Interesting question. What would prevent this to happen indeed?
One reason I can think of is that for GCC all input languages are converted to the same intermediate representation (IR). From there, it's easy to apply the same optimisations, generated code, etc.
For refactoring tools, I have never heard of such IR. The benefits of going for an IR are not obvious either. The drawbacks are huge: a lot more code, difficulty to build an IR rich enough to represent the semantics of all input languages, and there's an extra mapping to go back to the original code by keeping indentation and formatting.
While it is more obvious for GCC: you need another representation than the AST to compile to assembly, optimisations are run on the IR, there is no need to take care of the original source formatting.
Languages also have very subtle differences in meaning/behaviour making it harder to reuse refactorings across languages.
Maybe it's possible to go with your idea, but I think it would require a big team working on it. Who's willing to spend the money or the time when the current approach seems satisfactory?
One reason I can think of is that for GCC all input languages are converted to the same intermediate representation (IR). From there, it's easy to apply the same optimisations, generated code, etc.
For refactoring tools, I have never heard of such IR. The benefits of going for an IR are not obvious either. The drawbacks are huge: a lot more code, difficulty to build an IR rich enough to represent the semantics of all input languages, and there's an extra mapping to go back to the original code by keeping indentation and formatting.
While it is more obvious for GCC: you need another representation than the AST to compile to assembly, optimisations are run on the IR, there is no need to take care of the original source formatting.
Languages also have very subtle differences in meaning/behaviour making it harder to reuse refactorings across languages.
Maybe it's possible to go with your idea, but I think it would require a big team working on it. Who's willing to spend the money or the time when the current approach seems satisfactory?