[cfe-dev] Hello everybody and first question

[Douglas Gregor]

On Dec 3, 2009, at 12:56 PM, Nicola Gigante wrote:

> Hello everybody.
> 
> I'm new to the list, I've subscribed because I'm looking at the clang source code for fun and learning.

Welcome!

> First of all, congratulations, it's a great work!
> 
> In my opinion, the best thing to do to learn how clang internals work is to do something concrete, so I've read the TODO file and I saw there are a few jobs that seems simple enough. For example, I read:
> 
> More ideas for code modification hints:
>  - If no member of a given name is found in a class/struct, search through the names of entities that do exist in the class and suggest the closest candidate. e.g., if I write "DS.setTypeSpecType", it would suggest "DS.SetTypeSpecType" (edit distance = 1).
> ... others...
>  - Change "foo.bar" to "foo->bar" when "foo" is a pointer.
> 
> First of all, is the TODO file up-to-date?

Mostly, yes.

> Then.. Which part of the source code should I look to fix these two points?

Both of them would get implemented in the function Sema::LookupMemberExpr, which is in lib/Sema/SemaExpr.cpp.

The second one is probably easier, because it will be a localized change, mostly likely around line 2600 (where we have the "if (IsArrow)" check.

> Another thing. In the case I could end up with a working patch, how does the clang contribution policy work? Do I have to send the patches to this list, or to someone in particular?


We prefer that patches be sent to the cfe-commits mailing list, unless you think that the patch does something fundamentally new or different from what's already in Clang: in that case, we like to discuss ideas here on cfe-dev first.

	- Doug