On 14 March 2014 07:55, Walter Bright <newshound2@digitalmars.com> wrote:

On 3/13/2014 10:07 AM, Xavier Bigand wrote:

Maybe if changes are really simple a tool can help? Tools are needed for such
kind of refactoring can be done automatically.

Source code "fixers" give me the heebie-jeebies. Besides, this particular fix needed some judgement.

I think it depends how it's done. Once upon a time, a tool that just made changes to a bunch of files, I would agree, is horrible.

These days you have version control, and it would also be easy for the tool to pop up a merge window to visualise the changes being made.

Theoretically, such a tool could produce a patch rather than modify your code directly, then you can merge it with your tool of choice, and visualise what it did in the process.

In fact, that's how to add this feature to DMD that people often ask for; run the compiler with a special flag that does "upgrade v2.0xx -> 2.0yy", and have it produce a patch file rather than modify your source.

That's gotta be fairly unobjectionable. I'd say that's an awesome feature, whereas, like you, I would strongly oppose any feature that directly updates your code for you.