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Building an environment

OO-Browser stores the browsing results into an environment, which is a prebuilt lisp file that can quickly be loaded into memory. In the following steps we will build an environment for browsing Tkintern classes.

Hit C-c C-o to invoke OO-Browser. You will be greeted with a prompt

Load/Create OO-Browser Environment: /usr2/src/oobr/
/usr2/src/oobr/ is the default path, which is formed by taking the path for the current buffer. The default name for the environment file is OOBR, but you can name it to your liking.

After this you are asked to choose the language:

Choose: 1) C++; 2) Python:
I have configured my OO-Browser to offer browsing for C++ and Python only. When you have selected Python, you will be flashed a message like

``/usr2/src/oobr/OOBR'', no such file.
and then you are asked to start specifying the environment

Please specify the ``OOBR'' Environment (Hit RTN to begin).
After hitting the requested Enter key, you will be prompted for the source directories. OO-Browser divides the source directories into two categories: System directories and Library directories. For system directories you are supposed to enter those directories that contain your still evolving source code. Library directories are meant for stable, reusable sources. OO-Browser recursively searches the subdirectories of all the given directories, so only separate directory trees need to be entered. (It is possible to exclude subdirectories by setting the BR-SKIP-DIR-REGEXPS variable.)

System search dir #1 (RTN to end): 
As we are just looking at the Tkintern classes this time, we leave the system search directory empty. For the following prompt of library directories we will enter the Tkintern directory.

Library search dir #1 (RTN to end): /usr/local/lib/python/tkinter/
We just hit Enter for the second library directory. After that the Loading Environment... message will flash by, and the OO-Browser will greet you with these two prompts:

Build Environment from spec in file, ``/usr2/src/oobr/OOBR''? (y or n)
Build Environment in a background process? (y or n)
Just hit 'y' and 'n'.

Depending on the amount of the source code, it may be useful to create the environment in a background process. However, building an environment for the full /usr/local/lib/python tree, with 38363 lines of source code, only takes about 1.5 minutes on my 486/120MHz, running Linux.

After the build is finished, OO-Browser creates the browse windows and display the available Tkintern classes.