output AST

[eisbaer66]

Is there an option to only generate the AST and output it (to stdout or a file) without actually generating a smx?
Would be interesting for tools like editors (showing errors etc.) and other static analysis.
Might for example allow to check if all natives in a include-file have a registered implementation, find all references of a variable or check for naming conventions etc.

Maybe something like spcomp --ast-output stdout or spcomp --ast-output ./ast.json would work?
Using it in combination with --syntax-only would skip the generation of smx-files and only output the AST instead.

I'd expect a JSON format, but maybe providing options to use different formats (or using a different format altogether) makes sense. Could use --ast-format json or similar to specify the format (on top of --ast-output ...).

[dvander]

I have a WIP patch for this but don't want to merge it without a separate 1.11 branch. It refactors the AST a bit.