If you want to build tools that manipulate Python code, you need a parser. If you want to write your tool in Python, access to the "real" parser is included as part of standard library. However, if you want access to this parser from C/C++ code, you basically need to include the entire Python runtime. I spent a few hours hacking away on it to separate the parser from the rest of Python. The code here is very rough and does not currently support all the Python types, but it does work (tested with Mac OS X and Linux). As an example, I've written a small program that prints the parse tree. It only supports a subset of the parse tree types, but it should be pretty obvious how it could be extended.
def foo( arg1, arg2, arg3 ):
a = 5
b = arg2
return arg2
b = 72
function name = 'foo'
arguments:
name = 'arg1'
name = 'arg2'
name = 'arg3'
body:
assignment
targets:
name = 'a'
value:
number = 5
assignment
targets:
name = 'b'
value:
name = 'arg2'
return value:
name = 'arg2'
assignment
targets:
name = 'b'
value:
number = 72