an xref Suggestion

[Bruce Stephens]

"Curtis R. Anderson" <gleepy at intelligencia.com> writes:

> Bruce Stephens wrote:

[...]

> > However, if someone wanted to work on this, then now would be a great
> > time to start: Mark Mitchell has been making changes to the C++ front
> > end which should make this much easier, and has been documenting the
> > necessary stuff, too (in gcc/cp/ir.texi).
>  
> This sounds like something I was wanting to work on.
> 
> I miss the listing and cross reference generation capabilities of
> the compilers from Digital/Compaq. The gcc community would have a
> lot to gain if we can build this into the collection.

Yes, I think so too.  The ability to do proper source-navigation (with
honorable exceptions, such as cxref, LXR) strikes me as an obvious
hole in what's available in free software (hence, presumably, Cygnus
buying Source Navigator).  It would be great to have the relevant
basic facilities in gcc (as is reasonably common in other compilers).

KDevelop isn't the only potential consumer of such data, obviously:
there's at least gIDE and SDS, and probably there'd be people using it
in Emacs, too.

Go for it, if you're interested.  From my cursory reading of ir.texi,
it doesn't look *that* hard (for C++; I've no idea what would apply to
other languages, if anything).

> I want to see the ability to output listings in either plain text or
> PostScript format for neatness. Also, all the compilers in gcc
> should have uniform listing appearance.

I must admit, I don't care at all about this.  I find the tools
available for pretty-printing (for example, a2ps) perfectly
sufficient.  However, that's quite possibly just me.