C++ – Displaying the #include hierarchy for a C++ file in Visual Studio

cincludevisual studio

Problem: I have a large Visual C++ project that I'm trying to migrate to Visual Studio 2010. It's a huge mix of stuff from various sources and of various ages. I'm getting problems because something is including both winsock.h and winsock2.h.

Question: What tools and techniques are there for displaying the #include hierarchy for a Visual Studio C++ source file?

I know about cl /P for getting the preprocessor output, but that doesn't clearly show which file includes which other files (and in this case the /P output is 376,932 lines long 😎

In a perfect world I'd like a hierarchical display of which files include which other files, along with line numbers so I can jump into the sources:

source.cpp(1)
  windows.h(100)
    winsock.h
  some_other_thing.h(1234)
    winsock2.h

Best Answer

There is a setting:

Project Settings -> Configuration Properties -> C/C++ -> Advanced -> Show Includes

that will generate the tree. It maps to the compiler switch /showIncludes