Creating custom CDT refactorings without using internal classes

Question

I'm trying to write a custom C++ refactoring using Eclipse Indigo and CDT 8.0.2. The CDT provides a class, CRefactoring2, which obtains the AST and provides hooks. But this class is in an internal package, so I assume it will change in future versions of Eclipse, and that I shouldn't subclass it.

Is there an external API (within the CDT; I don't particularly want to write all the AST-getting code from scratch) I can use to get ASTs and declare my own Eclipse CDT refactorings?

Answer 1

Thank you Jeff for sharing your method of obtaining the AST. I looked through my code and I have a different method of getting the AST but it also uses public API. I would like to post that method as well:

// Assume there is a variable, 'file', of type IFile
ICProject cProject = CoreModel.getDefault().create(file.getProject() );
ITranslationUnit unit = CoreModelUtil.findTranslationUnit(file);
if (unit == null) {
    unit = CoreModel.getDefault().createTranslationUnitFrom(cProject, file.getLocation() );
}
IASTTranslationUnit ast = null;
IIndex index = null;
try {
    index = CCorePlugin.getIndexManager().getIndex(cProject);
} catch (CoreException e) {
    ...
}

try {
    index.acquireReadLock();
    ast = unit.getAST(index, ITranslationUnit.AST_PARSE_INACTIVE_CODE);
    if (ast == null) {
        throw new IllegalArgumentException(file.getLocation().toPortableString() + ": not a valid C/C++ code file");
    }
} catch (InterruptedException e) {
    ...
} catch (CoreException e) {
    ...
} finally {
    index.releaseReadLock();
}

Mine is a little more involved; I basically kept changing things until stuff started working consistently 100% of the time. I have not any more to add on what you said about the actual refactoring.

Edit: To clarify: this is the safest way I have so far of getting the translation unit.