The State of Completion

ENSIME uses two completion facilities provided by the Scala presentation compiler, askScopeCompletion and askTypeCompletion. The first lists the symbols that are accessible in the current scope. The second lists the symbols that are accessible as members of the Type of the Symbol at the given Position.

The decision of whether to complete a symbol or a member is made in Emacs, based on the current syntactic context. If the user hits TAB when typing a symbol that follows what looks like an expression, separated by a dot or space, we try to complete as a type member. Otherwise, we assume it's just a floating symbol.

ENSIME augments the completion information with information about the Type and 'callability' of each symbol. This way, we can fill in parenthesis and parameter information when the user selects a callable symbol.

Today I added a third context for completion of a symbol following 'new'. In this situation ENSIME will only return completion candidates that are known to be class constructors. As with methods, we provide param help in the mini-buffer after a completion is chosen.