How to Refactor Millions of Line of Code Without Alienating your Colleagues
summary
Claims that clang-tidy extension API plus custom clang tooling can automatically rewrite APIs across millions of lines of C++ code, turning months of manual edits into minutes by running matchers and FixIts at scale. Shows concrete tools: repo-wide AST matchers, code-mod runners, CI preview jobs, and migration headers. Reports that large-scale runs do generate heavy merge conflicts and break dependent branches, and recommends incremental rollouts, CI preview runs, and explicit migration shims to avoid disrupting colleagues.
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chapters (10)
- 0:00Massive codebase refactoring intro
- 3:03Legacy code risks
- 8:22Refactoring vs business needs
- 14:08Gradual modernization strategies
- 20:35Automating refactoring
- 27:09Team resistance to changes
- 33:14Measuring refactoring success
- 41:48Common pitfalls and how to avoid them
- 47:58Refactoring success stories
- 56:40Q&A
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