[cfe-dev] Clang -ast-dump-xml question

[Douglas Gregor]

On Mar 6, 2013, at 7:24 AM, Manuel Klimek <klimek at google.com> wrote:

> On Wed, Mar 6, 2013 at 7:14 AM, Douglas Gregor <dgregor at apple.com> wrote:
> 
> On Mar 5, 2013, at 2:41 AM, Matthias Grimmer <grimmer at ssw.jku.at> wrote:
> 
>> Hi
>> 
>> we are using clang and its -ast-dump-xml feature. Our goal is to convert the serialized clang-AST to a different code representation.
>> We think that the output, that -ast-dump-xml produces, is not well suited for parsing. Statements are represented as ASCII styled trees and also contain parts that
>> confuse XML parsers (e.g. <line:18:2, col:18>).
> 
> The pseudo-XML dump is a debugging aid. It's not a stable, useful format on which to build tools. Tools should be built on top of the Clang AST, either through libclang (for a stable but not-very-rich AST representation) or the C++ AST.
> 
> Wasn't there a plan to get rid of the XMLish dump?

I removed an XML printer that was underdeveloped and unmaintained (see http://llvm.org/viewvc/llvm-project?view=revision&revision=127141). Now that the normal AST dumping has been greatly improved, it's probably time to remove the XMLish dump as well. It's only advantage is that it was (at one point) more detailed than the normal AST dump.

	- Doug


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