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| <h1>LibTooling</h1> |
| <p>LibTooling is a library to support writing standalone tools based on |
| Clang. This document will provide a basic walkthrough of how to write |
| a tool using LibTooling.</p> |
| <p>For the information on how to setup Clang Tooling for LLVM see |
| <a href="HowToSetupToolingForLLVM.html">HowToSetupToolingForLLVM.html</a></p> |
| |
| <!-- ======================================================================= --> |
| <h2 id="intro">Introduction</h2> |
| <!-- ======================================================================= --> |
| |
| <p>Tools built with LibTooling, like Clang Plugins, run |
| <code>FrontendActions</code> over code. |
| <!-- See FIXME for a tutorial on how to write FrontendActions. --> |
| In this tutorial, we'll demonstrate the different ways of running clang's |
| <code>SyntaxOnlyAction</code>, which runs a quick syntax check, over a bunch of |
| code.</p> |
| |
| <!-- ======================================================================= --> |
| <h2 id="runoncode">Parsing a code snippet in memory.</h2> |
| <!-- ======================================================================= --> |
| |
| <p>If you ever wanted to run a <code>FrontendAction</code> over some sample |
| code, for example to unit test parts of the Clang AST, |
| <code>runToolOnCode</code> is what you looked for. Let me give you an example: |
| <pre> |
| #include "clang/Tooling/Tooling.h" |
| |
| TEST(runToolOnCode, CanSyntaxCheckCode) { |
| // runToolOnCode returns whether the action was correctly run over the |
| // given code. |
| EXPECT_TRUE(runToolOnCode(new clang::SyntaxOnlyAction, "class X {};")); |
| } |
| </pre> |
| |
| <!-- ======================================================================= --> |
| <h2 id="standalonetool">Writing a standalone tool.</h2> |
| <!-- ======================================================================= --> |
| |
| <p>Once you unit tested your <code>FrontendAction</code> to the point where it |
| cannot possibly break, it's time to create a standalone tool. For a standalone |
| tool to run clang, it first needs to figure out what command line arguments to |
| use for a specified file. To that end we create a |
| <code>CompilationDatabase</code>. There are different ways to create a |
| compilation database, and we need to support all of them depending on |
| command-line options. There's the <code>CommonOptionsParser</code> class |
| that takes the responsibility to parse command-line parameters related to |
| compilation databases and inputs, so that all tools share the implementation. |
| </p> |
| |
| <h3 id="parsingcommonoptions">Parsing common tools options.</h3> |
| <p><code>CompilationDatabase</code> can be read from a build directory or the |
| command line. Using <code>CommonOptionsParser</code> allows for explicit |
| specification of a compile command line, specification of build path using the |
| <code>-p</code> command-line option, and automatic location of the compilation |
| database using source files paths. |
| <pre> |
| #include "clang/Tooling/CommonOptionsParser.h" |
| |
| using namespace clang::tooling; |
| |
| int main(int argc, const char **argv) { |
| // CommonOptionsParser constructor will parse arguments and create a |
| // CompilationDatabase. In case of error it will terminate the program. |
| CommonOptionsParser OptionsParser(argc, argv); |
| |
| // Use OptionsParser.GetCompilations() and OptionsParser.GetSourcePathList() |
| // to retrieve CompilationDatabase and the list of input file paths. |
| } |
| </pre> |
| </p> |
| |
| <h3 id="tool">Creating and running a ClangTool.</h3> |
| <p>Once we have a <code>CompilationDatabase</code>, we can create a |
| <code>ClangTool</code> and run our <code>FrontendAction</code> over some code. |
| For example, to run the <code>SyntaxOnlyAction</code> over the files "a.cc" and |
| "b.cc" one would write: |
| <pre> |
| // A clang tool can run over a number of sources in the same process... |
| std::vector<std::string> Sources; |
| Sources.push_back("a.cc"); |
| Sources.push_back("b.cc"); |
| |
| // We hand the CompilationDatabase we created and the sources to run over into |
| // the tool constructor. |
| ClangTool Tool(OptionsParser.GetCompilations(), Sources); |
| |
| // The ClangTool needs a new FrontendAction for each translation unit we run |
