[GCC-XML]gcc-xml , can serve to my goal?

[Brad King]

Mario,

> I'm a Computer Science Engineering Student. I'm working at my master
> thesis on the subject of Reverse Engineering. To be precise my thesis is
> about the development of a software tool for the recovering of scenarios
> ( use cases view ) from C++ source code.
> I've studied some methodologies about this recovering process as MM-Path
> and ASF ( Atomic System Function ). To implement a software tool that
> use these methodologies i need to do some analysis on c++ code such as
> parsing , symbol table management , control flow analysis and data flow
> analysis. I've not already done a deep analysis on *all* information i
> must to extract from code.
> I'd like to know if gccxml is suitable as a analysis platform to extract
> from code the info i require ( for example list of Methods , Class
> Hierarchy , Symbols informations and the capability of identify some
> particular type of statements[like I/O statements] to record in witch
> method a MM-Path start and/or die).
> If someone who has a certain degree of practice with gccxml can
> summarize me the features that gcc-xml can give to my goal i would thank
> him a lot!  I've read some docs from the gcc-xml site but i need to
> better understand what it can do and what remains on my shoulder :)

GCC-XML would be useful for extracting class hierarchy, method, and
function declaration information.  However, since it doesn't dump function
bodies, it is not useful for control flow analysis or identification of
statement types.

I'd suggest looking at OpenC++, an open-source C++ parser.  The last time
I looked at it, it was still missing some template-related features, but
they were working on it.  Using it will require a much bigger initial time
investment than writing a simple XML parser for GCC-XML's output, but it
does support function bodies.

Here is the home page:

http://www.csg.is.titech.ac.jp/~chiba/openc++.html

Good luck,
-Brad