[cfe-dev] Driver support for AST features (UI Proposal)

[Douglas Gregor]

On Sep 1, 2009, at 12:58 AM, Sebastian Redl wrote:

> Daniel Dunbar wrote:
>> Hi all,
>>
>> This is a UI design proposal for the clang driver for providing  
>> user /
>> tool access to clang AST based features.
>>
>> 1. Support '-emit-ast'; this will be an option like '-S' in that it
>> stops compilation at the AST production phase, and will generate  
>> files
>> with a '.ast' suffix.
>>
>> 2. Recognize '.ast' files as source inputs which can be compiled.
>> Obviously this will start at the compilation phase, in the same way
>> that '.i' etc inputs bypass the preprocessing phase.
>> Comments?
>>
> Isn't this essentially the same as first emitting a PCH made from the
> entire source file, and then compiling an empty source file with a PCH
> include directive? In other words, don't we pretty much already  
> support
> this, albeit with a weird command syntax?


Yes and yes.

	- Doug