RE: [cdt-dev] CDT refactoring support Google SoC project

["Schorn, Markus" <Markus.Schorn@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Robert,
currently none of the CDT-committers is working on refactoring so contributions towards that will be welcome. 

There is a need for discussions on how to get this right. And if you want to contribute you best start a discussion on what you intend to do on bugzilla. I'll be happy to participate.
Markus.


> -----Original Message-----
> From: cdt-dev-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxx 
> [mailto:cdt-dev-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Robert Gravina
> Sent: Donnerstag, 22. März 2007 11:26
> To: cdt-dev@xxxxxxxxxxx
> Subject: [cdt-dev] CDT refactoring support Google SoC project
> 
> Hello Eclipse CDT developers!
> 
> I was browsing the Google SoC projects for this year and came across  
> this Eclipse proposal:
> 
> "Add full refactoring support to CDT."
> 
> As it turns out, my masters project relates to software tools for C.  
> I was actually planning to develop a C refactoring tool for Eclipse,  
> and been looking into adding at least partial refactoring support to  
> CDT for a number of reasons. Firstly, my professor has asked me look  
> at ways of dealing with the C-pre-processor, and the truckload of  
> problems it causes for software tools, and also to apply some of his  
> previous work to creating new tools. Seeing as I have an interest in  
> software design in general also, I thought building a refactoring  
> tool would be a useful tool to test whatever techniques we develop.  
> Secondly, there seems to be a dearth of open source C refactoring  
> tools. There are few commercial implementations, and research  
> projects, but I was unable to find any open source implementations  
> which I could download and play around with (although recently  
> XRefectory has released a free version). Thirdly, I really think CDT  
> would really benefit from refactoring support - and obviously  
> whomever proposed that topic does too! I understand why this hasn't  
> been tackled yet - C, and C++, create a load of problems for  
> refactoring tools that languages like Java don't - the 
> pre-processor,  
> pointers, difficulty in parsing. etc.
> 
> I would be interested in tackling this project, wanted to send this  
> mail out too see if any CDT developers have any suggestions or  
> comments, and if any work has been done on refactoring support thus  
> far (apart from Rename, as useful as this is! Thanks!). I 
> realise I'm  
> cutting this a bit fine - the Google SoC deadline is only a few days  
> away (March 26th) - but I only discovered this project by chance a  
> few days ago!
> 
> Even if I don't do this as a Google SoC project, I will most likely  
> be developing a C refactoring tool of some sort for Eclipse as part  
> of my research project. Doing it as a SoC would mean that I 
> can spend  
> more time on the refactoring tool that I otherwise would (as much as  
> I would love to just hack away on the tool itself, I do need *some*  
> novel research contributions!), so it is a win-win situation 
> for both  
> of us. I'm still in the process of getting aquainted with previous  
> work on the topic, and it seems one of the Gang of Four (Ralph  
> Johnson) and one of his students has put a fair bit of work 
> into this  
> with CRefactory <https://netfiles.uiuc.edu/garrido/www/ 
> CRefactory.html>. One very useful outcome of this is a collection of  
> refactorings tailored to C - rename macro, group a set of variables  
> in a new struct etc. I think this could form a solid basis for the  
> design of a CDT refactoring pugin, or at least as a starting point.  
> Also, I came across this CDT refactoring proposal from a couple of  
> years ago, which also is useful to look at https://bugs.eclipse.org/ 
> bugs/attachment.cgi?id=14995
> 
> I haven't looked into the specific problems C++ causes, and honestly  
> I'm not the most experienced C++ developer, but I have been 
> delighted  
> to find some of things that bothered me about C have been addressed  
> in C++ (and yes, of course, it's  object-oriented!!!)
> 
> Over the next few days I will work on an application for the Google  
> SoC and a supporting website I can put additional information on.
> 
> Robert
> 
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