>> Can someone point out some concrete examples of that situation that I can investigate?

One of the examples I had in mind is cross platform development like developing for Linux on Windows in VS, where build (and all build tools) are running on Linux side, and VS IDE on Windows side.
Sure, there is a communication channel between the machines, but reading a json file on a different machine is much simpler/robust/faster than launching a process and then transferring its output.

And even when developing on the same OS as build tools are running on - the build environment where tool exe can actually be launched (as it, say, depends on some other binaries to be found there) can be quite different from the IDE environment - i.e. you might not be able to launch a build tool directly from the IDE.

My main point is that many more things can go wrong when you are launching a process than when you read an existing json (text) file. The process might require a special (and different from the caller) environment. Reading a json file (even if you transfer it between the machines) is much simpler.

Thanks,
Olga

-----Original Message-----
From: René Ferdinand Rivera Morell <grafikrobot_at_gmail.com>
Sent: Thursday, June 15, 2023 05:06
To: Tom Honermann <tom_at_[hidden]>
Cc: Olga Arkhipova <olgaark_at_microsoft.com>; sg15_at_lists.isocpp.org; Charles-Henri Gros <Charles-Henri.Gros_at_synopsys.com>
Subject: Re: [SG15] P2717R1, EcoIS Introspection

On Fri, Jun 2, 2023 at 4:32 PM Tom Honermann <tom_at_honermann.net> wrote:
> On 6/2/23 5:08 PM, Olga Arkhipova wrote:
> > I believe that IDEs and different generators will very likely be interested in build tool capabilities. And those IDE/generators processes might not even be able to launch a tool as they are not necessarily running in the environment the tool can run. Or they might be running on a different OS altogether for some cross-platform development.
> This is a very good point.

Can someone point out some concrete examples of that situation that I can investigate? As I'm not familiar with that use case.

--
-- René Ferdinand Rivera Morell
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