[Qt-creator] Extending Qt Creator with scripts

[Nicolas Arnaud-Cormos]

Hi all,

Qt Creator is one of my favorite IDE, unfortunatelly there's something I'm 
still missing compare to xemacs: scripting.
In my day to day work, I'm using xemacs most of the time because of existing 
scripts for this particular project. Also, we all have some specific tasks we 
do again and again in a project, and creating a new plugin each time would be 
a pain.

I would like to work on this, but before starting anything let's discuss the 
architecture a bit here (and maybe on IRC), so I would be able to push it 
upstream.

Langage
=======
I'm thinking of javascript, for 2 reasons: it's supported by Qt Script, and 
QML developpers know it.
I considered QML 5 seconds, but I don't see how a declarative langage (mainly 
for creating graphical interface) can be used here, and what we would gain.
So my primary goal is javascript using Qt Script.

Script manager
============
There's already a ScriptManager class in core, not used, with already some 
nice things. This ScriptManager is used to start the engine with all the Qt 
Creator interfaces registered.
Seems like a good decision, and I'll revive this class.

Qt Creator interfaces
=================
There's not much code right now, but it seems that the direction taken by 
ScriptManager is to do a 1:1 mapping with QtCreator.
For me, it doesn't make sense, scripting must be fast and easy. 
I would propose to create an object (or maybe more than one) for each plugin, 
with methods we want to export to javascript.

For exemple, for a cppplugin, I would like to write something like this (more 
or less, but you get the idea):
if (isCppFile())
	editor.switchDeclarationDefinition()

Script plugin
==========
The script plugin will manage the script files (directories, delete,  
create...).
Like the macro plugin, a way to execute a script using the locator, and a way 
to assign shortcuts to scripts.
So except the engine (in ScriptManager... maybe rename it to ScriptEngine) and 
the plugins interfaces, everything script related should be in this plugin.

Macro plugin
==========
That's the last target of my project: replacing the current macro plugin by 
something which create scripts.
So instead of storing key events (press 's' key, release 's' key...), I would 
store editor->write("slots") in a script. It should also fix some issues of the 
current macro plugin...


Any comments are very welcome, either here or on IRC (nikikko).

Cheers,
Nicolas

-- 
Nicolas Arnaud-Cormos | nicolas.arnaud-cormos at kdab.com | Senior Software 
Engineer
KDAB (France) S.A.S., a KDAB Group company
Tel. France +33 (0)4 90 84 08 53, Sweden (HQ) +46-563-540090
KDAB - Qt Experts - Platform-independent software solutions