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Architecture#

High-level architecture description.

Modules#

architecture

  • treesitter: Tree-sitter C++ wrapper
    • Wraps C interface into C++ classes
    • Improved memory-safety by use of smart pointers
    • High-Level user access through QueryMatch implemented in core
  • lsp: LSP client library
    • Complete LSP protocole definition
    • Client class to handle some of the messages
    • Use clangd for C/C++
  • rccore: rc files parser and converter
    • Conversion to ui files
    • ⚠️ Not everything is parsed
  • rcui: widgets for viewing a rcfile
  • core: script engine and all script objects
    • The engine is based on QML
    • Manage project and documents
  • gui: ui on top of the core
    • IDE-like
    • All dialogs available from command line
  • knut: the application itself, just a main.cpp file

Details#

Startup#

KnutCore is the central object in the application (module core), and is created in the main.cpp:

  • create the application singletons: Project, Settings and ScriptManager
  • read parameters from the command line

KnutMain is a subclass (module gui) that adds the gui specific parameters.

Project#

The Project class is the root of everything, as it's the class used to create all documents. Then each document has a specific API to work with the type of document (for example, a CppDocument has a switchDeclarationDefinition() method).

project classes

All objects exported must be declared inside the ScriptRunner class constructor. This class, as the name suggest, is used to run the scripts. Also make sure to add the object properties at the end of the constructor, for example: 

addProperties<CppDocument>(m_properties);
This will store all property's names for this object, and is used when recording a script from the ui, to make a difference between a property call and a method call.

Tree-sitter#

Tree-sitter is used by knut to parse code and extract many higher-level structures (currently only C++).

In the Knut GUI, use the C++>Tree-sitter Inspector widget to explore the current Tree-sitter state.

Note

Tree-sitter capabilities are implemented on the CodeDocument class. Most code-specific scripting functions implemented by Knut are based on Tree-sitter and we expect Tree-sitter bindings to be available for almost any language.

LSP server#

Warning

For now, knut has only been tested with clangd LSP server, and require at least version 13.0.

When using a LSP server, different log files are created (next to the knut executable):

  • extension_messages.log: contains all the different json messages exchanged between the client and the server
  • extension_server.log: all the logs coming from the server

extension being the extension used for the language, typically cpp for C++ files.

The first one can be loaded directly in this online lsp-viewer.