[cfe-dev] [RFC] Removing libclang APIs to traverse the comment AST

[Dmitri Gribenko]

On Tue, Nov 12, 2013 at 8:42 PM, Alex Turbov <i.zaufi at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On Wed, Nov 13, 2013 at 7:48 AM, Sean Silva <silvas at purdue.edu> wrote:
>>
>> Do we have no users? :(
>>
>> This is a huge API surface area that is being ripped out. The cries of
>> even a single user that depends on this will forever shatter all confidence
>> in LLVM's C API stability promise. (also, btw, I wouldn't expect a user of a
>> stable API to be subscribed to the developer's mailing list of the
>> project...; that is a key difference between a stable API and a "no
>> backwards compatibility; the onus is on you to be aware of what is happening
>> in the codebase" API).
>
> +1
> I'm the user of that API... (yep, I'm subscribed to the dev list :)

Hi Alex,

Thank you for a quick reply.  It is unexpected for me that these APIs
have users.

>> If these API's are deprecated (later to be removed) please write a
>> migration guide to help existing users transition to the new recommended
>> approach (also, it would be nice to have some documentation about what the
>> recommended approach even is!). Can you estimate the expected development
>> cost required to transition from the old API to the recommended API? (for
>> example, what if bunding an XML library is not feasible for a user that
>> depends on this functionality?)
>
> agreed. personally I don't want to link w/ any XML lib... it was quite
> enough (moreover, it is desired) to have an access to plain text comments...
> I don't want any XML, cuz extracted comments get indexed for further
> full-text search... and having XML here is completely harmful and
> undesired...

You can still extract plain text from XML pretty easily, without
linking to an XML library.  While *parsing* XML requires a real
parser, stripping tags can be done with with a regexp.  Or you could
use the C++ API.  Does any of these work for you?

Dmitri

-- 
main(i,j){for(i=2;;i++){for(j=2;j<i;j++){if(!(i%j)){j=0;break;}}if
(j){printf("%d\n",i);}}} /*Dmitri Gribenko <gribozavr at gmail.com>*/