How to run cscope from any directory?

Question

I set up cscope as explained in this tutorial. I do not want to regenerate my database on every invocation of cscope and hence I start it cscope -d. But the problem is, I need to run this command from the directory where my DB, cscope.out resides. I keep shuffling across directories and I want the flexibility to start cscope from anywhere. I tried putting CSCOPE_DB=~/cscope/cscope.out; export CSCOPE_DB in my .bash_profile/.bashrc to no avail. I also have export CSCOPE_EDITOR=vim in my bash profile files and as such can invoke cscope from within vim from any directory but not the standalone cscope! It always throws the error

cscope: cannot open file cscope.out

How can I do this?

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Feb 24 '16 at 07:38

I found a workaround. Assuming my cscope DB is in ~/cscope, I cd into this directory, launch cscope and go back to the directory I came from. Like so-

cd ~/cscope && cscope -d && cd - > /dev/null

Effectively, I'm able to launch cscope from any directory( and also stay in the same directory after cscope exits ). I've aliased the above command and just typing cs does the trick

How to run cscope from any directory?

1 Answers1