From: Andrew Sutton (asutton_at_[hidden])
Date: 2007-09-01 17:04:08
>> Cool... I've been wanting something like this for a while. Out of
>> curiosity - and this probably isn't the best place to ask - but I
>> noticed one of their stated goals is to support source code
>> engineering tasks like refactoring, etc. The problem is that
>> compilers aren't necessarily that good at that type of work in that
>> they require _correct_ and probably preprocessed source code. Is
>> there any indication on whether or not this project will support
>> partial and incomplete parsing?
>
> Hmm, I would expect complete and build source before I try any
> refactoring -- so that I can run tests before and after and veryfy
> nothing broke. I believe Eclipse requires all files to be saved before
> refactoring (this is in Java)
Not necessarily so. Refactorings are essentially transformations on
the structured text, and most can be done regardless of whether or
not the code is actually in a compilable state. Others require
information beyond what the compiler can give (e.g., propagating the
change of a class name to files outside the current translation
unit). This also implies that you don't necessarily have to run the
preprocessor before trying to run a refactoring. Other code-related
tasks don't even need to parse the entire the program, but just need
to extract the "superstructure" of some code (think UML diagram).
Andrew Sutton
asutton_at_[hidden]