You are given a big Java (or another language) project to contribute to. No documentation. How do you start? What tools do you use to understand the high-level structure of the code? Thanks HN!
Some of these old discussions might help. Ignore the answers pointing to documention. I once had to dive into a medium size Java web application without documentation and it took me half a day to even find out where data was stored (in a H2 database) nevermind trying to install it or finding out what changed between the repository and what I found on the live server. Ultimately told the client it will be cheaper for them to find another contractor. Best of luck.
doxygen turned the classes into hyperlinked web pages for a ginormous complex enterprise code base we worked on, it made understanding the code structure and class organization trivially easy - and we could email code structure links to each other for collaboration! For this purpose I rate doxygen as at least 11 or 12 out of a possible maximum of 10.
I would have to agree. Find usages along with figuring out where/what variables are or used for will get you a long way. You can also go from the entry point and follow execution order, to the extent that you can.
in addition to what was already suggested I use a notebook and a pen to keep track of interesting classes and write notes about them, like sort of an index, and I draw few flow charts.
I used to be this way. I found that working in an editor using asciidoc/markdown is way easier for me. Copy/paste is faster than pen/paper. Also, I can write down notes and snippets of code to make life easier when I am trying to show someone what is going on in the source. Another advantage is I edit things to reflect the current state of the source and not get messed up by older notes/writings.
Ask HN: How to understand the large codebase of an open-source project? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16299125
Ask HN: Studying large code bases https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9060832
Ask HN: How to dive into large codebase? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12142807