[cdt-core-dev] Re: [Bug 75364] [plan item] Refactoring support

[Douglas Schaefer <dschaefe@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Markus,

Thanks for your list of requirements. I will go through them and give you 
detailed feedback over the next couple of days.

I've spent a little time looking at JDT and how it does refactoring 
relative to it's AST (DOM) and ASTRewrite components. I am coming to the 
conclusion that this is a good architecture to follow. Here are the main 
points I'd like to see in place for the CDT in relation to the AST, 
Search, and Refactoring:

- Be able to create an AST for a translation unit. This is pretty basic 
but it needs to take into account build settings which we have been 
gaining experience with our work in CDT 2.0.
- Be able to invoke the CDT search engine to find references and 
declarations of named types, functions, and variables. The results should 
be in the form of a list of translation units with location information so 
that we can quickly find the AST nodes.
- A rewrite capability similar to the JDT that takes in requests for AST 
changes and creates TextEdit objects that will affect those changes. We do 
not have to support people changing the AST willy nilly since the clients 
can use the rewriter directly. This will allow us to control which changes 
we accept since some will take longer to implement than others.

I will write up a walkthrough of JDT's Inline Constant refactoring that I 
did to show how things work there. It might be a good idea to look at some 
more since it appears they use different techniques for different 
refactorings.

String search based refactoring is similar to the rename refactoring we 
put in CDT 2.0. It is a great place to start to figure out the 
interactions with the LTK and search engine.

AST2 is still pretty young and doesn't have parser support yet. We are a 
few weeks away from that becoming usable. We may need to think a bit about 
the best way to get you started.

I am also copying the cdt-core-dev list to make sure we keep our work out 
in the open :-)

Cheers,
Doug Schaefer, IBM's Technical Lead, Eclipse CDT
Ottawa Lab, IBM Canada, Rational Software Division



Markus.Schorn@xxxxxxxxxxxxx 
10/18/2004 10:01 AM

To
Douglas Schaefer/Ottawa/IBM@IBMCA
cc
John Camelon/Ottawa/IBM@IBMCA, Michael.Scharf@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject
[Bug 75364] [plan item] Refactoring support






Hi Doug,
I have compiled a list of what I'd like to be able to read out
of the AST (https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=75364), 
I appreciate any feedback on it.

To get warmed up I wrote a string-search-based rename refactoring 
that work's pretty decently. Now I'd like to integrate the AST 
parser to implement the additional checks on the string matches.
Is it a good idea to code against the current AST2 interface,
or am I better off waiting for a later or final version?

Markus.