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Inheriting Code

Enygma

I'm inheriting about 80,000 lines of code over the next few weeks. I've got the help of a senior engineer, who did most of the development, for about another 3-4 weeks. After he leaves, I'm basically on my own.
This will be the first big project I've taken over, has anyone got any (helpful) advice?
Is there any software that can aid this kind of learning?
Anything.

Thanks.

Screw you guys....
I'm going home.

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Hobbes

Tell him to remark all his code (assuming he hasn't).

At worst he should at least remark funky stuff.

It really depends on what kind of code your talking about?

Trojan

Question: you're going to be doing maintenance alone, or further development or porting?

I took on a porting project int he last place I worked, this is basically how I dealt with it. It's not a offical method or process, athough there probably are such things (must check SEI etc). So when dealing with a new codebase I:

- read the docs, especially the ones with pictures. If there's something I don't understand, mark it with a high-lighter.

- use the product. Over and over. Get to understand it from a user perspective.

- take the code base, look for main() or whatever the equivalent is. Start there and manually trace through the code (I did this on paper, not with the debugger, but I suppose you might prefer that). Write down the major functions that get called. Write down what they call. See if these functions are part of the code base, or an external library.

- I didn't need to do this, but I would probably: meet the guy, ask him about all the high level stuff I don't understand, specially the stuff I marked in the docs. Ask him about the main functions, and where they have had problems. Ask him is there any specific areas that he thinks he should show me. Get the most use out of having him there as possible.

That should help you a fair bit along the road to understanding the code. If you have any suggestions or questions after starting this, please let us know.

Al.

seamus

and post up here if you've any issues

Hobbes

<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">Originally posted by seamus:
and post up here if you've any issues</font>

Actually Trojans post made extremly good sense and I'm slapping myself I didn't suggest it.

Enygma

Thanks a lot guys!

In the beginning I'll be doing maintenance, so I guess the best things to look for are potential bugs etc.

The docs are very poor and often misleading so I'm going to stay away from them. I've used version 1.4 of the product quite a lot but the version I'm working on is version 2.0 which is almost completely different.

The comments are excellent though, so thats a good thing.

Thanks again lads!