feature: add more advanced setSimpleName that also changes the references

[surli]

Hi everyone,

I find that really counter intuitive that the reference are not considered as CtNamedElement: for example, recently I wrote a processor to rename element in Spoon, in order to do it properly I also had to rename references, then it led me to the creation of a processor of CtElement with ugly casts to finally call the same methods getSimpleName/setSimpleName.

I know there is an historical reason for that and it would break a lot of things to change the metamodel to make CtReference inherits from CtNamedElement. I also know that @monperrus point of view on that is - if I remember well - that the reference should be computed from the structural elements and not directly modified by the end users.

However I really have the feeling that the current API does not allow to easily change only structural elements: for refactorings, we need to fix the references too.

So, I see at least two solutions here:

1. to make another interface maybe called CtAbstractNamedElement for CtReference and CtNamedElement: we keep the fact that CtNamedElement are structural elements, but we also allow to do lots of renaming/filtering by name, in using the same type
2. a completely different solution: we use internally in Spoon the model change listener to fix the reference when we change a name of a structural element. It won't help for querying the model, but it can surely help when refactoring.

Actually we might even apply both solution.
Is it a problem you also encountered using Spoon or is it just me? And WDYT about those solutions?

[tdurieux]

a completely different solution: we use internally in Spoon the model change listener to fix the reference when we change a name of a structural element. It won't help for querying the model, but it can surely help when refactoring.

I don't think it is a good idea to do this, especially because of the clone. The reference is pointing to the original version or to the clone?
I think it is better to provide utility classes that does the refactoring instead of trying to do it automatically.

[surli]

I think it is better to provide utility classes that does the refactoring instead of trying to do it automatically.

I agree that we have to provide classes to ease the refactoring. But IMHO it won't cover all dev needs, and so the problem will remain.

I really see that as a design flaw for adopting Spoon: it takes time to understand the metamodel, and when you understand that references are also named elements you have to take into account in your transformations it's really tedious to process them differently than structural named elements.