> I don’t think compiling kernels would really gain anything from being outside a terminal?

I remember compiling, flashing and debugging Windows CE images (10? maybe 15 years ago?) from an IDE (Visual Studio). It was super comfortable. Setting breakpoints, jumping to any kernel thread, navigating the call stack, watching memory and variables. All from the IDE. The development process was super fast.

Now between dmesg and logcat, I have to debug reading and grepping thousands of lines of log. Also adding printk, ALOG and all sort of logging functions to the code, recompiling, reflashing using a terminal with ADB, etc.

> Ultimately it’s just an interface to programs that output mostly text

For example, double-clicking on a compilation error and showing the error in an IDE is priceless. I know there should be some Vim plugin that does that, but it's out-of-the-box on every decent/modern coding IDE out there (VScode + ssh, which I use for AOSP, for example). Even better if the IDE shows only the errors/warnings the compiler emitted.

Also, try to find the error line between 10000's lines of building log when you compile a kernel/AOSP in parallel with -j20.