VDF Tools for Eclipse
The VDF Tools for Eclipse, written by T. U. Resheim started out as a simple JavaCC grammar for FMAC/ICODE in 2003. When wanting to actually use the grammar in 2004 it soon became clear that it would not be a good idea to use this low-level language parser to provide the foundations, the parser was rewritten for VDF7 using ANTLR. At the same time a decision was made use the Eclipse platform that offered everything required.
While being a hobby project, the feature set still fast and steady so in February 2005 the first trials were done at Emma EDB AS. One year later it was ready and the 1.0 version was released. Version 1.1 was released in February 2007.
VDF Tools works more or less like any programming language IDE. It has a parser that builds an index or metadata model of the code. These data forms the foundation of a number of features such as:
- Class hierarchy browser
- VDF Navigator
- Symbol table
- Syntax colored editor
- Context sensitive content assist/intellisense
- Database view
