Re: [open-cobol-list] tips on studying code bases

[Vincent Coen]

I would recommend you work on v2.1 and not v1.1.
It will not be long before v2 series becomes the primary focus for all of us.
As for tools well I have used doxygen in the past but I must admit it issues too much info much of which I find un-needed.

I just write comments on my copy of the code but there again I have not had to look at the whole codebase only small segments.

One project that I do wish to get involved in is to migrate the compiler to IBM MVS but I need to see if anyone else is involved doing so already.

This will not be easy although it does have a gcc compiler but v3.4 and a earlier one around v3.3 along with the 'C' libraries.  These are the last versions with support for the IBM mainframe architecture.


Vince

On 29/04/14 14:07, Patrick wrote:

Hi Everyone

Thanks again to Brian for yet another very helpful post and I am 
thankful for the private messages I received too.

I think I am going to make another big push to learn the code base.

I printed all the source code from 1.1. I think this is okay for bulk 
memorization but I wouldn't do it again,

I ran cobc through cflow last night. It gives results like this:

main() <int main (int argc, char **argv) at cobc.c:3669>:
     memset()
     cobc_sig_handler() <void COB_A_NORETURN cobc_sig_handler (int sig) 
at cobc.c:1478>:
         raise()
         kill()
         getpid()
         exit()
continues on....

It shows that raise, kill, getpid etc are callable from cobc_sig_handler 
but it can't tell which path of execution it will take.

I was thinking of building a version with a whole bunch of printf 
statements inside each function that would print the path of execution, 
"I am raise()"  etc.

I thought that I would then look at each function and then use ctags to 
view the argument definitions.

Does this sound like a logical way to study the code base ? If not could 
you recommend some other techniques ?