Three times I've joined a team that has a substantial C++ codebase, and three times I've been tempted to use libclang based tooling to automate changes, or at l

Three times I've joined a team that has a substantial C++ codebase, and three times I've been tempted to use libclang based tooling to automate changes, or at least to identify patterns that could be changed. This article, while not the nerdy deep dive I'd like, does touch on what happens when you try to do that. You realize that the C++ standard library is really complicated, that your existing code is really fucked up, and that libclang is too limited a tool. You end up writing a XSLT engine in hacked up python, but by a different name. [LibTooling][1] is probably The Right Thing ("in C++", as the article says), but I never spent the time to get it working. Somebody write a DSL for C++ inspection and transformations that uses LibTooling as a backend. I bet there are many, but none close at hand. edit: [this][2] is close... [1]: https://clang.llvm.org/docs/LibTooling.html https://clang.llvm.org/docs/LibTooling.html [2]: https://clang.llvm.org/docs/LibASTMatchersTutorial.html#intermezzo-learn-ast-matcher-basics https://clang.llvm.org/docs/LibASTMatchersTutorial.html#inte...