Kate C++ Helper Plugin

This plugin intended to simplify the hard life of C/C++ programmers who use Kate to write code :-)

Features

• code auto completion using clang
• flexible cleanup rules to beautify completion results
• code indexing and navigation (no need to use ctags plugin anymore)
• flexible search facility allowing to execute various queries using multiple indices
• preprocessor directives auto completion w/ automatic substitution
• #include headers auto completion
• highlight #include lines if header not found in configured locations or found in multiple times
• Edit->Copy #include to Clipboard to add #include <current-file.h> to a clipboard
• File->Open Header/Implementation a replacement for official Open Header plugin with few enhancements
• explore and navigate over included files
• monitor configured directories for header files

... and few more neat things. Hope you'll enjoy using it! ;-)

Requirements

NOTE: Actually I don't know a real minimum requirements (I'm a gentoo user and have everything fresh in my system). So I call to users and distro-makers to provide some feedback, so I can update a list below.

• C++14 compatible compiler (gcc >= 4.9)
• clang >= 3.3 or >=3.5 if you want to compile it with clang
• cmake >= 3.1
• Kate editor version >= 3.8
• KDE >= 4.8
• boost library >= 1.49 required since version 0.8.7
• xapian library >= 1.2.12 required since version 1.0

NOTE: Attention distro guys! GNU Autogen, searched by CMake script, do not needed by end users! No need to add it to package dependencies! It is used (by me) in this particular project to generate C++ files from skeletons -- i.e. it is "this package developers only dependency"!

Installation

• Clone sources into (some) working dir

• To install into your home directory you have to specify a prefix like this::

  $ cd <plugin-sources-dir>
  $ mkdir build && cd build
  $ cmake -DNO_DOXY_DOCS=ON -DBUILD_TESTING=OFF -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=~/.kde4 .. && make && make install

• To make a system-wide installation, set the prefix to /usr and become a superuser to make install

• After that, you have to enable it from Settings->Configure Kate...->Plugins, configure the include paths globally and/or per session and other options. Some details could be found at [home page]

Note: One may use kde4-config utility with option --localprefix or --prefix to get user or system-wide prefix correspondingly.

Known Bugs

• It seems recently released clang 3.2 has a bug with optional parameters: completer return only first one.
• clang 3.3 has a bug w/ pure virtual function call when accessing some completion diagnostic messages. If you see a call to clang_getSpellingLocation in a backtrace, do not report a bug to me ;-)

