understand a large system in C

[ccwork]

Hi all,
How you guys get familiar with a large system writtin in C?
The reason I am asking this is that I found myself get lost
usually when I take a new task (and start looking at the source code).
There are tons of struct, unoin, define, variables, functions and
people don't like to document the meaning/usage of them. This confuses
me and delays the schedule much. I am thinking if this is my poor
ability.
Please help.

 

[Emmanuel Delahaye]

ccwork wrote on 30/12/04 :

Hi all,
How you guys get familiar with a large system writtin in C?

I guess you meant 'a large project'...

The reason I am asking this is that I found myself get lost
usually when I take a new task (and start looking at the source code).

Welcome to the real world. Some tools can help like DOxygen.

http://www.doxygen.com/

(sounds that www.stack.nl where the server is hosted is down at the
moment...)

There are tons of struct, union, define, variables, functions and
people don't like to document the meaning/usage of them. This confuses
me and delays the schedule much. I am thinking if this is my poor
ability.

Now, I'm quite sure that when you will write your own project, you will
document it correctly...

--
Emmanuel
The C-FAQ: http://www.eskimo.com/~scs/C-faq/faq.html
The C-library: http://www.dinkumware.com/refxc.html

"C is a sharp tool"

 

[Emmanuel Delahaye]

(supersedes <[email protected]>)

ccwork wrote on 30/12/04 :

Hi all,
How you guys get familiar with a large system writtin in C?

I guess you meant 'a large project'...

The reason I am asking this is that I found myself get lost
usually when I take a new task (and start looking at the source code).

Welcome to the real world. Some tools can help like DOxygen.

http://www.doxygen.com/

(sounds that www.stack.nl where the server is hosted is down at the
moment...)

Here is a mirror:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/doxygen/

There are tons of struct, union, define, variables, functions and
people don't like to document the meaning/usage of them. This confuses
me and delays the schedule much. I am thinking if this is my poor
ability.

Now, I'm quite sure that when you will write your own project, you will
document it correctly...

--
Emmanuel
The C-FAQ: http://www.eskimo.com/~scs/C-faq/faq.html
The C-library: http://www.dinkumware.com/refxc.html

"Clearly your code does not meet the original spec."
"You are sentenced to 30 lashes with a wet noodle."
-- Jerry Coffin in a.l.c.c++

 

[surendran.d]

use some tools like "source-navigator", cscope, or sourceinsight just
try it

 

[john_bode]

Hi all,
How you guys get familiar with a large system writtin in C?
The reason I am asking this is that I found myself get lost
usually when I take a new task (and start looking at the source code).
There are tons of struct, unoin, define, variables, functions and
people don't like to document the meaning/usage of them. This confuses
me and delays the schedule much. I am thinking if this is my poor
ability.
Please help.

I think the best way is to find someone who *is* familiar with the
system and ping on them mercilessly until you've grokked enough to
figure the rest out, or until they get fed up and write everything down
just so you'll go away.
Or, you can use find and grep and keep a lot of notes.