long time.

I was more seeking discussion on the possibility and silently hoping someone with more experience would take up the mantle >:D

So an ETA of roughly 5 years minimum then. Doesn't dmd's frontend have the issue of poorly managing its memory (issue for longer running tools), or is that mostly fixed now?

On Friday, 16 July 2021 at 22:11:37 UTC, SealabJaster wrote:

Spent a good half a day learning and testing out dmd-fe.

T_T My head hurts slightly. I feel I'm definitely not the right person to try and do this.

That's one of the issue with IDEs in D, everything works nice and great, including debugging, but when you play with generics, then nothing works (code completion)

Generics/Templates is one of D's strength, lot to gain from making sure that works too, setting up a work group to tackle it would a great investment imo

But it's hard to find people with expertise in the subject, and it is harder to motivate people to do the work, because it's not an easy job and requires allocating significant amount of free time

On Sunday, 18 July 2021 at 22:14:50 UTC, russhy wrote:

I could only wish to be even a fraction as educated and knowledgeable as a lot of the people on this forums.

Sadly though, that'd likely mean I'd no longer have the free time to do anything!
... except I don't have the expertise to really do anything either :D!

On Sunday, 18 July 2021 at 22:14:50 UTC, russhy wrote:

I think expertise might not be enough. C++ has been trying to solve this problem for decades with much more manpower thrown at it and IDEs still mostly give up when encountering templates.