Introduction

Developers need to have skill sets that range from coding to communication skills. One skill that lies between them and sometimes goes unnoticed is the ability to understand existing codebases. This skill is quite helpful for a developer as they will be hired on an existing codebase, can change projects while remaining in the same organization, or simply make an Open Source contribution. In all the above scenarios, the developer first needs to understand the codebase first then start any action such as writing code.

The process of understanding the codebase sometimes be easy due to knowing each stack properly or the project is not dense. But also sometimes it gets hard as you don’t understand certain structures or can’t find the required code. Also, if you are assigned to another project then you might need to understand the codebase by yourself.

To help developers improve their ability to understand any codebase easily, we are going to look into some developer tools. These tools can help you retrieve necessary code, help visualize the codebase, etc. In this way, you will be able to understand any codebase faster.

So, let us get started.

Documatic

A search engine for your codebase; Ask Documatic a question and find relevant code and insights in seconds

Documatic is a code search engine that queries through your codebase to find the related code block. This tool can be helpful in retrieving necessary code blocks that you are required to understand any particular topic such as connection to a database. Under the hood, it uses AI to match patterns in the code to provide more accurate code blocks. It can understand the natural language so you don't need to be a prompt engineer to write queries to it.

It is available as a VS Code extension that you can use directly in the code editor. You can download it from here.

Understand by SciTools

Understand by SciTools is a software development tool that allows you to perform static code analysis, edit and refactor code, view dependency graphs, and see useful metrics.

It is a static analysis tool that aims to help developers in maintaining and documenting their codebase. It also offers features such as code navigation, metrics, and visualization. This gives a deeper understanding of the code structure and dependencies. Using understanding developers can easily navigate through large codebases, find bugs, and improve code quality.

It has support for multiple programming languages which broadens its applicability. All these features make this tool a must-have tool while understanding a codebase.

cscope

Efficient, text-only browser for C sources

This is yet another tool that help can help in understanding the codebase. CScope is specialized in working with C and C++ codebases. It helps the navigation of code by allowing quick searching for symbols, finding definitions, and understanding the relationship between functions and variables. This can be helpful in understanding the flow of the code as it identifies where functions are called within the code.

All these features make it beneficial when navigating to a large codebase. As this is specialized in C and C++ will provide more features to understand projects that are based on these programming languages.

GitLens

GitLens is an open-source extension for Visual Studio Code.

Most of the codebase uses git under the hood to collaborate among the different team members on the same project. GitLens became quite a useful tool for understanding the Git integration in the codebase. It helps make it easier to understand and work with any git-based repository directly from the code editor. It displays information about the commit that last modified that line, including the author, commit message, timestamp, and miniaturized version of the commit diff. This makes it easy to track the history of the codebase and understand why specific changes were made.

This feature is available directly in the code editor making it easier to understand each code block that came with the commit without leaving the code editor. You can get the extension for VS Code from here.

Doxygen

Generate documentation using Doxygen from your source code for you.

Doxygen is a VS Code extension that helps in generating documentation based on the code provided. It parses source code, extracting valuable insights that can help in understanding the codebase better. It not only generates comprehensive and well-structured documentation but also creates visualizations like class hierarchies, call graphs, and collaboration diagrams.

This can be very helpful in case of no or bad documentation of the codebase. Along with that, it can be helpful in generating documentation for your existing codebase.

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Conclusion

The ability to understand existing codebases is a crucial skill for developers, whether they are joining a new project, transitioning within an organization, or contributing to open-source initiatives. We have discussed some of the tools that are available for developers that can decrease the time taken to understand the code. I recommend you try each of the tools to find which is better for you.

I hope this article has helped you learn some tools that can help you understand the codebase faster. Thanks for reading the article.