In the last few years, Clang has opened up new possibilities in C++ tooling for the masses. Tools such as clang-tidy and clazy offer ready-to-use source-to-source transformations. Available transformations can be used to modernize (use newer C++ language features), improve readability (remove redundant constructs), or improve adherence to the C++ Core Guidelines.
However, when special needs arise, maintainers of large codebases need to learn some of the Clang APIs to create their own porting aids. The Clang APIs necessarily form a more-exact picture of the structure of C++ code than most developers keep in their heads, and bridging the conceptual gap can be a daunting task.
Tooling supplied with clang-tidy, such as clang-query, are indispensable in the discovery of the Clang AST.
This talk will show recent and future features in Clang tooling, as well as Tips, Tricks and Traps encountered on the journey to quality refactoring tools. The audience will see how mechanical refactoring in a large codebase can become easy, given the right tools.
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