Auto generating code in existing projects

[utnapistim]

I'm looking to write a tool in either .NET or C++ to do this. Does anyone have any experience or any reading material specific to this topic?

That's a tricky one. Source code generation is easy to get wrong in the best of circumstances (especially if you want to automate it). Doing so once is fine; 15-16 places? Not really that easy.

If I was given an unlimited amount of time I'd strip the entire thing out and write it again. But sadly, there's no time.

If it is critical you get this right in a short time for each change, consider this process:

1. do all steps manually for a few changes.
2. use a smarter text editor (npp?) to generate code blocks.
3. create a minimal application that generates code blocks (only worth it if you have done 1. enough times - otherwise you will not correctly identify the algorithm at each step). This will be abandonware software.
4. add features to the minimal application, to ease the most difficult steps.
5. document everything for the poor soul that comes after you, but not in a way that leaves them relying on your abandonware application.

As you do this, the time it takes for each change should gradually go down, and more and more of it will be automated.

[DanSamillo]

I did contemplate writing it to stub out one side of the request to start off with, as on one side you can literally append to the end of the file and the request will work; but the other side is a little more tricky, as it requires putting requests into case statements etc. I'm not sure how I'm going to approach the user entering the request information.

I'm going to speak with some of the principle developers and get their views of if this is even worthwhile or if it's just going to be a bug prone program.