ACAV Software Overview

ACAV (Aurora Clang AST Viewer) is a desktop application for interactive exploration of Clang abstract syntax trees in real C, C++, and Objective-C projects. Instead of working from raw -ast-dump output, users can inspect source code, AST structure, declaration context, and project files side by side.

The project is intended for students, researchers, and developers who need to understand how Clang parses a codebase. ACAV focuses on read-only inspection: it helps users trace source locations to AST nodes, inspect node properties, and study how program structure is represented inside Clang.

ACAV screenshot

What ACAV Helps You Inspect

ACAV is useful for several common workflows:

learning how language constructs map to Clang AST nodes
exploring declaration scope and semantic context in large codebases
debugging or developing Clang-based analysis tools
searching nodes by kind, name, or type
exporting selected AST subtrees to JSON for further analysis

The interface supports bidirectional navigation between source code and the AST. A user can select a location in the source view and highlight the corresponding AST node, or select a node in the tree and jump back to the relevant source range.

Typical Workflow

To use ACAV on a project, first build the software from this repository. Then generate a JSON compilation database for the codebase you want to inspect. Usually this file is named compile_commands.json. CMake can emit it directly, and tools such as Bear can generate it for build systems that do not.

After that, launch ACAV and point it at the compilation database:

acav -c /path/to/compile_commands.json

Once the project is loaded, users can browse project files, trigger AST extraction for a translation unit, inspect node details, search the tree, and export subtrees.

Key Capabilities

bidirectional navigation between source locations and AST nodes
project file browsing with included headers and translation units
declaration context panels for semantic and lexical scope
AST and source-code search for targeted inspection
JSON export for selected AST regions and subtrees

Documentation

Additional project information can be found in: