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Source Code Browsing Tools?
Marco Sanvido asks: "I often look at source code (especially C, but this question is valid for other languages as well) and I have a really hard time in understanding how it works. Documentation is often missing or quite outdated, and the only way to see how the program works is to try to understand the source code. Which tools do you prefer to use for browsing and studying source code? So far I have used LXR for Linux, Eclipse for java, and CScope, but I'm not sure that these tools are the best solution." It's tempting to flood this question with answers for your IDE, but the key thing here is _browsing_, not _development_. What decent, lightweight programs would work well as source code viewers?
I'm actually a fan of using a debugger to step through code I'm trying to understand. I can let it keep track of the call stack for me and it saves me from having to manually surf around multiple source files to figure out where the next function I need to look at is.
It's not a good way to figure out how every nook and cranny of the code works, but it's great for an initial scan-through to see the overall structure of a module. And if you are at liberty to throw in an embeddable scripting language (I use F-Script) you can poke and prod at anything you want with ease.
Unfortunately the story poster was a bit vague. They could mean that they or the person assigned don't read code, yet they need to know how a program works, or what it does. There are many times when you don't want to or cannot run/debug a program to analyze it.
... Current tools give you unuseful amounts like cyclomatic complexity, or other ratings like test coverage or Fowler's class interdepence/brittleness/(whatever) measure. However those things are useful to me only: if you know nothing about code, have any resources to plug testing holes, or are actively managing a codebase, respectively. None of them say what the code *does* or how it does it. So we need something that covers concerns orthogonal to what already exists.
There have been many links posted which I'm going to have to explore - not the editor links (jEdit and Emacs rulz!) but the conceptualization links. Unfortunately most if not all IDEs are still code-file based. The most prominent other tool for project conceptualization is UML which has been gaining IDE integration. Yet there are still a couple problems with that:
1. The UML usually generates accurate structures for classes, but doesn't or cannot generate execution diagrams (what, 4 types in UML?) or state diagrams.
2. These static diagrams represent only the level of the code instead of being an interactive object with drill-downs or abstract-up commands!
To understand a new set of code or codebase, I need something that analyzes the code and reports back to me on its tactics and strategies - what patterns are used, what weaknesses are in the code,
Which makes me more curious about the comment asking if anyone uses the tools researchers are working on for visualizing a project. I haven't kept up on academics - where do I start looking? And is there anything there with demos, products available, or in post-beta releases?
8-PP