Path: utzoo!utgpu!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-lcc!ames!ll-xn!mit-eddie!uw-beaver!tektronix!sequent!mntgfx!rreed
From: rreed@mntgfx.mentor.com (Robert Reed)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c++
Subject: Re: .h-file extractor from c++ source file available?
Message-ID: <1988Aug8.180524.3167@mntgfx.mentor.com>
Date: 9 Aug 88 01:05:18 GMT
References: <2192@hplabsz.HPL.HP.COM> <1988Aug7.005251.7548@utzoo.uucp>
Reply-To: rreed@mntgfx.UUCP (Robert Reed)
Organization: Mentor Graphics Corp., Beaverton OR
Lines: 26

In article <1988Aug7.005251.7548@utzoo.uucp> henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer) writes:
    In article <2192@hplabsz.HPL.HP.COM> collins@hplabsz.HPL.HP.COM (Patricia Collins) writes:
    >Do you know of a utility for extracting include files from c++ source
    >files?  It's probably doable with a straightforward awk script...
    
    Some of this may be sensitive to the details of my own programming style, 
    but I'd be skeptical of claims that automatic extraction without marking 
    worked well.

But that is NOT to say that automatic extraction does not work well.  In the
last project upon which I worked, we had a tool called autohdr which relied
on a marking scheme we deeveloped for C.  This method used special declarations
to mark exported structures, including defines, typedefs and structs, and 
generated a temporary header file which was then compared against the current
header file.  If the files were different, the old file was replaced, and make
would automatically recompile those targets depending on the header.

The scheme still required the same amount of work for editing, and required
more overhead for the generation and checking process.  However, the editing
process was simplified by having a single "module" which contained both
internal and external declarations.  Revision control is simplified by the
commonality of unified header/code files.  

The syntax of C++ complicates the process, but it should be possible to 
accommodate the extensions.  Special care and more detailed analysis will be
required to support things like inline declarations, which need to be 
completely copied to the header file.  It would be a useful tool, though.