[cfe-dev] clang-refactoring tool proposal

[Kirill Bobyrev via cfe-dev]

Thanks to Saleem Abdulrasool for originally proposing this approach in the
mentioned discussion.
+CC: Saleem Abdulrasool

On Tue, Aug 9, 2016 at 2:07 PM, Kirill Bobyrev <kbobyrev at google.com> wrote:

> Hi everyone!
>
> As you know we have several useful Clang-based tools: clang-format for
> code formatting, clang-tidy for for diagnosing and fixing typical
> programming errors, clang-include-fixer for automatic management of
> #include directives and a few others.
>
> I am working on clang-rename, whose purpose is to perform efficient
> renaming actions in large-scale projects such as renaming classes,
> functions, variables, arguments, namespaces etc. It is clearly meant for
> refactoring code and doesn’t fit into any of above mentioned tools. And at
> this point we only have clang-rename for code refactoring.
>
> However, there are many other interesting refactoring actions, which are
> typically provided by third-party editor plugins or IDEs (and which we
> ideally would like to have), such as:
>
> * Extract method
> * Inline local variable, method or constant
> * Change method signature
>
> And many others. For a sample list of some popular refactoring techniques
> see Eclipse Refactorings list (http://help.eclipse.org/neon/
> index.jsp?topic=%2Forg.eclipse.jdt.doc.user%2Freference%2Fref-menu-
> refactor.htm) and ReSharper C++ Refactoring (https://www.jetbrains.com/
> resharper-cpp/features/#refactorings).
>
> We recently had a related short discussion in https://reviews.llvm.org/
> D23279, which introduced a simple tool for field reordering. The main
> point is that neither clang-rename nor clang-tidy are a good place for such
> a tool, but we don’t want to end up with too many binaries in
> clang-tools-extra, too.
>
> My proposed solution is to create clang-refactor tool, which would be an
> “umbrella” for other refactoring modules. A prototype of clang-refactor
> would merge clang-rename inside of it and other modules and refactorings
> would be added later.
>
> A properly designed clang-refactor tool would be able to process multiple
> Translation Units, which is crucial for all mentioned refactorings.
>
> I am very excited about the idea of having Clang-based refactoring tool
> and I see a lot of potential in it.
>
> I want to bring up a Community discussion and get feedback on these ideas.
>
> Best regards,
> Kirill Bobyrev
>



-- 
Best regards,
Kirill Bobyrev
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