c++ code completion status report

[Thomas Schilling]

C++ CODE COMPLETION

Seems it's an impatiently expected feature.
So I'll give you a short survey of what issues
we're struggling with. (Until now we held our
discussion in German and outside kdevelop-devel).

The first features the C++ code completion (CC)
will support are:
- member completion
- argument hinting/completion
- type information

About 100 more features are conceivable but
the time ... ;-)

Undoubtedly we need a parser. Therefore we
had to learn BISON (at least I had to) and even
before had to find out that we had to learn about it.
It seems that work will continue faster now but
it's still a lot of work and C++ has a very complicated
grammar with many many ambiguities.

If someone want's to help he/she(?) should first
read the FLEX manual ("man flex") and the BISON
documentation ("info bison" or GNU website).

Currently the most promising approach for the
CC parser is one big parser that creates sort of a
parse tree that is evaluated by the different aspects
of the CC part.

Furthermore we need some extension to the Class
Store. It's already persistant (thank Victor Röder and
Daniel Engelschalt) but it's yet not sufficient for all
C++ features (Namespaces, Templates(!)).
If someone's interested in working on that I can give
more detailed information.

Also there's much work to do concerning the UI.
I'll give more details when CC works acceptable
(nevertheless it really is important).

So you see it's really a LOT of work to do and I have
so many more ideas whizzing around in my head but
the time ... the damn ol' time ;-)

Help and hints is always welcomed.

regards,
Thomas Schilling