cnd integration proposal: cnd-small

As stated in 4th and 5th donations the "cnd" cluster as donated presents some issues that have to be resolved. This page presents a proposal to recover some of the functionality of the "cnd" cluster.

cpplite

Work has progressed in the Apache NetBeans C/C++ front via the "cpplite" cluster, which provides integration with different C/C++ Language Server Protocol servers (LSP), including https://clangd.llvm.org/

These C/C++ LSP servers provide syntax highlighting, code completion, go-to definitions and more (see https://clangd.llvm.org/features for a detailed list of features), and are maintained by third parties.

The "cpplite" cluster offers a basic NetBeans project structure, that requires manual creation of the so-called "compilation database" https://clang.llvm.org/docs/JSONCompilationDatabase.html so that the LSP servers can work properly.

cnd-small - Objectives

The objectives of the proposal are:

• to recover some of the functionalities of the cnd cluster (see below)
• to integrate these with cpplite and C/C++ LSP servers (see below)

Proposed plan

The proposed plan is as follows:

cnd-small/1 - Recover some of the funcionalities of the cnd cluster in a new  "cnd-small" branch

The proposed list of functionalities to recover is:

• Makefile based project infrastructure https://netbeans.apache.org/kb/docs/cnd/quickstart.html. including C/C++ Shell Script and Makefile with syntax highlighting (cnd/cnd.script). This will allow opening projects created with NetBeans <= 8.2.
• Platform specific toolchains https://netbeans.apache.org/kb/docs/cnd/toolchain.html.
• Remote capabilities https://netbeans.apache.org/kb/docs/cnd/remotedev-tutorial.html.

The idea is to move all the modules in cnd to the contrib directory, but the ones listed in the following build-time-only Dependency Structure Matrix:

(see attached cnd-small-cluster.xlsx for details)

The editor can also be included in the list by removing the dependency with jclank (used only formatting, which will be provided by the LSP servers instead) the resulting DSM would then be (after modifying "cnd.editor") like so:

NOTE: The DSMs above represent build-time module dependencies (not test dependencies nor runtime dependencies).

cnd-small/2 - Import latest enhancements from master

Once these functionalities are in place the proposal is to merge master into "cnd-small", to integrate with the latest enhancements.

The objective is to pass the "ant commit-validation" checks, to make sure the cnd branch is ready to be merged in master.

cnd-small/3 - Integrate cnd-small with cpplite

Once "cnd-small" in in place and merged with master, the plan is to enhance the NetBeans Makefile-based projects so that a compilation database can be generated automatically (using the cnd/cnd.api.project and/or cnd.makeproject).

Once the compilation database is generated automatically, it would be easier for users to benefit from code-completion and other features.

NOTE: Cpplite "lsp" support does not currently register the LSP servers in the Options Dialog as "ide/lsp.client" does. We could explore the possibility to use "clangd", "ccls" (as cpplite does) or even Apple's sourcekit-lsp: https://github.com/apple/sourcekit-lsp and register them in the Options Dialog of "ide/lsp.client".

cnd-small/4 - Release and future enhancements

At this stage this small subset of the "cnd" cluster could hopefully be rolled-out to users.

After that there are some possible future enhancements:

• See if we want to recover any module from the "cnd" donation.
• Add more tools to the existing Toolchains (including Microsoft Visual Studio 2022, with a free-to-use Community Edition?)