Re: Use gcc front-end for metrics

[Christian Wagner <christian dot wagner at dnw-germany dot aero>]

> In order to build a metrication tool I need a frontend that can
> provide me with an abstract syntax tree containing information on all
> actual language constructs in the code and also a CFG representation.
> I reckon GCC has these capabilities and I was wondering if any of you
> could tell me if it is possible to use just GCC's frontend.
> Furthermore, where should I start, how do I extract the frontend from
> GCC, which of the intermediate GCC representation could I use, are
> they documented?
>
> I would like to thank you in advance for any help you can give me.

Before you are to familiarized with GCC I want to give you a hint to another 
project from Berkley. It is called Elsa/Elkhound parser 
(www.cs.berkeley.edu/~smcpeak/elkhound/). It is a C and C++ parser written in 
C++ with a cleaner internal structure as the GCC parser. Additionally, there is 
another projects, called OINK (funny name), which provides different back-ends 
for Elsa as well printing a CFG.
I started like you with implementing my own code inside GCC, then I found these 
two projects and this saves me a lot of time.

HTH
Christian