CODEWITHSUNDEEP
visual-studiovisual-c++browse-information
dimba
dimba

Reputation: 27611

Visual C++ browse information

I am trying to figure out what the browse information (.sbr files) is used for but find only references how to create it. So what is it for?

Thanks Dima

Upvotes: 7

Views: 6179

Answers (3)

Pavel Minaev
Pavel Minaev

Reputation: 101615

.sbr is pretty much Visual Studio's ctags - an index of symbols with backreferences to the source. When available, it's used by "Find Symbol" and other similar tools. It's more accurate than the built-in VS parser, because C++ can be tricky, and the real compiler can do a better job (though that is not quite true in VS2010 anymore).

Upvotes: 3

Kim Gräsman
Kim Gräsman

Reputation: 7596

At one time browse info drove the "Go to definition" engine, but that has been reworked in later version of Visual C++. Some third-party tools still use browse info (can't remember for sure, but I think one of Rational's tools does) to cross-reference code.

I always disable it, to shorten build times.

Upvotes: 2

Shay Erlichmen
Shay Erlichmen

Reputation: 31928

Read here (Visual C++ Team Blog: IntelliSense History, Part 1)

Capturing information about a C or C++ program’s structure has been around for a very long time in Microsoft’s products. Preceding even Visual C++ 1.0, the compiler supported generating program information through .SBR and .BSC files. (Note: The compiler in Visual C++ 1.0 was already version 8, so the command line tools had been around a while already.) The SBR files contain reference and definition information for a single translation unit that the compiler generates as it compiles. These SBR files are combined in a later step using the BSCMAKE tool to generate a BSC file. This file can then be used to look at many different aspects of a program: reference, definitions, caller-callee graphs, macros, etc.

Upvotes: 7

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