srivatsan raghavan writes:

--- "William Trenker " wrote:

...

Does anyone know if there is a GCC option to save the C++ parse tree to a file? Or has anyone come across a C++ parser utility that does this? I'm building a Python extension for a library that has many .hpp files and I would like to try and automate the generation of the Boost.Python headers for this library.

Thanks, Bill

yes, i know of one called gcc-xml.. i don't know if the project is still being worked on,

It is. Brad King, the author, is also working on CABLE, an automated wrapping system. He has been talking about building a GCC_XML front-end for Boost.Python. There has also been interest more recently from someone named Nicodemus on the C++-sig: http://www.python.org/sigs/c++-sig/

but basically it uses gcc's parser as a 1st phase and then takes the parse tree that's generated and outputs an xml file (i don't know if it has a schema or DTD available , it didn't when i last looked, but the xml format it uses is sufficiently simple that writing a DTD/schema should be trivially simple) url here : http://www.gccxml.org/HTML/Index.html

last i checked it uses the gcc 3.0.4 source as the front end parser, so it may be a bit lacking in terms of advanced c++ features especially in the area of templates :) ( as was gcc in general until 'round 3.2 anyway ) but that should help you out :)

GCC_XML is up to 3.2 now, and I have to disagree about GCC's template handling before that. Even 2.95.2 was pretty great by comparison to many of today's production compilers. The front-end in 3.0.4 was not enormously different from 3.2 in its capabilities. -- David Abrahams dave@boost-consulting.com * http://www.boost-consulting.com Boost support, enhancements, training, and commercial distribution