Re: language server protocol for Kawa

[Per Bothner <per@bothner.com>]

On 01/14/2018 12:07 PM, Helmut Eller wrote:
> - It seems to me that an LSP server would like to have something like a
> "project" file that lists the interesting source files, libraries etc.
> I suppose plain Makefiles will not work so well for that; maybe Ant
> files would work better.  Or maybe Kawa should have something like
> Rust's Cargo.  My guess is that this will be an important design
> decision.

Definitely things to ponder and research, which I have barely started on.

I would like to have good defaults, so at least basic syntax checking
(and syntax coloring) works even without a project file.  That is one
of the things I like about Emacs - you can edit a file without having
create a project containing the file.

I'd also like the server to be able to use import, module-name,
require, and define-library forms to find definitions.

However, in general one will want some kind of project file - for
example for compiler options or adding jar files to a classpath.
This is something I will need to study other servers for.

Scanning a Makefile for project properties doesn't seem like
it would be difficult - at least string-valued properties.
The Makefiles would have to follow certain conventions, just
like automake source files already do.
-- 
	--Per Bothner
per@bothner.com   http://per.bothner.com/