[cfe-dev] extending clang C-API (CIndex)

[Stefan Seefeld]

On 06/11/2010 03:24 PM, Sebastien Binet wrote:
> hi there,
>
> I am about to work on extending the C-API provided by CIndex and friends
> so I can introspect the AST and (especially) all the xyzDecl (from
> python-ctypes.)
>
>
>    

> so the convention would be:
>
> clang_[C++class-name]_[method-name]( cursor )
>
>
> what do you think ?
>    

What is the point of such a mapping ? Why not use the C++ API itself ?

The warning I received on this list about using the C++ API directly was 
that the (existing) C API was much more stable than the C++ API.
I don't think this stability is related to the language (C vs. C++), but 
is caused by the the C++ API being much richer (and thus, no-one is 
willing to commit to any form of backward compatibility just yet).

If you propose such a one-to-one mapping, it seems your proposed C API 
will be no more stable than the C++ API. Why would anyone use that ?

(Note that I'm looking into mapping the existing AST (C++) API to my 
Synopsis ASG (Python) API (http://synopsis.fresco.org), using the 
current 2.7 release. I'm aware of this changing, but would hope that 
until the next major release it may be useful nonetheless.)


Thanks,
         Stefan

-- 

       ...ich hab' noch einen Koffer in Berlin...