Using rpc for IDE funcionality

[aiguofer]

Describe the feature

It would be great to have the ability to create a way for IDEs and editors to have enough knowledge about the code to be able to jump to definition or get documentation for a model, source, macro, etc. Based on some light reading about the rpc server, it seems like this could be a good place to expose the functionality so that an IDE/editor plugin can implement such functionality pretty easily.

Describe alternatives you've considered

Build an entirely separate project that uses the dbt python API to try to implement an RPC server for this specific purpose.

Who will this benefit?

I believe this would benefit everyone using dbt. It would be a great addition to the cloud IDE and to any other IDEs/editors that implement a plugin to leverage this. It would make it much easier to navigate and understand a project during development.

[drewbanin]

Thanks for opening this issue @aiguofer! dbt currently produces a manifest that contains all of the information about a dbt project. You can view a sample manifest by doing a dbt compile and then checking out the target/manifest.json file!

We did just add support for returning the manifest in the rpc server (see here), but I think some more work is required to support the kinds of IDE interactions you're describing!

What kinds of other info do you think it would be helpful for the rpc server to serve up?

[jtcohen6]

Going to close this one. The interactions envisioned here are quite compelling, and I imagine we'll find other ways to surface them :)