CMake Daemon for user tools

I’ve been working for quite some time on a daemon mode for CMake in order to make it easier to build advanced tooling for CMake. I made a video about this today:

The general idea is that CMake is started as a long-running process, and can then be communicated with via a JSON protocol.

So, for example, a client sends a request like

{
  "type": "code_completion_at",
  "line": 50,
  "path": "/home/stephen/dev/src/cmake-browser/CMakeLists.txt",
  "column": 7
}

and the daemon responds with

{  
   "completion":{  
      "commands":[  
         "target_compile_definitions",
         "target_compile_features",
         "target_compile_options",
         "target_include_directories",
         "target_link_libraries",
         "target_sources"
      ],
      "matcher":"target_"
   }
}

Many more features are implemented such as semantic annotation, variable introspection, contextual help etc, all without the client having to implement it themselves.

Aside from the daemon, I implemented a Qt client making use of all of the features, and a Kate plugin to use the debugging features in that editor. This is the subject of my talk at FOSDEM, which I previewed in Berlin last week.

Come to my talk there to learn more!