Context sensitive completion - IDE

Hi,

pasting this mail by Wolfgang Bangerth concerning C++, as it addresses the needs of python-mode likewise IMHO,

Source: http://www.dealii.org/~archiver/dealii/msg06854.html

Andreas

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> apart from being more accessible for newcomers, did you find any
> functionality of KDevelop which is not yet available in Emacs?

Oh, absolutely, and that from all I know will also never be available in
emacs. [1]

There are two primary points of deviation:
- emacs more or less only considers a file at a time, whereas KDevelop
considers "projects" (that may consist of many files, thousands in our case)
as a unit
- KDevelop "understands" C++. It parses these thousands of files and stores
available classes and methods, it remembers the data types of variables, and
cross references everything.

These two things are remarkably powerful. For example:
- You can define a class member variable (say, C::x of type A) in a header
file; if you're editing member function C::foo in the implementation file and
type "x.", KDevelop remembers what "x" is and that it is of type "A" and will
offer you to complete "x." with A's member functions and variables.

- You can hover your mouse over a symbol and it offers to show you where this
symbol is declared and all the places where it is used. In the example above,
if you typed "x.some_member()" and hovered over "some_member", it will
remember that this refers to A::some_member.

- I've really come to like the "Quick open" functionality: you just throw a
(part of a) function name at it and it will open the file where the function
is defined or declared, at the correct location within the file.

I think there is little that could not in principle also be implemented in
emacs but much as I love emacs (I've used it for 19 years now and will
continue to use it for many things) let's face it: (i) emacs development moves
at a glacial pace, (ii) the tyrrany of a certain old-time maintainer of emacs
isn't helping in this regard, and (iii) it isn't a *graphical* environment,
with all the concomitant difficulties in displaying some kinds of information.
There is a reason why our students don't want to use it :-)

Cheers
  W.

[1] I believe the last version of emacs actually has an IDE-like mode though I
must admit that I haven't used it.

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Wolfgang Bangerth email: bangerth@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
                                 www: http://www.math.tamu.edu/~bangerth/

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