C Hexa Nav

Go to Implementation for C function pointers — built for hexagonal architectures (ports & adapters) on embedded projects.

In a ports-and-adapters C codebase, calls go through structs of function pointers:

port->send(buf, len);

Ctrl+Click (Go to Definition) only takes you to the field declaration inside the struct — a dead end. C Hexa Nav statically indexes your project and resolves which concrete functions are actually bound to each port field, so Go to Implementation (Ctrl+F12) jumps straight to uart_dma_send().

Features

• Go to Implementation on port fields — put the cursor on a function-pointer field (at the call site or in the struct definition) and press Ctrl+F12, or right-click → Go to Implementations.
• Multiple candidates supported — when several adapters bind the same field (real driver, simulator, test stub), all of them are listed in a peek view.
• Works on real-world firmware code — the parser is error-tolerant: files that don't currently compile, extern "C" headers, and in-progress edits don't break the index.
• Always up to date — the index refreshes incrementally when you save a .c/.h file, and rebuilds automatically when compile_commands.json is regenerated.

Supported binding patterns

A port is a typedef'd struct of function pointers:

typedef struct {
    int  (*send)(const uint8_t *buf, size_t len);
    void (*flush)(void);
} comm_port_t;

C Hexa Nav resolves the two common ways adapters bind to it:

1. Designated initializer

static const comm_port_t uart_adapter = {
    .send  = uart_dma_send,
    .flush = uart_flush,
};

2. Runtime assignment (typical in *_init() functions)

void uart_comm_init(comm_port_t *p_port) {
    p_port->send  = s_uart_send;
    p_port->flush = s_uart_flush;
}

Getting started

1. Make sure your project has a compile_commands.json (with CMake: -DCMAKE_EXPORT_COMPILE_COMMANDS=ON). C Hexa Nav auto-detects it in common build directories (build/, out/, cmake-build-*/, including per-preset subfolders).
2. Open the project in VS Code. The extension activates on the first C file you open and indexes the workspace in the background.
3. Put the cursor on a port field — e.g. send in port->send(...) — and press Ctrl+F12.

Commands

Settings

Known limitations

Resolution is purely syntactic (no preprocessing), which keeps it fast and tolerant of non-compiling code, but means:

• Adapters generated by macros are not seen.
• Indirect typedefs (aliases of port types) are not resolved.
• All #ifdef branches are indexed, not just the active one — you may see candidates from inactive configurations.

Release notes

See the changelog.

1.0.0

Initial release: port/binding indexing (designated initializers + runtime assignments), Implementation provider, incremental re-indexing, compile_commands.json auto-detection.