Recently I was poking around seeing what it would take to create a D plugin for IntelliJ, and took a look at DDT as a staring point. Referencing:

http://code.google.com/a/eclipselabs.org/p/ddt/wiki/DevelopmentGuide

There is a relation between the DDT project and the Descent compiler that isn't clear to me - on the one hand, they are separate, with separate repositories, but on the other descent.compiler contains references to DDT in the build...

Is the descent compiler now considered a sub-project of DDT, owned and maintained by the same folks, or is it 'legacy', or what?  What is the future path for the descent.compiler vs. DDT?

As mentioned, my interest is in re-using parts for a separate IDE plugin (having used Eclipse for years, I am heavily biased towards IntelliJ).  From a first glance it looks like the descent.compiler only has some _very_ minimal dependencies on Eclipse/OSGI, and could easily be a reusable lexer/parser library for any java code what needs it.  It looks like there hasn't been any changes to descent.compiler in quite some time (latest was an addition of ddt referencing pom.xml) - is Descent still considered an active project on its own, or is it being fully consumed by DDT, or somewhere in the middle?

Thanks,
Jeremy

On 2013-01-05 02:37, Jeremy Powers wrote:
> Recently I was poking around seeing what it would take to create a D
> plugin for IntelliJ, and took a look at DDT as a staring point.
> Referencing:
>
> http://code.google.com/a/eclipselabs.org/p/ddt/wiki/DevelopmentGuide
>
> There is a relation between the DDT project and the Descent compiler
> that isn't clear to me - on the one hand, they are separate, with
> separate repositories, but on the other descent.compiler contains
> references to DDT in the build...
>
> Is the descent compiler now considered a sub-project of DDT, owned and
> maintained by the same folks, or is it 'legacy', or what?  What is the
> future path for the descent.compiler vs. DDT?
>
> As mentioned, my interest is in re-using parts for a separate IDE
> plugin (having used Eclipse for years, I am heavily biased towards
> IntelliJ).  From a first glance it looks like the descent.compiler
> only has some _very_ minimal dependencies on Eclipse/OSGI, and could
> easily be a reusable lexer/parser library for any java code what needs
> it.  It looks like there hasn't been any changes to descent.compiler
> in quite some time (latest was an addition of ddt referencing pom.xml)
> - is Descent still considered an active project on its own, or is it
> being fully consumed by DDT, or somewhere in the middle?

I'm not sure but I think that DDT uses some parts of Descent. Descent is considered dead. Don't really know about DDT.

-- 
/Jacob Carlborg

On Saturday, 5 January 2013 at 03:37:06 UTC, Jeremy Powers wrote:
> Recently I was poking around seeing what it would take to create a D
> plugin for IntelliJ, and took a look at DDT as a staring point.
> Referencing:
>
> http://code.google.com/a/eclipselabs.org/p/ddt/wiki/DevelopmentGuide
>
> There is a relation between the DDT project and the Descent compiler
> that isn't clear to me - on the one hand, they are separate, with
> separate repositories, but on the other descent.compiler contains
> references to DDT in the build...
>
> Is the descent compiler now considered a sub-project of DDT, owned and
> maintained by the same folks, or is it 'legacy', or what?  What is the
> future path for the descent.compiler vs. DDT?
>
> As mentioned, my interest is in re-using parts for a separate IDE
> plugin (having used Eclipse for years, I am heavily biased towards
> IntelliJ).  From a first glance it looks like the descent.compiler
> only has some _very_ minimal dependencies on Eclipse/OSGI, and could
> easily be a reusable lexer/parser library for any java code what needs
> it.  It looks like there hasn't been any changes to descent.compiler
> in quite some time (latest was an addition of ddt referencing pom.xml)
> - is Descent still considered an active project on its own, or is it
> being fully consumed by DDT, or somewhere in the middle?
>
> Thanks,
> Jeremy

The author of Descent decided to push the project no further, because considered it to be in a very unmaintanable and hardly to extend state. The internal architecture was considered inappropriate for further project growth. The DDT is the only resurrection of the original idea, that is being developed/maintained at the moment, as far as i know. Thou, DDT does not support features like Descent did - especially regarding debugging support.

So if you want to inspire yourself, feel free to dig up and use any (merged) portion of code from either project. I keep my fingers crossed for you.

On 05/01/2013 01:37, Jeremy Powers wrote:
> Recently I was poking around seeing what it would take to create a D
> plugin for IntelliJ, and took a look at DDT as a staring point.
> Referencing:
>
> http://code.google.com/a/eclipselabs.org/p/ddt/wiki/DevelopmentGuide
>
> There is a relation between the DDT project and the Descent compiler
> that isn't clear to me - on the one hand, they are separate, with
> separate repositories, but on the other descent.compiler contains
> references to DDT in the build...
>
> Is the descent compiler now considered a sub-project of DDT, owned and
> maintained by the same folks, or is it 'legacy', or what?  What is the
> future path for the descent.compiler vs. DDT?
>
> As mentioned, my interest is in re-using parts for a separate IDE
> plugin (having used Eclipse for years, I am heavily biased towards
> IntelliJ).  From a first glance it looks like the descent.compiler
> only has some _very_ minimal dependencies on Eclipse/OSGI, and could
> easily be a reusable lexer/parser library for any java code what needs
> it.  It looks like there hasn't been any changes to descent.compiler
> in quite some time (latest was an addition of ddt referencing pom.xml)
> - is Descent still considered an active project on its own, or is it
> being fully consumed by DDT, or somewhere in the middle?
>
> Thanks,
> Jeremy
>

Hi Jeremy. Descent is pretty much dead, and even the subcomponent descent.compiler is no longer mantained, even though it's used by DDT. Current plans for DDT is to develop a new parser (work is under way), and drop usage of descent.compiler altoghether.

The new parser will be part of the org.dsource.ddt.dtool bundle/plug-in, which also contains most of the semantic functionality of DDT (code complete, etc.), and has no dependencies on Eclipse - it is designed to be reusable by other Java IDEs or programs.

-- 
Bruno Medeiros - Software Engineer