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My school of thought would be to limit it to just #include, #if, #else, #end, and non-recursive single word only #define / #undef. Force everything to be 1 per single line, and call it a day.

Macros should always be the absolute last resort to doing anything. Stepping through code in gdb with some "creative" macro-based API is almost as bad as C++.

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I've seen 'C' macros used to do template-ey things that probably reinforced the readability of the code ( once you get used to the fact that the macros were there at all ) .

More modern compilers allow using non-static "const" constructs to do much of the same, which is a great improvement.

To wit:

#define in_bounds(lower,x,upper) ((x <upper) && (x >lower))

vs. const bool in_bounds = ((x > lower) && ( x < upper ));

Macros can be used effectively for reduction in strength, so long as you're not too clever about it.

You'll forgive me if my knowledge is a bit dated. I largely work on tools integration these days and don't do much in the way of framework development but aren't macros pretty much the defacto way of doing reflection/rtti. Actually, almost every mature framework I've worked with in the past used macros to markup class properties, register types, etc.

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