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Source Code Browsing Tools?

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the emacsen-are-right-out dept.

Marco Sanvido asks: "I often look at source code (especially C, but this question is valid for other languages as well) and I have a really hard time in understanding how it works. Documentation is often missing or quite outdated, and the only way to see how the program works is to try to understand the source code. Which tools do you prefer to use for browsing and studying source code? So far I have used LXR for Linux, Eclipse for java, and CScope, but I'm not sure that these tools are the best solution." It's tempting to flood this question with answers for your IDE, but the key thing here is _browsing_, not _development_. What decent, lightweight programs would work well as source code viewers?

4 of 165 comments (clear)

  1. A couple of options by plover · · Score: 5, Informative
    If you're looking for really lightweight, run the code through a prettyprinter first. Pick the style you can most easily read. For example, I personally don't like K&R style, but that's entirely up to you.

    If you're looking more for documentation of existing code, doxygen is great. It produces click-to-follow hierarchies, graphical pictures of trees, and can will intelligently display some of the comments it encounters. It can produce output in html, LaTeX, rtf, PS, PDF, and even man pages. And I know from experience that it can handle some pretty massive projects.

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    John
  2. OpenGrok by Lucractius · · Score: 4, Informative

    the opensolaris code browser is built off a bunch of open source stuff.

    OpenGrok
    its incredibly easy to use, and makes things very easy to read. and is now packaged for your enjoyment.
    and available at http://www.opensolaris.org/os/project/opengrok/

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    XML - A clever joke would be here if /. didn't mangle tag brackets.
  3. codeviz by meowsqueak · · Score: 4, Informative

    You can make some useful call graphs with codeviz + graphviz. I sometimes find this useful for tracing the heirarchy of abstraction through a set of C source files.

    http://www.csn.ul.ie/~mel/projects/codeviz/

  4. Re:Nothing Can Beat a Good Editor by plover · · Score: 4, Informative
    For windows, I've completely replaced "notepad.exe" with "notepad2.exe" And when I say completely, I mean I crawled through my system registry editing every occurrance of "notepad.exe" to "notepad2.exe". Shell opens, file associations, defaults of every sort use it. I love it. And unless someone using the computer is particularly observant, they don't even notice it's not the original notepad.

    It has a very simple interface that looks like the original notepad, it does syntax coloring for two dozen different languages and file formats, shows bracket matching, adds line numbers, word wrap features, support for UNIX- and mac-style line terminations, regexps, and is in general what notepad itself should have been back in the 1990s. Plus, it's freeware. What more could you want?

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    John