C++Talk.NET

Andre Baresel · Guest

Hello together,

just a year ago I was searching arround for a tool supporting refactoring
for c++.
I've seen implementations for java and was impressed how an IDE can help
with
such a feature.

Just rename classes / member / parameter with a mouse click.
reduce the size of a method by transforming parts of it into a seperate
function
(just by selection and 'do-refactor-out').

But than the bad news - no C++ IDE does support that. Can you imagine why ?
Two arguments I've seen during web search:

- "C++ syntax parsing is hard" I must say - yes it is. Parser
generators don't get it completly.
- "C++ has this nasty preprocessing" Am, yes that makes it a little bit
harder
- "c++ has these template things" Well, declaration constructs can
be a little bit more complex ;)

However, I finally found a project targeting the problem. It is called
"CppTool" on Sourceforge.
A name not very impressive and it started in late 2001. After one year
discussion about how to write
a full c++ parser. Some new members created an idea which convinced me.
Baptiste Lepilleur
(see CppUnit activities) created the idea of doing "lazy parsing". It is a
hand written parser, which is
able to parse only fragments of the code - this is great, since that enables
us to parse only these parts
which we need to know about. An example:

let's say, we know that we are inside a compound statement. that enables us
to seperate all
declaration and statements just by searching for ';' Next step is to decide
if it's a
declaration or statement.

Well, and what to say - after 3 month we have this parser can handle full
files. Not yet getting
all the details, but this is just a question of time.

You will ask - what is there now ?
Important thing first:
- we implemented some simple refactoring (e.g. local variable rename,
split declaration)
- we have an integration for Eclipse and Visual-Studio.
- we are open to any IDE (as long as the IDE is open for
plugin/extensions)

What about these nasty C++ things ?
- the parser does create an AST for C++ Sources
- templates in programs can be parsed
- preprocessing has solved for simple macro replacements
(we keep them as long as they do not conflict a refactoring)

After all, we are only two active programmers. Don't you want to take part
in this
important project ? Just read the mailing lists "cpptool-develop Archive" or
contact
me. I would like to send a first example of the plugins to you.
Check out the sources, well there's much. But just ask me to seperate
important things...

Don't you think that this will be worth ?

See you soon at CppTool: https://sourceforge.net/projects/cpptool/

André Baresel
(netmemberab)

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btw) if you scan through the net in todays time you will also see that the
eclipse project CDT is targeting refactoring, unfortunatly i don't see
progress
on this front and they have even not solved the basic problems. The mile
stones
tell that some very basic rename feature is planned for summer 2004.
However,
I have seen such point also on the time table for this year 2003 - ... I
really like
eclipse, however what is with all there programmers working with borland /
visual studio
because of this COM/ActiveX features.