> I imagine doing it for c++ and outputting cscope format which is > reasonably expressive and popular. > > I have no idea how hard it would be, but if I can bug people for help > I'd be willing to give it a shot.
There are two ways to do this with GCC. One is trivial and one is hard, but the hard one will likely give better results than the trivial one. The trivial one is that you build a plugin (https://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gccint/Plugins.html) and hook it at PLUGIN_FINISH_DECL (and perhaps also at PLUGIN_FINISH_TYPE, not sure about that). You can then run the plugin in the same command that compiles your code. However, this approach has some limitations. It will not handle preprocessor macros. You'll need to add new plugin hooks to GCC (which I think would be welcome). And it may not work well in the presence of compilation errors. It will also be slower than it really needs to be (although perhaps faster than etags? The GCC parser is very optimized...). The hard approach is that you contribute to the effort to make GCC more modular so that you can call the functions in the C++ parser that you really need, while ignoring the rest of the compiler. Then, you will be able to build a stand-alone program that does what you want without requiring a complete gcc. The way to do this is to join the GCC project, create a branch and try to build a prototype that doesn't break the compiler and allows you to achieve what you want. Then, propose to merge your changes to the main development branch. I would suggest to start with the trivial approach, get used to GCC development, then think about what it would take to do the hard approach. Cheers, Manuel.