TODO

• Add autocompleter for #include files [done]
• Handle multiple matches [done]
• Passive popups if nothing found [done]
• Handle #include files w/ relative and quoted paths (investigate the "problem")
• Use Shift+F10 to go back in stack (?)
• Form an #include directive w/ filename currently active in a clipboard [done]
• List of currently #included files in a dialog and/or menu [done]
• OpenFile dialog for current #include line to choose (another) header
• Is it possible to use annotations iface somehow to indicate 'not-found' #include file? [done]
• Add quick open dialog -- like quick document switcher, but allows to find a file to open based on configured include paths by partial name match...
• Add view to explore a tree of #included files [done someway]
• Add option(s) to include/exclude files from completion list [exclusion list of extensions done]
• Issue a warning if /proc/sys/fs/inotify/max_user_watches is not high enough
• Use KUrl for files and dirs instead of QStrings [code review required]
• Clean std::enable_if and boost::enable_if from return value and parameters [use sanitizers]
• Use compilation database if possible. What to do w/ headers which are not in there? -- Collect various options from database and offer to autosetup "Additional clang options" from few variants...
• Auto generate doxygen documentation for functions from definition -- just skeleton w/ parameters and return type. (maybe better to implement as Python plugin for kate?)
• Enable code auto completion (configurable by checkbox)... but how to deal w/ really heavy project? Nowadays for one of my current project it took ~8sec to show completions (even with PCH) :-( So, definitely there should be possible to turn code autocompleter off [done]
• Need to introduce index database to lookup for declarations/definitions/references. It also can be used for code refactorings (like rename smth & etc.)
• Give a context hint to code completer
• Give a priority boost for code completion items depending on lexical/semantic context
• Not quite related to C++, but it would be nice to have a CMake autocompleter. It can complete variables, functions, properties, include() or find_package() files. Also it can retrieve help screen for particular module. [done in kate.git and KDE SC 4.11]
• Collect sanitizer stats (rule hits) -- it can help to understand what rules must be first in a configured list (to speedup completer + sanitizer).
• Add a bunch of default sanitizer rules
• Add import/export sanitizer rules
• Show some diagnostic from sanitizer
• Colorize and group diagnostic messages [partially done]
• Add icons to completion types [done for prefix-less layout]
• Get/show list of possible exceptions in particular function call
• Highlight interior of user specified #ifdefs (like __linux__, __WIN32__, etc) w/ a user specified color
• Try to get a location for completion item and show it as suffix in a completion list in the expandable part of completion item
• Add ptr/ref/const/etc to a type under cursor (by a hot-key). maybe better to implement as a Python plugin for kate?
• Show a real type of typedefs (as a tooltip?) In symbol details pane
• Render class layout according sizeof/align of of all bases and members
• Provide Python bindings to indexing and C++ parsing, so they can be used from kate/pate plugins
• Group #include completion items by directory
• Sort #include directives according configurable rules and type (project specific, third party libs or system)
• Upgrade plugin configuration (at least internal struct) to .kcfg -- BAD IDEA! kate plugins can not use this feature cuz application class (plugins manager to be precise) do not designed for that... xsltproc still can be used :)
• Unfortunately KCompletion can't be used to complete search query (cuz it is designed to complete only one, very first, term) -- it would be nice to have terms completer anyway...
• Index comments from source code
• Add terms for overloads
• Add terms for symbols' linkage kind
• Add value slot for offsetof(member)
• Add terms for arrays (and possible value slots)
• Add terms for variadic functions
• Add terms for function result type
• Add terms for calling conversion
• Handle attributes
• Add terms for 'noexcept'
• How to deal w/ 'redeclarations' of namespaces?
• Add terms for deprecated symbols (and platform availability)
• Find crash after some DB gets enabled after reindexing
• Use actions w/ states (see KXMLGUIClient)
• Normalize file names when add to the cache on indexing
• Split #include completions into a system and session? (controlled via config option) or even maybe it would be reasonable to have a base dirctory name as a group name.
• Add search options
• Add more indexing threads and control their count
• Add Go to declaration/definition to the context menu
• Add Go to semantic/lexical parent to context menu
• Do incremental reindexing on view change and/or inactivity timeout
• Add a way to analyze and show to a user what exceptions are possible at some particular point (function/method body/call) -- so user may add an appropriate try/catch block
• That (possibly) would be nice to have #ifdef/#else ifdef/#else blocks as inlined tabs inside a text buffer/view. So, depending on particular definitions the code (view) will activate a corresponding tab automatically (and still allows to switch to others and/or add some new branches).
• Turn #incldue lines into "links", if Ctrl key pressed
• Avoid CSS files (if found) to be indexed as C/C++ sources! (and *.cc.in as well)
• Disable "Save Current List" button on Session Include Dirs page if current list is empty (to prevent overwriting some saved list occasionally). Introduce confirmation on overwrite?
• When autocomplete preprocessor, do not add a space if it is already here. Make autocompletion configurable?
• BUG: after sanitize refref has no space after parameter
• Strip '.' from ignore extensions list. Maybe it is better to have inclusion list instead, BTW?
• Try to match filenames when "open first header" option in effect
• Index standard headers w/ a predefined collection name and use them to add missed #includes
• Add an action to generate a switch statement for enumeration type

See Also

• project home page
• sources repository