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

[Richard]

In article <CA+Yaqnhj7Vu-NnMtt4JD96gpePawideni7GsOcWxwT9pgCaG4w at mail.gmail.com>,
    Daniel Albuschat <d.albuschat at gmail.com> writes:

> For example, there was a paradigm to have a nested "data"-class inside of
> classes that manage the ui. They all share the same name, albeit being
> nested inside of totally different classes. VA X failed miserably analysing
> ("Go to definition") and refactoring this.

Yeah, this is the downside to an ad-hoc/heuristic based refactoring
tool.  It doesn't know enough about the semantics/syntax of the
language to identify that all these classes with the same local
context name have a different global context and therefore all
different.

> If clang-rename will be able to handle the codebase I am working with, I
> will be in sheer joy.

Yes, this is why too am excited about clang-based refactoring tools
because all this ad-hoc/heuristic approach is just a dead-end for
real world code bases.  Those huge legacy code bases are also the ones
most desperately in need of refactoring!
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