New parser branch (Was: Dumping the source DOM?)

[JeDi]

Hi,

I'm a research software developer, using kdevelop in linux as much as
I can. The last months we're developing software for windows mobile,
so I'm obligated to use visual studio for now. I use vs2005, with
VisualAssist as an addon. The realtime parsing there works great (off
course, with such a big budget). It can handle include file
completion, -> to . conversion, and relatively fast code completion
from every library in the search path.
My questions:
- Does anyone know how parsing is done in vs2005 / VisualAssist? How
much does it differ from the techniques used in the kdevelop parser?
- How far away from this quality of parsing is the kdevelop parser
you're working on? What are the major problems you still have to
tackle?

And about code refactoring: it would be a _very_ cool feature, but it
can only be used if it would _always_ be correct. If you rename a
method for example, it's of no use if you'll have to check all the
modified source files afterwards. Some sort of log, where you can see
what has been changed by the refactoring, is certainly needed I guess.
Code refactoring also is a new feature in vs2005, but only for
c-sharp. The fact that a multi-million dollar company can't develop
such a feature, says enough about the complexity of such a feature in
C++, don't you think? If kdevelop could have this and vs wouldn't,
that would certainly be great advertising :-)

Keep up the great work!

Greetz,
JeDi