bearophile wrote:
An IDE is designed to not just let you explore and understand already written code, but to modify the code too. So such data changes as the programmer writes the code. So it may be positive for the IDE to have ways to query DMD and receive a smaller, faster and more focused amount of data regarding something. Otherwise generating all the data every few moments may slow down things.
I know this won't help for syntax highlighting or working within a source file that may only be partially parsable. But for an easy way to do autocompletion and throwing up 'tooltip' documentation on library functions, etc., it should be very powerful.
Generating the data on imports should be very fast, and should not be necessary every few moments (only when those imported source files change).
Eventually a good thing is to go the route chosen by LLVM, splitting the compiler in parts, so the IDE can use some of those parts in a mode direct way. Even LDC, that's based on LLVM, follows the monolithic design of GCC and DMD, but I am certain that today a loosely coupled design similar to LLVM is better.
That's far more complex. I'm looking for ways to cover 90% of the territory with some simple, straightforward means.
