[cfe-dev] RFC: A proposal for a Clang-based service architecture

[Manuel Klimek]

On Tue, Jun 12, 2012 at 8:12 PM, Eli Bendersky <eliben at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Tue, Jun 12, 2012 at 12:43 PM, Chandler Carruth <chandlerc at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> > Greetings all!
> >
> > What follows is a fairly lengthy and detailed design document for a
> proposed
> > persistent Clang server (or clangd in unix-terms) to serve as
> infrastructure
> > for increasingly advanced and interactive C++ tools. It should generalize
> > and build upon libclang, and will allow us to effectively target Vim,
> Emacs,
> > and other editors. This is something we're planning to pursue in the near
> > term, so I'd appreciate any and all feedback.
> >
> > Here is a Google Docs link you can use to view and comment on the
> proposal:
> >
> https://docs.google.com/document/d/1kNv2jJK0I0JGnxJxU6w5lUOlrIBoecU4fi9d_o5e2-c/edit
> >
> > Its interim home is on github here, where you can see the history and the
> > actual rest version in all its glory:
> > https://github.com/chandlerc/llvm-designs/blob/master/ClangService.rst
> >
> > I've also attached the text for email-based comments.
>
> Great proposal, I really like the potential of such a project - it's
> exactly the kind of service that can start with one thing in mind and
> then find itself adapted for various interesting uses. That said, your
> initial proposed application is awesome and itself worth the effort -
> having real IDE-ish code completion and indexing in Vim & Emacs could
> be awesome.
>
> Some minor comments on the design document:
>
> * Goal: "Provide a restartable, long-lived background process which
> manages caching, compilation, indexes, and performs the business
> logic."
>
> What does "compilation" mean in this context? From the rest of the
> document I understand Clang is only used for its analysis features,
> not for actual code generation or full compilation.
>
> * "The crazy stretch goal for this is O(1ms) for code-completion with
> fully warm and primed caches."
>
> It really sounds overly ambitious, taking IPC and a fairly complex
> code-base into account. Why 1ms, though? Since this is user
> interaction application, isn't 1ms far, far below the human detection
> threshold?
>

Well, people argue about what is "far below the human detection threshold".
For example, I (personally, no idea how much chandler agrees) want this
service to just take my keystrokes and be able to give me contextual
information updated while I type. That would require getting close to the
1ms.

Cheers,
/Manuel


> * "The communication protocol will take the form of serialized
> messages encoded using the LLVM bitcode system"
>
> Why the LLVM bitcode system, and not a library designed for IPC, such
> as protobuf? I realize this means less external dependencies, but it
> can also be a burden on a subsystem that was designed for a different
> purpose. Not to mention that something like protobuf gives you IPC
> bindings for other languages for free (Python, Java, etc.)
>
> * s/filei system/file system/
>
> * "Likely only to support Linux and local sockets"
>
> You mean Unix domain sockets
> (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix_domain_socket) or "normal" sockets
> on localhost ?
>
> - Eli
>
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