• Freddy (1/1) Oct 21 2014 Is there any advice/tips for reading medium/big D codebases?
• Jonathan M Davis (8/9) Oct 21 2014 I'm not aware of there being anything about D which makes it any
• Nicolas F (14/17) Oct 22 2014 This is how I usually do it too, though you don't even need to
• safety0ff (5/6) Oct 21 2014 Somewhat D specific: I would consider an IDE/editor like Eclipse
• Paulo Pinto (7/13) Oct 22 2014 This would be my approach as well.

"Freddy" <Hexagonalstar64 gmail.com> writes:

Is there any advice/tips for reading medium/big D codebases?

"Jonathan M Davis" <jmdavisProg gmx.com> writes:

On Wednesday, 22 October 2014 at 01:21:19 UTC, Freddy wrote:
 Is there any advice/tips for reading medium/big D codebases?

I'm not aware of there being anything about D which makes it any 
different to dig into a large codebase than it is for any other 
language. The usual suggestion that I've heard given (without any 
particular language in mind) is to start by tracking down and 
fixing a bug in it, though if the codebase isn't too large for 
it, personally, I'd be highly tempted to just read through it 
all. I don't think very many people function that way though.

"Nicolas F" <ddev fratti.ch> writes:

On Wednesday, 22 October 2014 at 02:09:53 UTC, Jonathan M Davis
wrote:
 The usual suggestion that I've heard given (without any 
 particular language in mind) is to start by tracking down and 
 fixing a bug in it

This is how I usually do it too, though you don't even need to
find a bug in it. Picking any feature and trying to find it in
the codebase and understand how it is implemented will usually
serve well as an entry point. To understand all of the code, I'd
start taking notes though, as they're useful to fall back on
later.

Either way, I wouldn't try to swallow all of it before starting
to work with the code. I've been working on codebases just fine
without understanding them in their entirety, as such is the
magic of code separation. I'm pretty sure there are real
codebases in the wild where nobody understands all of it. X11
comes to mind.

"safety0ff" <safety0ff.dev gmail.com> writes:

On Wednesday, 22 October 2014 at 01:21:19 UTC, Freddy wrote:
 Is there any advice/tips for reading medium/big D codebases?

Somewhat D specific: I would consider an IDE/editor like Eclipse 
with DDT that can give an outline of the data structures & 
functions names in a source file to make the files easier to 
digest.

"Paulo Pinto" <pjmlp progtools.org> writes:

On Wednesday, 22 October 2014 at 02:42:38 UTC, safety0ff wrote:
 On Wednesday, 22 October 2014 at 01:21:19 UTC, Freddy wrote:
 Is there any advice/tips for reading medium/big D codebases?

 Somewhat D specific: I would consider an IDE/editor like 
 Eclipse with DDT that can give an outline of the data 
 structures & functions names in a source file to make the files 
 easier to digest.

This would be my approach as well.

The code navigation options offered by modern IDEs are way better 
than the alternatives, specially the semantic navigation "what 
gets used where".

--
Paulo