[cfe-commits] r160265 - in /cfe/trunk: include/clang/Tooling/CommandLineClangTool.h lib/Tooling/CMakeLists.txt lib/Tooling/CommandLineClangTool.cpp test/CMakeLists.txt test/Tooling/clang-ast-dump.cpp tools/CMakeLists.txt tools/Makefile tools/clan

[Alexander Kornienko]

On Tue, Jul 17, 2012 at 7:55 PM, Douglas Gregor <dgregor at apple.com> wrote:

> Okay, that's fair; but this could trivially be added as a parameter to the
> existing XML dumper. We don't need a whole separate, single-purpose tool
> for this.
> ...
> > Overall, a way to dump the AST is critical to writing clang tools,
> > especially while you're learning the AST. Being able to dump parts of
> > the AST of the source you want to work on makes it far easier to find
> > out why the AST looks the way it does at a certain place where your
> > refactoring doesn't work than trying to reproduce that with a minimal
> > source file that doesn't use any non-builtin includes. Many tool
> > writers are not hardcore C++ experts (the ones that are obviously
> > don't need the tool that much), and one of the goals for us is to make
> > writing C++ tools possible for normal people ;)
>
> The XML dump isn't really a great way to learn the AST. Our normal dumper
> is far better for that purpose, IMO, because it's more complete and
> produces less noise.


Basically, we don't need XML, we only need a format which is closer to an
actual AST structure than just a C++ listing. Both XML and normal dumper
use the same format for statements, which is nice. The problem with the
normal dumper is how it outputs declarations. It basically outputs
fragments in C++, which isn't much useful for those trying to figure out
how AST looks like for declarations.If we could change its output to that
LISP-style format used for statements, it would be much more helpful in our
use-case.

Are there reasons for the normal dumper to exist in its current state? If
there are no serious reasons, I could work on switching it's format.
Otherwise we could add another dump format for declarations (consistent
with the one used for statements), or replace XML with it.

What do you think about this?

I would also be glad to add an "-ast-dump-filter" option to clang, so we
could select AST declaration nodes to dump by a substring. This would
remove any need in a separate clang-ast-dump tool.

-- 
Best regards,
Alexander Kornienko
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.llvm.org/pipermail/cfe-commits/attachments/20120719/fddc7821/attachment.html>