vimdir/documentation/developer_quide.md

Vimdir developer guide

Files

Name	Description
kvec.h	Vector library.
dictate.*	IO library.
remove_all.*	Recursive remove library.
global.h	Global variables from flags and the environment. There are only a few and it shall be kept like that.
main.c	Project core. Implements global.h.
opts.*	Flag and environment handler. Fills up global.h
error.*	Simplifies and unifies error handling. All error messages are dispatched from within here.
directive.*	Responsible for creating parsing entries.
file_utils.*	File operations. This is where directive.* delegates commands to. Responsible for respecting dry-runs.

Errors

As mentioned, error.* are responsible for all the actual reporting.

All errors which are reported are fatal.

The only errors which are not fatal are those which occur during a shutdown caused by another error.

Exception like in the sense that they continuously propagate upward. This is not an architectural nightmare only because the maximum stack frame number within the code base is very small. While the codebase has seemingly no direction to bloat to, if such thing were to happen, C++ (maybe Objective-C or some dialect) should be adapted (for true exceptions).

LS_COLORS

Using the ls_colors Make target, we can statically render the vim highlighting script. Tcl is used to generate the vim commands. Plug is used to insert it into .vim/syntax/vimdir.vim. .vim/syntax/vimdir.vim is version controlled for user convenience.

Debugging

If the $DEBUG environment variable is set to 1, a clean build will produce a debug version executable of Vimdir. Debug builds contain DRARF symbols, may output extra info and use ./vimdir_test_file.vimdir as a tmpfile.

Tests require ./vimdir_test_file.vimdir, therefor they will only succeed on debug builds.