From: Jeff King <peff@peff.net>
Date: Wed, 02 Sep 2020 08:04:32 GMT
Subject: Re: [PATCH] Makefile: add support for generating JSON compilation database
Message-ID: <20200902080432.GB855335@coredump.intra.peff.net>
In-Reply-To: <20200902013351.GD241078@camp.crustytoothpaste.net>

On Wed, Sep 02, 2020 at 01:33:51AM +0000, brian m. carlson wrote:

> Traditionally, editors had to learn about every language if they wanted
> to add special functionality like refactoring (e.g., renaming "struct
> foo" to "struct bar"), finding all the instances of a type, finding
> where a type or function was declared, or similar IDE features.  When
> Microsoft developed Visual Studio Code, they decided that they did not
> want to implement this functionality for every language under the sun,
> and instead developed the Language Server Protocol[0].
> [...]

Thanks for the explanation. I understand what LSP does, but the missing
link for me was how "here are the command-line flags to the compiler"
turned into something useful like "here's a list of identifiers". And
clangd fills in that gap (presumably re-running the front-end bits of
clang on the fly to pull out that kind of information).

-Peff