Creation of an Eclipse-based IDE for the D programming language

Bruno Dinis Ormonde de

Key information

Authors:

Bruno Dinis Ormonde de (Bruno Dinis Ormonde de Medeiros)

Supervisors:

António Paulo Teles de Menezes Correia Leitão (António Paulo Teles de Menezes Correia Leitão)

Published in

11/09/2007

Abstract

Modern IDEs support a set of impressive semantic features, such as code navigation, code assistance, and code refactoring, which greatly enhance the productivity of IDE users. Of these, Eclipse JDT stands out as one of the most advanced open-source IDEs available, and is one of several IDEs based on the Eclipse Platform, an extensible framework for the creation of custom IDEs. This document explores the issues and techniques concerning the creation of language IDEs with rich semantic features, based on the Eclipse Platform, while at the same time describing the development of one such IDE implementation for the D programming language. The architecture, and the various components of an IDE are examined, with particular focus given to the concepts and data structures that provide support for IDE semantic functionality. The application of these concepts to the creation of the D IDE implementation is then described, illustrating how it is possible, with the current state of the art, to use Eclipse and related projects to create a feature-rich IDE for a new language, with functionality such as an advanced code editor, code completion, rich project model, and others.