| // on. Thus, it takes a FrontendActionFactory as parameter. To create a |
| // FrontendActionFactory from a given FrontendAction type, we call |
| // newFrontendActionFactory<clang::SyntaxOnlyAction>(). |
| int result = Tool.run(newFrontendActionFactory<clang::SyntaxOnlyAction>()); |
| </pre> |
| </p> |
| |
| <h3 id="main">Putting it together - the first tool.</h3> |
| <p>Now we combine the two previous steps into our first real tool. This example |
| tool is also checked into the clang tree at tools/clang-check/ClangCheck.cpp. |
| <pre> |
| // Declares clang::SyntaxOnlyAction. |
| #include "clang/Frontend/FrontendActions.h" |
| #include "clang/Tooling/CommonOptionsParser.h" |
| #include "clang/Tooling/Tooling.h" |
| // Declares llvm::cl::extrahelp. |
| #include "llvm/Support/CommandLine.h" |
| |
| using namespace clang::tooling; |
| using namespace llvm; |
| |
| // CommonOptionsParser declares HelpMessage with a description of the common |
| // command-line options related to the compilation database and input files. |
| // It's nice to have this help message in all tools. |
| static cl::extrahelp CommonHelp(CommonOptionsParser::HelpMessage); |
| |
| // A help message for this specific tool can be added afterwards. |
| static cl::extrahelp MoreHelp("\nMore help text..."); |
| |
| int main(int argc, const char **argv) { |
| CommonOptionsParser OptionsParser(argc, argv); |
| ClangTool Tool(OptionsParser.GetCompilations(), |
| OptionsParser.GetSourcePathList()); |
| return Tool.run(newFrontendActionFactory<clang::SyntaxOnlyAction>()); |
| } |
| </pre> |
| </p> |
| |
| <h3 id="running">Running the tool on some code.</h3> |
| <p>When you check out and build clang, clang-check is already built and |
| available to you in bin/clang-check inside your build directory.</p> |
| <p>You can run clang-check on a file in the llvm repository by specifying |
| all the needed parameters after a "--" separator: |
| <pre> |
| $ cd /path/to/source/llvm |
| $ export BD=/path/to/build/llvm |
| $ $BD/bin/clang-check tools/clang/tools/clang-check/ClangCheck.cpp -- \ |
| clang++ -D__STDC_CONSTANT_MACROS -D__STDC_LIMIT_MACROS \ |
| -Itools/clang/include -I$BD/include -Iinclude -Itools/clang/lib/Headers -c |
| </pre> |
| </p> |
| |
| <p>As an alternative, you can also configure cmake to output a compile command |
| database into its build directory: |
| <pre> |
| # Alternatively to calling cmake, use ccmake, toggle to advanced mode and |
| # set the parameter CMAKE_EXPORT_COMPILE_COMMANDS from the UI. |
| $ cmake -DCMAKE_EXPORT_COMPILE_COMMANDS=ON . |
| </pre> |
| </p> |
| <p> |
| This creates a file called compile_commands.json in the build directory. Now |
| you can run clang-check over files in the project by specifying the build path |
| as first argument and some source files as further positional arguments: |
| <pre> |
| $ cd /path/to/source/llvm |
| $ export BD=/path/to/build/llvm |
| $ $BD/bin/clang-check -p $BD tools/clang/tools/clang-check/ClangCheck.cpp |
| </pre> |
| </p> |
| |
| <h3 id="builtin">Builtin includes.</h3> |
| <p>Clang tools need their builtin headers and search for them the same way clang |
| does. Thus, the default location to look for builtin headers is in a path |
| $(dirname /path/to/tool)/../lib/clang/3.2/include relative to the tool |
| binary. This works out-of-the-box for tools running from llvm's toplevel |
| binary directory after building clang-headers, or if the tool is running |
| from the binary directory of a clang install next to the clang binary.</p> |
| |
| <p>Tips: if your tool fails to find stddef.h or similar headers, call |
| the tool with -v and look at the search paths it looks through.</p> |
| |
| <h3 id="linking">Linking.</h3> |
| <p>Please note that this presents the linking requirements at the time of this |
| writing. For the most up-to-date information, look at one of the tools' |
| Makefiles (for example |
| <a href="http://llvm.org/viewvc/llvm-project/cfe/trunk/tools/clang-check/Makefile?view=markup">clang-check/Makefile</a>). |
| </p> |
| |
| <p>To link a binary using the tooling infrastructure, link in the following |
| libraries: |
| <ul> |
| <li>Tooling</li> |
| <li>Frontend</li> |
| <li>Driver</li> |
| <li>Serialization</li> |
| <li>Parse</li> |
| <li>Sema</li> |
| <li>Analysis</li> |
| <li>Edit</li> |
| <li>AST</li> |
| <li>Lex</li> |
| <li>Basic</li> |
| </ul> |
| </p> |
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