Recommendations for C++ sourcecode analysis tools

[Kevin D. Clark]

Michael ODonnell writes:

> I've joined an established project and I'm trying to come up to
> speed with their (complex!) C++ code and could use some help
> in divining how all the pieces fit together.  I'm doing all the
> usual WWW searches but also wanted to get recommendations from
> the GNHLUG; anybody know of good sourcecode analysis tools for C++
> that run on Linux?  We already have ctags and Cscope and though
> they're occasionally (accidentally) useful they're basically
> not up to the task of grokking all the class hierarchies and such.

I've used some tools for this over the years.  Most of these you can
google yourself.  I've used OO-browser and cscope a bit, for example.
Eclipse might be useful here too (it's not just for Java).  But this
is a rather big package...

However, my best strategy for grokking a complex C++ codebase has been
to sit down with somebody who has already familiarized themselves with
the code and ask them for a brain dump.  An hour of this has always
been much more helpful to me than what I got out of any tool.  It's
nice to know mindeset of the designers.

In return I usually buy the person who gave me a brain dump lunch or
bring them cookies or something.  

Sometimes I haven't been able to get anybody to give me such a
braindump.  In general, projects that started out this way didn't go
as smoothly as I would have hoped.

--kevin
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