[cfe-dev] clang indexing server for emacs?

[Douglas Gregor]

On Sep 1, 2010, at 7:17 AM, Ramneek Handa wrote:

> On Sunday 29,August,2010 01:47 AM, Ramneek Handa wrote:
>> Hey Guys,
>>     i was surprised to see a couple of days back that a piece of
>> complicated software that i work on was fully compilable by cclang. What
>> i was more enthusiastic about was that there were some tiny little
>> scripts for emacs which would present completion options using cclangs
>> --completion-at instruction. It was able to prove that cclang is ready
>> (or close to be ready) for prime time.
>> 
>> I have a question and a suggestion:
>> Question:
>> Is anyone writing a full fledged backend indexing server for emacs and
>> other editors? I see that its possible to provide a very powerful
>> indexing services to editors using cclang.
>> 
>> We could have a simple service that listens on a custom protocol
>> supporting commands like:
>> 1. Load Project:
>>     a. sets up std header locations
>>     b. sets up project specific header locations etc
>> 
>> 2. Now editing:
>>     a. Loads up the current state of the file and returns back a list of
>> classes defined and functions in each etc.
>>     b. precompiles all headers being used for responding back
>> immediately on this file in future.
>>     b. a subcommand of "Get Completion" would return completion on this
>> file using precompiled headers.
>>     d. Get classes, functions, uml associations etc etc etc..
>> 
>> 3. Close project etc.
>> 
>> I am very excited as it now gives us a chance to use emacs the way
>> eclipse and other editors have been used (with more intelligence). There
>> was a project called XRef which was usable but it doesnt have gnu
>> compatible compiler backend (or atleast discontinued a while ago and
>> cannot compile boost).
>> 
>> Now you might ask me if i have all these ideas why dont i pick it up?
>> Well, honestly i have a full time job and a part time course thats going
>> to keep me a lot busy for next 1 year and thats why i asked. I would be
>> very interested in mentoring if someone is able to take this up as a uni
>> project or something.
>> 
>> Regards,
>> Ramneek
> no replies??

I'm guessing that most readers of the list had the same reaction I did: it sounds like a great idea, but unless you're planning to work on this, or someone is already working on this, there's nothing we say. It's fairly rare in the open source world for someone to read another persons's idea and go off to implement such a major feature.

	- Doug