Export compile_commands.json

[ZedThree]

Description

It would be lovely to automatically export a compile_commands.json file to the build directory. This would make it easy for other tools to pick up the compile flags.

Possible Solution

No response

Additional Information

This can be done with CMake with the CMAKE_EXPORT_COMPILE_COMMANDS option, or with bear more generically.

The file spec is pretty simple, just a JSON list, one element per file, with a few fields.

[ivan-pi]

Hey @ZedThree, there has been a discussion of this before (#960).

Would you be willing to supervise this feature in the GSoC project in case someone applies for it? The description can be found here: https://github.com/fortran-lang/webpage/wiki/GSoC-2025-Project-ideas#export-build-order-and-compile_commandsjson-fpm

[ZedThree]

Ah, I did have a look in the issues, didn't check the discussions. Sure, I don't know anything about fpm's internals though. I think in principle it's not too difficult -- at some point you must have all the information required, it's just a matter of putting that into a JSON struct and dumping it