port:libclang

[René J.V. Bertin]

Hi,

I currently have the v3.7 llvm and clang ports installed, almost exclusively because I'm doing some work on the KDevelop5 IDE (and a port for it). In v5, KDevelop dropped its own C/C++ parser and now uses a Clang-based parser.
If it weren't for KDevelop5 I probably wouldn't install another Clang version, or keep it deactivated outside of the rare cases when I want to test something in a newer clang version. (Converted to .txz images, llvm+clang 3.7 takes about 10x less space deactivated, and that's ignoring the potential file/block size overhead).

That parser only uses libclang (and thus libLLVM), and the install footprint of required LLVM/Clang stuff can apparently be reduced to about 50Mb (on Linux or MS Windows) which is a far cry from the almost 3.5 Gb a full, uncompressed LLVM+Clang 3.7 install takes.

I'm trying to figure out exactly what is needed to build the KDevelop components depending on libclang, and also if it's really impossible to build against Xcode's libclang (any thoughts on that would be appreciated).

I have no idea how many (potential) ports (could) use and benefit from a port:libclang-x.y but would it be possible to create such (sub)ports? I suppose it'd best to provide libclang as a subport and not as a dependency for the main port unless libclang (and libllvm) is (are) actually provided as separate entities.

Do you think there's any justification for this kind of effort?

Thanks,
R.