GSOC 2012

[Alexandre Courbot]

> How do you know wether a file is C or C++ or has mixed code? Right, you
> cannot know that unless its something the user specifies and thats
> currently not available and hence would also need to be added.

Well for one using file extension. This does not help much for header
files I concede, and ultimately the user would have to explicitly
specify it by the project type.

> This is untrue afaik. The maintenance cost of the parser itself is
> relatively low, it works for most things and hence doesn't need a lot of
> work unless you want to add new features. The most work is in DUChain
> and thats the part you cannot replace with CLang.

The AST builder is still a huge beast and is quite difficult to
apprehend (like all complex parsers). Also less code is better than
more code, especially since one can argue CLang's parser is more
accurate than KDevelop's, no matter how good it is in the first place.

> This comes up again and again and sure if it has comparable speed to the
> current parser it would be nice to lay off the burden of the parser. But
> its a really huge task and needs someone who has in-depth knowledge
> about the parser and the DUChain already to complete it in a reasonable
> timeframe.

You're right in that getting that done during a GSOC is quite
over-optimistic. On the other hand it could be a nice starting point,
and the modularity of KDevelop would easily allow for two DUchain
builders to co-exist.

Alex.