[cfe-dev] RFC: Adding a rename refactoring tool to clang

[Daniel Albuschat]

Hi there,

2014-07-25 22:01 GMT+02:00 Amin Shali <amshali at google.com>:

> Folks,
>
> At Google we are working on a tool and set of APIs for refactoring C++
> programs based on LibTooling. Particularly, we have targeted rename
> refactoring for C++ as our first step.
>
> In our first iteration we want to offer two things:
> 1- A command line tool similar to clang-format which will semantically
> rename a symbol (specified by a position in a file) in a set of input files.
> 2- An API for doing the above task which can effectively be used to
> provide this functionality for any editor (Emacs, Vim, CodeMirror, etc.).
>

This is something that C++ developers are definitely lacking. Just image
how neat it could be to rename some legacy class or method name in the LLVM
or clang codebase that has been bugging you ever since. :-) If it can be
used broadly, it could become a "game changer" in C/Objective C/C++ code
quality, e.g. for large frameworks like Qt, KDE, the Linux kernel.

I have one question that might be important to others that are interested,
too:
Will this only work on a codebase that can be compiled (or at least
strictly parsed) with clang, or is it more "fuzzy", so it will work with
e.g. a codebase that uses windows.h (that, afaik, can not be compiled with
clang - please correct me if I'm wrong)?
This might be a general LibTooling-question, though.

Greetings,

Daniel Albuschat
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