Have you just been given a new code base you have no idea how to even begin to comprehend? Are you tired of "global searching" in your favorite IDE on every symbol under the sun understand who inherits what, and what files actually modify that variable? I have. This led me to investigate what tools are out there for comprehending large code bases quickly. I recalled seeing enterprise-level solutions for such a problem in Visual Studio, but I wanted to try to find a #FreeAndOpenSource project achieving the same thing.
In comes SourceTrail, the exact tool I was looking for. This source explorer software delivers on being a completely free tool capable of viewing source code visually, showing all decencies visually, symbol locations clearly, and connecting to most IDE's.
I took the tool out for a spin looking at an open source project I've been poking around in, spotify-qt. After simply following the "getting started" section of SourceTrail, I was able to open the C++ code base and start poking around in no time. The tool quickly allowed for navigation among the over 300 files, making it very clear who depended on what, and what classes used which other classes.
Disclaimer - To Be Discontinued
As of 3 days ago since writing this blog post, it has been announced by the SourceTrail team that they are discontinuing this project. Unfortunately, it appears the original creators Eberhard Gräther and Malte Langkabel have found that supporting a development tool of this scale was becoming more work than they originally signed up for. I'll assume the biggest feature to drop after the discontinuation will be IDE integration, as I'm assuming as IDE's advance this tool would have to update for ever one. The optimistic side of me hopes that the tool will always be able to provide the same core features as it does now for the foreseeable future, primarily providing a quick way to explore a source code visually. But only time will tell.
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