[Qt-creator] Whacky thought of the day

[Coda Highland]

On Mon, Mar 3, 2014 at 4:17 PM, Jason H <scorp1us at yahoo.com> wrote:
> So Qt comes along and helps kick C++ into the modern era.  I was wondering
> if we could use Qt Creator to address one of my remaining complaints of C++.
>
> I really like languages like Python, C#, and Java where there is only an
> implementation file. While we can't get rid of headers, it would be cool if
> we could define a class file that gets split by QtCreator or qmake that
> would prepare the .h and .cpp files from a unified file.
>
> Creator helps with the maintaining the header and the C with the light bulb,
> but this isn't as elegant as having one file that controls both. I'm
> wondering if its possible and f clang would be any help in reaching this new
> level of elevating C++?

It's certainly POSSIBLE to do... It'd have to be done at both the
qmake level and the QtC level, with a custom compiler rule that takes
.cppm (for "C++ merged") from a MERGEDSOURCES variable, generates
.h/.cpp files, and adds them to the HEADERS and SOURCES rules. You'd
have to implement a custom compiler (possibly using libclang) to parse
the AST and generate a those output files, and you'd have to implement
a QtC plugin that recognized a .cppm file as containing stuff that
you'd want autocompletion for.

Sounds like a pain in the butt to me, and I'm the one already
implementing a C++ compiler from scratch.

/s/ Adam