On Thu, 10 Nov 2011 13:11:49 +0100 David Brown <da...@westcontrol.com> wrote: > > I don't know why you say such a feature would only help C++ newbies - my > guess is that it would be at least as helpful to experts. But maybe > /real/ C++ experts have a different opinion there!
Yes, perhaps you're right. But certainly newbies will find it useful. We do agree that such a feature would be useful. > > You might get something useful from the "-fdump-" options: > <http://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc/Debugging-Options.html> The dumps are mostly middle-end (i.a. after gimplification), and I think what is needed for such type annotation is the most precise possible location information (at least, as start end interval of line & column number & file path, perhaps more, like what Dodji is doing...), and all the dump outputs I looked into don't have precise location information anymore. But I admit I did not looked into all possible kind of dump files. > I don't know which pass would be best for you, and obviously the use in > an editor depends entirely on the editor. Agreed, but we can do what Ocaml does more or less. We could document the format of the annotation type file. Perhaps even, it could become eventually some kind of "de facto standard" (like the output of -M is today for "make like dependencies"). Using that file is not the responsability of GCC (but producing it is)! Of course, GCC should not care of a specific editor. But I believe that if we had an easily parsable & somehow stable well defined & documented textual annotation file format, editor communities (e.g. GNU emacs community) will be happy to use it. (IIRC Ocaml type annotation files are used by more than one tool). Regards. -- Basile STARYNKEVITCH http://starynkevitch.net/Basile/ email: basile<at>starynkevitch<dot>net mobile: +33 6 8501 2359 8, rue de la Faiencerie, 92340 Bourg La Reine, France *** opinions {are only mine, sont seulement les miennes} ***
