language_fan wrote:
Another point not mentioned here is that modern IDEs use incremental and interactive compilation model. The compiler should be run as a persistent background process and parsing should happen perhaps on the level of the current scope. Re-compiling a million line project after each key stroke simply makes no sense.
This would not require recompiling a million lines with every key stroke, unless you are editing a million line module.
Even compiling the current module once per key stroke is too slow.
As you say, it should be done as a background process.
Specifying an intermediate json/xml file format is a huge task considering the amount of language constructs, types etc. available in D.
It isn't. It's far less work than ddoc is, for example.
I'm all for good tool support but as many have already mentioned, the support would only bring marginal improvements to small scale tools like vim and emacs. Usually small scale D projects (< 10000 lines of code) are written with those tools (feel free to prove me wrong). These are not the kinds of projects large enterprises would use D for, they use scripting languages for smaller tasks. Thus the overall improvement is minimal.
I think the bang for the buck on this is large.
Spending the time on critical compiler bugs on the other hand would help everyone in the community.
That hasn't been shorted, look at the changelog!
