[Geany-Devel] RFC: Merge C and C++ Filetypes (no troll)

[Jiří Techet]

On Sat, Jan 2, 2016 at 7:39 PM, Colomban Wendling <
lists.ban at herbesfolles.org> wrote:

> Le 29/12/2015 11:11, Matthew Brush a écrit :
> > Hi,
> >
> > I have been using Geany without the C filetype and opening all C files
> > as C++. I use about 50% each of C and C++, and since I merged the two
> > filetypes quite a few of headaches went away.
> >
> > Some of the benefits:
> >
> >   - C or C++ tags always work
>
> This is a bug in current code that I think Jiří fixed in his scope PR.
> But yeah, that's a fairly good point.
>
> >   - Special highlighting of C++ keywords so I know to avoid in C
> >   - All C and C++ constructs always work
>
> I can understand this being useful in headers, really less in source
> files, and as some I find this being some arbitrary C++ leaking into C
>
> >   - No ambiguity of *.h files (except w/ Obj-C)
>
> If only C++ people used some *meaningful* extensions, like .hpp or .hh…
> Anyway, yeah, maybe for headers it could have a reasonable benefit to
> warrant some weirdy things.  I sure got my share of C++ headers opened
> as C annoying me -- to the point I got a slight look at allowing
> extension patterns to include some path portion so I could force C++ for
> some known locations.
>
> BTW, IIRC currently creating a custom "C Header" filetype has some
> drawbacks, because it's not recognized as C by CTags, because we used
> the filetype's ID instead of the parser's ID to determine some logic or
> something; but again it's something that should be fixed, and again IIRC
> Jiří's scope PR takes care of this too.
>
> > Some of the drawbacks:
> >
> >   - Using C++ build commands for C doesn't make much sense
> >       (although some claim compiling plain C as C++ to be a virtue)
>
> (but they are wrong and simply try to shove some C++ down honest C
> programmer's throats, so let's ignore them :))
>
> >   - The default C++ extension wouldn't be suitable for plain C
>
> Indeed that would be a problem.  Here again having a "C Header" filetype
> highlighting C++ stuff would solve it  (once the other bugs are fixed).
>
> > Some non-issues (AFAICT):
> >   - Both filetypes already use the same Scintilla C++ lexer
> >   - For Geany's purposes the CTags C++ parser works for both C and C++
>
> I would indeed believe that CTags should mostly be fine parsing C as
> C++, but when the C code is using C++ keywords as identifiers (i.e.
> function `void template(void) {}` does't parse as C++).  Again, this
> *might* be fine for headers, but maybe less for sources.
>
> Sure, using C++ keywords as identifiers for C generally doesn't give
> much, but failing on them is not really a great idea either: some people
> do use them (heck, we used to), and disallowing them is a bit of an
> arbitrary decision from us.
>
> > It might be useful to only have one filetype for both. I'm content
> > editing my config files locally, but I just thought it worth discussing
> > to see if I'm mistaken on the perceived benefits/drawbacks.
>
> It's indeed at least interesting to consider, because at least for .h
> headers there really is some mixed stuff all over the place -- even,
> simply look in Scintilla's source tree.


+1 for having the headers parsed/lexed by the C++ parser (with sources it
may be a bit dangerous and typically the sources have the right C++
extension).

Jiri
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