'No-compile' MFC Browsing

Rick Esterling -- rick@eco.twg.com
Tuesday, January 16, 1996

Upgrading 32-bit MFC projects from MSVC 2.2 to MSVC 4.0 (w/ SP-1).  
Running WinNT 3.51 (w/ SP-3).

Everytime I load and old .MAK file into Dev Studio and go through the
conversion process, I get the following dialog right before it asks me to
save the new project file:

                          ---------------
   "You can speed up your builds by disabling compiled browse information,
   and using Developer Studio's "no-compile" browser.  Do you want to
   disable compiled browse information?"

                             YES | NO
                          ----------------

I have exhaustively searched everything at my disposal (Release Notes,
Visual C++ Books Online, MSDN, et al) and can find no other reference to
this "no-compile" browser.  All of the documentation still refers to the
old-style .SBR and .BSC browse methods.

If I click yes (as shown above) and later try to browse my source code, it
tells me I need to enable browsing in my project file and recompile my
project which, of course, builds the .SBR and .BSC files. 

Does anyone have have any details about this seemingly phantom no-compile
browser?

Much thanks,

---

Jim Beveridge -- jimb@turningpoint.com
Thursday, January 18, 1996

Rick Esterling wrote:
> 
> Upgrading 32-bit MFC projects from MSVC 2.2 to MSVC 4.0 (w/ SP-1).
> Running WinNT 3.51 (w/ SP-3).
> 
> Everytime I load and old .MAK file into Dev Studio and go through the
> conversion process, I get the following dialog right before it asks me to
> save the new project file:
> 
>                           ---------------
>    "You can speed up your builds by disabling compiled browse information,
>    and using Developer Studio's "no-compile" browser.  Do you want to
>    disable compiled browse information?"
> 
>                              YES | NO
>                           ----------------
> 
> I have exhaustively searched everything at my disposal (Release Notes,
> Visual C++ Books Online, MSDN, et al) and can find no other reference to
> this "no-compile" browser.  All of the documentation still refers to the
> old-style .SBR and .BSC browse methods.
> 
> If I click yes (as shown above) and later try to browse my source code, it
> tells me I need to enable browsing in my project file and recompile my
> project which, of course, builds the .SBR and .BSC files.
> 
> Does anyone have have any details about this seemingly phantom no-compile
> browser?
> 
> Much thanks,

The no-compile browser is the class browser that automatically shows
in your Project Workspace window (Click the tab with the blue
square connecting to cyan and magenta squares).  It is completely
UNintegrated with the old-browse functionality, so it cannot
handle a "goto definition" command (CTRL-F11 in VC 2.2) when 
your cursor is on a variable name.

The no-compile browser will only show classes in alphabetical order.
For large projects I have found it almost useless because I cannot
group the classes together that I want to work with and the alphabetical
list is HUGE.  The other problem is that the no-compile browser
can cause substantial disk thrashing (even with 32MB), even though
it is running during idle time. I've found no way to disable it,
unfortunately.

In a nutshell, I leave the old browse mechanism turned on because
the new mechanism can't support the "hyper-text" type jumps that
the old browser could when my cursor was on a function name,
a class name or a variable name. (e.g. Go to definition, go
to reference, pop stack, etc.)


Hope this helps,
Jim

---

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