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Show HN: Anyone interested in a tool helps to explore C++ ASTs

49 points by leomicv 5mo ago

I built this software to help users who need to do static code analysis for C/C++ codebase. This can help you to explore the ASTs interactively. It can replace the Clang ast dump completely and also you can search the code/ASTs in a structual way. For example you can search a function which matches specific name or number of paremeters.

leomicv 5mo ago
This is the repo: https://github.com/uvic-aurora/acav https://github.com/uvic-aurora/acav Feel free to leave a comment if you have any questions. Thanks!
dundunUp 5mo ago
[flagged]
mohamedkoubaa 5mo ago
Is this based on or otherwise related to kythe?
enoent 5mo ago
Nice to see another static analysis tool. It looks like the compilation database is only used for discovering source files, without any additional cross translation unit analysis [1]. Even if you don't plan on implementing data flow tracking or other passes, it can still be interesting to know on which translation unit a function declaration is defined on. Also, it seems we always have to recompile each unit when switching between source files. Consider pre-compiling and caching so it's only done once. That should also enable users to search across files/ASTs. [1]: https://clang.llvm.org/docs/analyzer/user-docs/CrossTranslationUnit.html https://clang.llvm.org/docs/analyzer/user-docs/CrossTranslat...
rohanucla 5mo ago
Cool project. The bidirectional source-to-AST navigation is the killer combination, clang -Xclang -ast-dump gives you a wall of text that's hard to correlate back to code, especially with C++'s implicit conversions and template instantiations. Being able to click and see exactly what Clang produces is invaluable for anyone writing AST matchers or clang-tidy checks. I work on a related project called sem (Ataraxy-Labs/sem) that takes ASTs in a different direction — extracting semantic entities from tree-sitter ASTs to build cross-file dependency graphs with git history tracking. Would be curious if you've thought about leveraging Clang's richer AST to do cross-file entity analysis for C++.
ranger_danger 4mo ago
Nice, you don't see many new Qt projects that use QDockWidget anymore.

49 points by leomicv 5mo ago

leomicv 5mo ago

This is the repo: https://github.com/uvic-aurora/acav https://github.com/uvic-aurora/acav Feel free to leave a comment if you have any questions. Thanks!

dundunUp 5mo ago

[flagged]

mohamedkoubaa 5mo ago

Is this based on or otherwise related to kythe?

enoent 5mo ago

Nice to see another static analysis tool. It looks like the compilation database is only used for discovering source files, without any additional cross translation unit analysis [1]. Even if you don't plan on implementing data flow tracking or other passes, it can still be interesting to know on which translation unit a function declaration is defined on. Also, it seems we always have to recompile each unit when switching between source files. Consider pre-compiling and caching so it's only done once. That should also enable users to search across files/ASTs. [1]: https://clang.llvm.org/docs/analyzer/user-docs/CrossTranslationUnit.html https://clang.llvm.org/docs/analyzer/user-docs/CrossTranslat...

rohanucla 5mo ago

Cool project. The bidirectional source-to-AST navigation is the killer combination, clang -Xclang -ast-dump gives you a wall of text that's hard to correlate back to code, especially with C++'s implicit conversions and template instantiations. Being able to click and see exactly what Clang produces is invaluable for anyone writing AST matchers or clang-tidy checks. I work on a related project called sem (Ataraxy-Labs/sem) that takes ASTs in a different direction — extracting semantic entities from tree-sitter ASTs to build cross-file dependency graphs with git history tracking. Would be curious if you've thought about leveraging Clang's richer AST to do cross-file entity analysis for C++.

ranger_danger 4mo ago

Nice, you don't see many new Qt projects that use QDockWidget anymore.