LuckyDonkey

I was lucky enough to get on the beta program for a new product called Include Manager. It's a plugin for Microsoft .NET 2003/5. It displays a tree of the C/C++ files included for the currently selected file in .NET.

It sounds weird but believe me it offers a really unique view of the code infront of you. As code evolves over time, for whatever reason, it starts to suck in more and more of the surrounding code. Next thing you know your string library is dependant on your threading library which is dependant on your xml library. You've got not idea how it happened but you know your design is starting to crumble.

Looking at a single C/C++ file is like looking through a keyhole while trying to decide if the building on the other side of the door is architecturally Neoclassical or Art Deco. You might get it right but if you can step back it makes the job a lot easier.

Include Manager lets you step back from the file, from the project even and see how pieces of code are related via physical links (include links).

I'm a big fan of gaining new perspectives on your code. No one wants to code without syntax coloring, most people want intellisense (autocompletion)... well I see no reason why we don't all get hooked on include trees as well.