Question

I found that GCCXML is not being maintained anymore (I think the last version is from 2009 from their CVS repository). People usually suggest to check out clang, but I couldn’t find a comprehensive documentation that described how to generate a similar output. Not necessarily XML, but the same information in a parsable (documented, if binary or obscure) format. If there is a way to get the same information from a recent gcc version, that is also fine.

^{This is for a hobby project for dynamic invocation of C++ code. I know about similar projects (pygccxml, xrtti, openc++), but the point is to make it, for fun.}

Answer 1

There used to be a way to print an xml dump with Clang but it was more or less supported and has been removed. There are developers options to get a dump at various stages, but the format is for human consumption, and unstable.

The recommendation for Clang users has always been code integration:

• Either directly using Clang from C++, and for example use a RecursiveASTVisitor implementation
• Or use libclang from C or C++.

Unlike gcc, clang is conceived as a set of a libraries to be reused, so it does not make much sense to try and write a parser for some clang output: it is just much more error-prone than just consuming the information right at the source.