First Commercial C++ Development Refactoring Tool

swrittenb writes "According to their recent press release, SlickEdit Inc. announced Visual SlickEdit® v9, the first commercially available development tool with C++ refactoring. Although this area has been studied, and non-commercial refactoring tools for C++ exist, how comfortable are people using an automated solution for refactoring with this particular language?"

Comments

Re:We're already comfortable with compilers

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, when you consider that a compiler is also "an automated solution for [code] refactoring", I guess anyone using C++ (or any other compiled language) is reasonably co[m]for[t]able. (I assume that's what you meant.)

Nope, it's not the same thing at all. The transformation from high-level to low-level code is much simpler than the converse; that's why you can't decompile a native-code executable, even an unstripped one, and get beautifully formatted and readable code out of it.

I trust my compiler to output valid machine code precisely because machine code is so simple. C++ is very complicated; if I were a C++ programmer (which I'm not, I prefer simpler and safer languages) I'd definitely be keeping backups of my unrefactored work for a while.

What I want

[geirt]

I want a syntax cheker running while I am editing the source code.

Example 1: When I am writing: "printf("Hello %d\n", "world");" I want a red line under "world", with a mouse-over stating: "Integer, not string expected in printf format string". I want this to happen while i type.

Example 2: When writing: sinus(3.14); I want a red line under sinus(), with a mouse over explaining "Call to function sinus() without prototype" without running the code trough a compiler.

I also want sane syntax highlighting. I want it to highlight the things that I look for when I am browsing trough lost of code. That is my function and variable names. All other should be kept in low key (eg. if while for int struct etc.). I am not sure if i want call to libc to be highlighted. Show me the important stuff, not the cruft! Editors are not too bad on this (or can be customized), but when I press print in emacs or use gnu enscript, it prettyprints all the wrong things, and hides away the important stuff.