[lug] C code quality tools

[rm at fabula.de]

On Fri, Apr 19, 2002 at 02:42:13PM -0500, Michael J. Hammel wrote:
> Thus spoke Chris Riddoch
> > Anybody else have recommendations on tools, compilers, or libraries
> > that make the C programmer's life-o-debugging easier?
> 
> cscope:  http://cscope.sourceforge.net/
> I've been using it for years on SVR4 systems and was ecstatic when they
> released the source for porting to other Unices.
> 
> Makes finding symbols much easier.  So if some nutcase actually uses single
> letter variable names ("a", "v", etc.) you can find them much quicker using
> cscope than perusing source code.  Also makes global changes *very* fast.
> I converted a bunch of GIMP 1.x plug-ins to the newer GIMP 1.2.x API using
> this.  Very quick and fairly painless.
> 
> Text (ie curses) based.  Runs in a xterm or in a console window.  Compiles
> very easily from source.

Two more tools: 


- xref for (X)emacs. This (shareware) tool is pretty close 
  to cscope and has very good itegration with (x)emacs.

- source navigator from Cygnus/Red Hat. This is the _one_ tool i have come
  to love recently. It helps me a lot to investigate  other programmers code
  an building a source navigator project database is the first step i do when
  i start to work on a new project (i'm just knee deep in Apache 2 code where there's
  not that much written documentation yet. Stepping throught the request cycle with 
  the gvd debugger and snavigtor's symbol retriver and class/structure browser helped
  a lot). Only drawback: it uses the "wrong" scripting language :-)

If you are willing to spend some bucks there 's also the Linux version of Sniff which
s pretty similar to snavigator ...

  Ralf Mattes

> -- 
> Michael J. Hammel           |
> The Graphics Muse           |   Chinese Proverb:
> mjhammel at graphics-muse.org  |      Man who eat many prunes get good run for
> http://www.graphics-muse.com       money.
> _______________________________________________
> Web Page:  http://lug.boulder.co.us
> Mailing List: http://lists.lug.boulder.co.us/mailman/listinfo/lug