If you are interested in C++ refactoring get in touch with me. we are working for more than a decade on practical refactorings and for your example of renaming the preprocessor is just one hurdle. The others are intrinsic in the language and won't go away. However, an engineering approach and interactivity make many useful things practical, even if you can prove they will not work in general.

And IMHO, adressing tool friendlyness is in the scope. But also consider p0939 if you ask for language changes.

Sent from Peter Sommerlad's iPad
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> On 22 Feb 2018, at 20:37, Corentin <corentin.jabot_at_[hidden]> wrote:
>
> I was wondering what was the extent of what is meant by tooling ?
> Would it only be about providing tools, or can we discuss about ways to make C++ more tools friendly?
>
> I do have a pretty strong opinion on tooling C++ : It can't be done. Not really.
> The preprocessor and its pesky #ifdef blocks gets in the way. A tool never have a complete view of the source code so even a simple method renaming can't be done reliably ( and reliability is everything).
>
> Of course the preprocessor is not something we can get rid of, but maybe, just maybe we can tame it and contain it enough that reliable tooling becomes possible.
> I'd love that to be discussed and maybe see what's doable in that area
>
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