Visual C++ browse information

Question

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

Answer 1

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.

Answer 2

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.

Answer 3

.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).