1. Overview of the tools

1.1 What is this?

GNU GLOBAL is a source code tag system that works the same way across diverse environments. You can locate a specified object in the source files and move there easily. It is useful for hacking a large project containing many subdirectories, many #ifdef and many main() functions.

It is similar to ctags or etags but is different from them at the point of independence of any editor.

1.2 Concept of project.

GNU GLOBAL can treat a source tree containing subdirectories as a project. It is similar to CVS. You can get the relative path of your object from anywhere in the source tree.

You need not specify where the tag file is. Instead, global(1) will locate the tag file by itself. If tag file isn't found in the current directory, global(1) search parent directories for tag file.

User's position (current directory) is the first argument for GLOBAL's command.

1.3 Features.

GNU GLOBAL has following features:

• support C, C++, Yacc, Java, PHP4 and assembly.
• work the same way across diverse environments. Currently, support followings:
  • Shell command line
  • Bash shell.
  • Vi editor clone (nvi, elvis, vim)
  • Less viewer
  • Emacs editor (emacs, mule, xemacs)
  • Glimmer editor
  • Web browser
  • Doxygen documentation system
• find the locations of a specified object quickly.
• locate not only object definitions but also object references.
• allows duplicate objects.
• locate also path which includes specified pattern.
• search not only in a source tree but also in library paths.
• understand POSIX 1003.2 regular expressions.
• support external search engine (grep and id-utils).
• generate hypertext of source code.
• tag files are independent of machine architecture.
• plug-in parser is available to treat new language.
• support incremental updating of tag files.
• support customizing with gtags.conf.
• generate completion list for completing input method.