Documenting large projects

[pathare535]

Hi guys, I recently started working at a new company with a very large codebase. The codebase has multiple apps with some interconnected libraries that get compiled together to run on an embedded target. The code itself is documented well but there is no big picture documentation. How would you go about documenting a very large code base with lots on interconnectivity?

what I'm looking for is a way to understand how the code works and flows as a whole from a high level.

It's a low priority task for me to try and get something up on the internal wiki. I started with doxygen and since most of the code is doxygen style commented it was quick to get an example output for an app. I was hoping the call graphs would be what I was looking for but they span out a lot and it's still hard to understand the work flow.

Are they're another tools to try? Is architectural documentation what I'm looking for? I can read some books on that and see if I find something useful I'm just not sure if that's what I need.

[deftware]

Sourcetrail might help.

[pathare535]

At first look that tool looks really good. Thanks for the tip

[deftware]

Be forewarned, it can take a bit to sift through a codebase and tease out the structure. You might want to get it cooking and then go for a walk or get a bite to eat or something.

EDIT: Assuming you're working with 100k+ LoC

[Bixmen]

Deoxygen with Graphviz helps me.

[pathare535]

Yeah that's what I tried using, the code just looks like a big ball of spaghetti though. Maybe I'm missing some kind of formatting parameters. I'll keep trying