Glarking

[pozorvlak]

I badly need some better strategies for making sense of large, twisty, underdocumented codebases.

My current "strategy" is

• grep for interesting words or phrases
• find relevant-looking functions
• look for their call-sites
• look up definitions of other functions called in those sections of code
• if I don't understand what a variable's for (almost certain) then look for assignments to it
• once I've identified all the bits of code that look relevant, stare at them until my eyes cross
• maybe put in a few printf's, try to make sense of the logs
• enter procrastinatory spiral of despair
• stress about losing job
• make more coffee
• repeat.

What do you do?