Subject: Re: bug#36678: 27.0.50; imenu not working in C++ (maybe because of namespace)

From: Alan Mackenzie <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 3 Aug 2019 11:27:34 +0000

Hello, Paul.

On Fri, Aug 02, 2019 at 15:56:59 -0400, Paul Smith wrote:
> I certainly don't want to discourage anyone from pursuing new features
> and capabilities if they want to.

> However, my personal opinion is that it's likely not the most
> productive use of time.  IMHO cc-mode should continue to focus on
> formatting (which is clearly no small task, but which it's very good
> at!) and not attempt to also get involved with indexing.

CC Mode has had imenu type indexing right from its inception.  What is
changing is the increasing complexity of function definitions, in
particular, the slow demise of the convention of function names being in
column zero.

> The future (again IMO) for indexing and code introspection is in LSP:
> there are very good LSP servers for C++ that are free ....

Free as in speech (not beer)?  (Just checking.)

> .... (I use ccls personally) and there are also very good LSP clients
> for Emacs (I use lsp-mode).  And of course there are LSP servers for
> many languages which can all be used with the same LSP client.  Since
> the servers are external ....

External to what?  External to Emacs, or external to the machine running
Emacs?  If the latter, that would restrict full Emacs functionality to
networked machines, which would be a big negative, possibly a decisive
one.

> .... (ccls is based on clang) ....

This makes it controversial, since clang isn't free software in the
copyleft sense of the term.

> .... they are very fast and can do much, MUCH more than imenu-type
> indexing.

Could you please give some idea of what you mean by "much more"?

> I honestly can't imagine working on a larger codebase without it,
> anymore.

Does the server you're using run on your own machine?  (I'm guessing
yes.)

> I don't personally use imenu but a quick search shows that there are
> integrations of imenu and lsp-mode available.

> Just my $0.02!!

Thanks!

-- 
Alan Mackenzie (Nuremberg, Germany).