Re: KDevelop 3.0 released - was Ada popularity

[okellogg@freenet.de (Oliver Kellogg)]

Martin Krischik <krischik@users.sourceforge.net> wrote in message news:<3197151.ID6hoJyZCs@linux1.krischik.com>...
> [...]
> Well I would like to help. But why use a "parser" - don't we have ASIS?
> Nothing is better at parsing Ada then the compiler itself.

Generally I would agree, but KDE is written in C++, and
introducing the need for a second language (i.e. second
compiler) is not too welcome with the KDE people
(understandably, I guess.)

> For example: I use AdaDoc and AdaBrowse to generate documentation for AdaCL. 
> 
> AdaDoc uses a parser and the AdaCL makefile currently list 30 legal spec
> files which AdaDoc can't parse and can't generate documentation for. Also
> AdaDoc has problems with local packages.

I haven't tried these tools, but for Kdevelop it is essential
that the parser be able to produce best-effort trees from
incomplete or faulty code. This is because Kdevelop has a
problem reporter which parses the code while the user is
in the editor, and gives on-the-fly error/warning messages.

> Is there much work to do?

For Kdevelop, we need to finish hooking up the AdaStoreWalker
to the CodeModel. If done right, this would involve factoring
the commonalities among the ANTLR based language supports (Java,
Ada, Pascal) into base classes from which the specific support
parts inherit.

If you're interested in helping with Umbrello, I suggest
you contact me directly.

--Oliver