Re: [cdt-dev] Code Assist Questions

["Thomas Fletcher" <thomasf@xxxxxxx>]

Alex addressed some of these questions for you, I'll take a crack at a few
more.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Hoda Amer" <hamer@xxxxxxxxxx>
To: <cdt-dev@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Tuesday, July 29, 2003 3:22 PM
Subject: [cdt-dev] Code Assist Questions


> Hello all,
>
> I'm still unable to get the current code assist working for me. However,
> looking at its code I have some questions:

Do you have ctags installed and have it in included in your "path"?

> - Does the current code assist propose anything other than
> functions/function prototypes?

Yes, but not much more (macros and defines).  You can see in the processor
that there are "two stream" for the completions.  The first stream goes to
look
at the contributed function extention point to see if it can find an answer
and
the second goes to the indexer for a solution.  One of the things which
was/is
missing is the fact that given a position in a file, we don't know the
context
of what should be completed.

> - Would the completion contribution through extension points be able to
> propose anything other than global functions?

Potentially yes, but the current interface you use from the extention point
isn't set up for that support =;-)  This was designed for vendors to be able
to wholesale contribute standard documentation support (ie for a library
of functionality, or an "OS" API =;-)  As Alex pointed out, this is a
function
centric model rather than even pretending to be C++ friendly.

> - Would we need completion contribution thorough extension points even
> if we parse and follow includes?

Yes.  You can think of it as one of the ways that vendors of libraries and
third party compoents can integrate and provide support.  If you are selling
a library of functionality (ie the dinkum C library, altivec support library
etc)
then you would be willing to write stock documentation (which can be HTML,
PDF, text etc) but you may or may not be willing to continuously change the
comments in your header for a number of IDE extensions.

Parsing includes and providing prototype information is a huge step forward,
but integrating the documentation won't always be able to come from the
source.

> - Do you know of a standard way of linking documentation to code in
> C/C++ that could be used by the parser to help in text hover?

Yes, there are two relatively standard ones.  JavaDoc (despite the name) is
quite populate as well as Doxygen (which is widely used in various open
source
projects).  There are lots of others, but these two would be a great start
to
standardize on.

Thanks,
 Thomas