GNU GLOBAL is a

software Software is a set of computer programs and associated documentation and data. This is in contrast to hardware, from which the system is built and which actually performs the work. At the lowest programming level, executable code consists ...

tool for

source code In computing, source code, or simply code, is any collection of code, with or without comments, written using a human-readable programming language, usually as plain text. The source code of a program is specially designed to facilitate the wo ...

tagging to aid code comprehension. It works in a uniform fashion in various environments (

GNU Emacs GNU Emacs is a free software text editor. It was created by GNU Project founder Richard Stallman, based on the Emacs editor developed for Unix operating systems. GNU Emacs has been a central component of the GNU project and a flagship project of ...

, Vim, GNU less, GNU Bash, web browsers, etc.), allowing users to find all objects declared in the source files and to move among them easily. It is particularly useful for working on projects containing numerous sub-projects and complex syntax trees generated by the compilation process (e.g., C code containing numerous #ifdef directive which select among several ''main()'' functions using

conditional compilation In computer programming, conditional compilation is a compilation technique which results in an executable program that is able to be altered by changing specified parameters. This technique is commonly used when these alterations to the program a ...

). It is similar to older tagging software such as

ctags Ctags is a programming tool that generates an index (or tag) file of names found in source and header files of various programming languages to aid code comprehension. Depending on the language, functions, variables, class members, macros and ...

and etags, but differs in its independence from any specific

text editor A text editor is a type of computer program that edits plain text. Such programs are sometimes known as "notepad" software (e.g. Windows Notepad). Text editors are provided with operating systems and software development packages, and can be us ...

. GNU GLOBAL is

free software Free software or libre software is computer software distributed under terms that allow users to run the software for any purpose as well as to study, change, and distribute it and any adapted versions. Free software is a matter of liberty, no ...

maintained for the

GNU project The GNU Project () is a free software, mass collaboration project announced by Richard Stallman on September 27, 1983. Its goal is to give computer users freedom and control in their use of their computers and computing devices by collaborati ...

by Shigio Yamaguchi.

Use cases

Use cases are varied, and include traversing the source code of the

Linux kernel The Linux kernel is a free and open-source, monolithic, modular, multitasking, Unix-like operating system kernel. It was originally authored in 1991 by Linus Torvalds for his i386-based PC, and it was soon adopted as the kernel for the GNU ope ...

,"Navigating Linux Source Code"
''drdobbs.com'', March 1, 2001. browsing

Ruby A ruby is a pinkish red to blood-red colored gemstone, a variety of the mineral corundum ( aluminium oxide). Ruby is one of the most popular traditional jewelry gems and is very durable. Other varieties of gem-quality corundum are called sa ...

code after having analyzed it with Exuberant ctags or rtags,"Using rtags ang gtags for coding Ruby"
, ''simple-and-basic.com'', October 14, 2008. examining the structure of software packages in

HTML The HyperText Markup Language or HTML is the standard markup language for documents designed to be displayed in a web browser. It can be assisted by technologies such as Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and scripting languages such as JavaScri ...

mode,"Greg's source code navigation tools"
''lemis.com'', July 2005. or exploring a large and unfamiliar codebase."Code Spelunking: Exploring Cavernous Code Bases"
''queue.acm.org'', October 1, 2003.

Usage by other software

GLOBAL is used by other software, including GNU Automake. FreeBSD uses it in its build system.

References

External links

GNU GLOBAL
in the

Free Software Directory The Free Software Directory (FSD) is a project of the Free Software Foundation (FSF). It catalogs free software that runs under free operating systems—particularly GNU and Linux. The cataloged projects are often able to run in several other opera ...

.
GNU GLOBAL
on the

GNU Savannah GNU Savannah is a project of the Free Software Foundation initiated by Loïc Dachary, which serves as a collaborative software development management system for free Software projects. Savannah currently offers CVS, GNU arch, Subversion, Git, M ...

platform. {{DEFAULTSORT:Global, Gnu Code comprehension tools Code navigation tools Free computer programming tools Unix programming tools GNU Project software

Use cases

Usage by other software

See also

References

External links