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Using agents to author bespoke clang-tidy transformations

A C++ code base belonging to one user or organization often needs repetitive structural changes specific to its APIs, conventions, and design. An agent can design and test a bespoke transformation, then use clang-tidy to apply the resulting rule consistently across the code base.

The infrastructure described in the three supporting proposals would make this workflow practical through a suitable Model Context Protocol

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Compile success with 19.50

Compile failure with 19.51

Compile with latest msvc

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Copilot Chat Transcript

Extracted on 2026-01-14 14:17:58

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User

is it possible to hardware accelerate a fractal by generating verilog that implements the per-orbit calculation and targets an fpga with the open source yosys toolchain?

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Clangd Matcher Generation LSP Extension

Overview

This document outlines a plan for extending the Language Server Protocol (LSP) to enable editors to obtain clang-query matcher strings for code at the cursor position. This feature will help developers generate matcher expressions that can be used as the basis for clang-tidy checks or standalone clang-query queries.

Table of Contents

1. Motivation
2. Design Goals

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Transformer Text Language Design Plan

Executive Summary

This document outlines a plan for creating a text input language to describe transformer library expressions (ASTEdits and associated components) that are passed to makeRule. This language would be analogous to clang-query's text input language for AST matchers, enabling declarative specification of code transformations.

Background

Current State

• clang-query: Provides text-based matcher specification (e.g., match functionDecl())

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Configurable Replacement Check Plan for clang-tidy

Overview

This document outlines a comprehensive plan for implementing a configurable clang-tidy check that combines:

1. AST Matching: Uses clang-query-style matcher expressions to select AST nodes
2. Node Binding: Binds matched AST nodes to named identifiers
3. Template Replacement: Uses Transformer's Stencil system for code generation
4. Fix-it Generation: Generates suggested fix-its for matched code patterns

This check type enables users to define custom refactoring rules through configuration without writing C++ code.

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Using NuGet Package Caching with VcPkg and GitHub Actions

The GitHub Actions Cache mechanism has been removed from vcpkg, so you can't use x-gha in VCPKG_BINARY_SOURCES as a way to re-use built products from one build to the next anymore. I was using x-gha because the setup was trivial for all platforms: just set a couple environment variables.

You can use NuGet packages to achieve the same purpose, although the setup is a little more complicated. Here's what I learned while setting this up for the first time for use with GitHub Actions.

1. GitHub Classic Personal Access Token

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Simple vcpkg Overlay Ports Setup

The file vcpkg-configuration.json uses an existing vcpkg as the default registry; this assumes vcpkg as a git submodule. The baseline value is the commit hash of the vcpkg submodule. Update the hash as needed to reflect the actual version of the vcpkg registry you've got checked out as a submodule.

Overlay Ports

Use a directory vcpkg-overlays to contain the overlay ports;

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Disassemble an Object File with MSVC Linker

There are undocumented switches to the linker that will disassemble an object file:

link /dump /disasm /linenumbers /out:foo.asm foo.obj

Cribbed from an answer on this stackoverflow question

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{
  "version": 6,
  "cmakeMinimumRequired": {
    "major": 3,
    "minor": 23,
    "patch": 0
  },
  "configurePresets": [
    {
      "name": "sibling-build-preset",