From: dal@mdavcr.mda.ca (Dale Lutz)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c++
Subject: Re: Public domain Class Browsers
Date: 14 Oct 92 16:22:39 GMT
Organization: MacDonald Dettwiler, 13800 Commerce Parkway, Richmond, BC, Canada  V6V 2J3

There is a great tool called SNIFF which is available in the public
domain for the SUN SPARC (commercial versions are available on other
platforms).  We have used it quite a bit around here and found it to be
extremely useful.  Its performance on large amounts of code (around
250,000) has been very very good.  I attach the following information
from the "Announcement" file in the Sniff directory at the two FTP
sites (listed at the end):

****

Abstract
========

Sniff is a C++/C programming environment providing browsing, cross-
referencing, design visualization, documentation, and editing
support. It delegates compilation and debugging to any C++ compiler
and debugger of choice.

The main goal in developing Sniff was to create an efficient
portable C++ programming environment which makes it possible to edit
and browse large software systems textually and graphically. Much
emphasis was laid on runtime and memory efficiency and on a
comfortable user interface.


History, Availability, and Future of Sniff
===========================================

Sniff was developed in the research laboratory of the Union Bank of
Switzerland (UBS) where it has been used on its own development for
about one year.

Two public domain beta releases of Sniff have been available for
some months. These releases were applied for professional software
development at several places.

This is the announcement of release 1.6. Version 1.6 is the last
public domain release. It has lost the beta.

Now that Sniff is almost finished I want to free myself from the
time consuming porting, support, and maintenance chore. For this
reason UBS cooperates with takeFive - a Salzburg based software
house - which will produce the first commercial release of Sniff
until end of year. A prerequisite for this cooperation is that
universities get further commercial releases of Sniff almost for
free and research laboratories will get Sniff at a fraction of the
commercial price.


Supported Platforms
===================

The newest public domain release (1.6) runs on SPARCstations only.
It requires OS 4.1.2 (it is not tested under 4.1.1) and it runs
under Open Windows and X11 (olwm, mwm, and twm window managers) as
well as under SunView.

takeFive has already ported Sniff to the HP RISC and IBM RS 6000
platforms.

How to Obtain Sniff
===================

Together with this announcement I publish release 1.6 which can be
obtained via anonymous ftp from the following two locations:

* iamsun.unibe.ch (130.92.64.10)
  /pub/Sniff1.6 or C++/Sniff1.6 directory

* self.stanford.edu (36.22.0.201 or 36.22.0.41)
  /pub/sniff directory

If you have no ftp access send $80 to:

takeFive Software GesmbH
Jakob-Haringer-Str. 8
5020 Salzburg
Austria

Tel. 0043 662 45 79 15
Fax. 0043 662 45 79 15 6
email: info@takeFive.co.at

They will send you a quarter inch tape (other media on request) and
the printed documentation. For $20 you will get the printed
documentation only.

-- 

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Dale Lutz      - MacDonald Dettwiler Richmond, BC, CANADA -      dal@mda.ca