Good refactoring support for C++

Question

The Visual Studio refactoring support for C# is quite good nowadays (though not half as good as some Java IDE's I've seen already) but I'm really missing C++ support.

I have seen Refactor! and am currently trying it out, but maybe one of you guys know a better tool or plugin?

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I've been working with Visual Assist X now for a week or two and got totally addicted. Thanks for the tip, I'll try to convince my boss to get me a license at work too.

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I've been bughunting for a few days since Visual Assist X kept messing up my Visual Studio after a few specific refactorings, It took me (and customer support) a week to hunt down but let's say for now that Visual Assist X is not a good combination with ClipX.

Answer 1

Visual Assist X by Whole Tomato software is not free, but it's absolutely worth the money if you use Visual Studio for C++.

http://www.wholetomato.com/

Answer 2

Mozilla's Taras Glek worked the last year or two on C++ analysis and code rewriting tools. His blog is at http://blog.mozilla.com/tglek/, you can find links to the tools they created there. They are of course free and open-source. No GUI, but I thought I'd link it in case it's interesting to anybody.

Answer 3

I'm not familiar with the tools you mentioned but the refactoring support for C++ in Eclipse 3.4 is getting pretty useful and growing.

Answer 4

If you like emacs then Xrefactory is a good choice.

Answer 5

I have tried Refactor!, as its features seemed promising, as did its testing with a simple testing project, but it failed to work with our real project at all - a lots of CPU activity, sometimes even frozen VS IDE, Refactoring UI not appearing at all for most of the code.

We are using Visual Assist X instead. While it does not offer than many refactorings and it seems to me somewhat more complicated to use, it works.

Answer 6

I didn't find this post and created another one. There is a great response about VS2010 there.

If you are like me, who wishes VS2010 comes with C++ refactoring support, please visit my Microsoft Connect ticket and vote for it. Hopefully with enough votes, MS may give it a higher priority.