The Linux Development Platform Configuring, Using, and ... - Classes

CH07.fm Page 219 Monday, October 7, 2002 9:12 PM
Using cscope and cbrowser 219
7.4 Using cscope and cbrowser
The cscope is a very useful utility to browse through the source code tree of a large project. It
was originally written by Santa Cruz Operations and made public later on. You can download it
from http://cscope.sourceforge.net. For Linux, it is available in RPM format as well.
It is a text-mode screen-oriented utility. When you start it using the cscope command,
the initial screen looks like the one shown in Figure 7-1.
When invoked, cscope first creates its symbol file cscope.out in the current directory
that contains a reference to symbols in source code files. This reference is generated from
files with the extensions .c and .h. You can also use command line options to create this symbol
file from a particular type of source code files.
The bottom part of the screen shows options that can be used to look up a symbol in the
source code. The cursor is blinking at the first option and can be moved to other options using
arrow keys. For example, if you want to look up symbol “msg” in all source code files, just type
it in at the first line and press the Enter key. You will see a listing of files containing this symbol
as shown in Figure 7-2.
Figure 7-1 The cscope initial screen.