If you've used javadoc and then come to doxygen, you may know what I mean when I say I miss the hierarchical (frame-based) view that made jumping from class to class and method to method easy. (For those who haven't seen it, imagine a tree-navigator in an IDE or over a filesystem).
How can I get Doxygen to include a navigation tree, if it's even possible?
A similar question was asked in October, but that was just about stylesheet alternatives and only one turned up. I think I'm looking for something more major.
Note that all you need to do to get the tree on the left in Quinn's example is setting GENERATE_TREEVIEW to YES in the config file.
At a basic level, Doxygen output is what it is, and I don't think there's "a better way to view" static HTML content. I think what you want is for Doxygen to produce HTML output that is more similar to Javadoc, which has both pros and cons. (The biggest drawback is that it's unlikely to happen, due to the effort involved and the broad user base.)
I manage a project that is documented using Doxygen, and I'm not sure to what degree my config uses the Doxygen defaults, but I get a sections in the left frame for a flat class list and a class hierarchy. Also, since I have diagrams enabled, the Graphical Class Hierarchy is a fairly quick way to jump to where I want. I haven't delved into Doxygen modules, so I don't have any experience with whether that might segment things similar to how Javadoc does with packages.
Related
I have a custom XML format that links to Java resources. For the sake of simplicity let's assume my XML file would look like this:
<root>
<java-class>my.fully.qualified.class.name</java-class>
</root>
Eventually my references will be somewhat more complicated. It will not contain the fully qualified class name directly and I will need some logic to resolve the correct class, but I want to keep the example as simple as possible here.
Now I want it to be possible to Strg+Click on the element's text and want IntelliJ to carry me to the .java file, just like it is possible in Spring-XML files. In the IDEA Plugin Development FAQ there is a link called "How do I add custom references to Java elements in XML files?" which so much sounds like exactly what I need. Unfortunately it links to a discussion where someone is more or less done implementing something like this, having some minor problems. Nevertheless I understood that I probably need to write an implementation of the interface com.intellij.psi.PsiReference. Googling for "PsiReference" and "IntelliJ" or "IDEA" unfortunately did not bring up any tutorials on how to use it, but I found the class XmlValueReference which sounds useful. Yet again googling for "XmlValueReference" did not turn up anything useful on how to use the class. At least the PSI Cookbook tells me that I can find the Java class by using JavaPsiFacade.findClass(). I'd be thankful for any tutorials, hints and the like, that tell the correct usage.
The above linked discussion mentions that I need to call registry.registerReferenceProvider(XmlTag.class, provider) in order to register my provider once I eventually managed to implement it, but of which type is "registry" and where do I get it from?
First of all, here's a nice tutorial that came up a few days ago, which explains the basics of IntelliJ plugin development (you should take a look at the section Reference Contributor).
You will likely have to define your own PsiReferenceContributor, which will be referenced in your plugin.xml like this:
<psi.referenceContributor implementation="com.yourplugin.YourReferenceContributor"/>
In your reference contributor, there's a method registerReferenceProviders(PsiReferenceRegistrar) where you will be able to call registry.registerReferenceProvider(XmlTag.class, provider).
Finally, in your instance of PsiReferenceProvider, you will have to test the tag name to filter out tags which don't contain class references, then find the right Java class using JavaPsiFacade.findClass().
From my experience, the best place to get help regarding IntelliJ plugin development is JetBrains' forums.
I need a tool that I can use to get a better understanding of a large C
project. I'd like to be able to see the relationship between the various C
modules and what calls what, most used functions, what headers are used, etc.
I've searched here and Google but all the source code analysis tools seem to give
you the number of lines of code and other metrics that I'm not interested in. I just
want to get a high level view of how things are structured and interconnected before jumping into the code.
Does anything like this exist?
I've looked at these but they do not seem to do what I want: Source Code Tools
Since posting this I've tried Doxygen and it seems to give me some of what I need. Any others?
Try GNU cflow, that will analyze the call tree of the functions - you will nicely see the call hierarchy of the functions. Or browse the code with Eclipse.
Source Navigator may be helpful for some things (I used it to see call trees). See screenshots.
cxref builds annotated source code cross reference that's easy to view and navigate (I used to create HTML reference of some of my code). See cxref's output on its own source code here. Can be used to document the code.
It is not OSS, but the tool CppDepend can certainly help when it comes to understand a large legacy application written in C or C++.
Here is what I'm looking for:
I'd like to separate pieces of functionality into modules or components of some sort to limit visibility of other classes to prevent that each class has access to every other class which over time results in spaghetti code.
In Java & Eclipse, for example, I would use packages and put each package into a separate project with a clearly defined dependency structure.
Things I have considered:
Using separate folders for source files and using Groups in Xcode:
Pros: simple to do, almost no Xcode configuration needed
Cons: no compile-time separation of functionality, i.e. access to everything is only one #import statement away
Using Frameworks:
Pros: Framework code cannot access access classes outside of framework. This enforces encapsulation and keeps things separate
Cons: Code management is cumbersome if you work on multiple Frameworks at the same time. Each Framework is a separate Xcode project with a separate window
Using Plugins:
Pros: Similar to Frameworks, Plugin code can't access code of other plugins. Clean separation at compile-time. Plugin source can be part of the same Xcode project.
Cons: Not sure. This may be the way to go...
Based on your experience, what would you choose to keep things separate while being able to edit all sources in the same project?
Edit:
I'm targeting Mac OS X
I'm really looking for a solution to enforce separation at compile time
By plugins I mean Cocoa bundles (http://developer.apple.com/library/mac/#documentation/Cocoa/Conceptual/LoadingCode/Concepts/Plugins.html)
I have worked on some good-sized Mac projects (>2M SLOC in my last one in 90 xcodeproj files) and here are my thoughts on managing them:
Avoid dynamic loads like Frameworks, Bundles, or dylibs unless you are actually sharing the binaries between groups. These tend to create more complexity than they solve in my experience. Plus they don't port easily to iOS, which means maintaining multiple approaches. Worst, having lots of dynamic libraries increases the likelihood of including the same symbols twice, leading to all kinds of crazy bugs. This happens when you directly include some "helper" class directly in more than one library. If it includes a global variable, the bugs are awesome as different threads use different instances of the global.
Static libraries are the best choice in many if not most cases. They resolve everything at build time, allowing code stripping in your C/C++ and other optimizations not possible in dynamic libraries. They get rid of "hey, it loads on my system but not the customer's" (when you use the wrong value for the framework path). No need to deal with slides when computing line numbers from crash stacks. They catch duplicate symbols at build time, saving many hours of debugging pain.
Separate major components into separate xcodeproj. Really think about what "major" means here, though. My 90-project product was way too many. Just doing dependency checking can become a very non-trivial exercise. (Xcode 4 can improve this, but I left the project before we ever were able to get Xcode 4 to reliably build it, so I don't know how well it did in the end.)
Separate public from private headers. You can do this with static libs just as well as you can with Frameworks. Put the public headers in a different directory. I recommend each component have its own public include directory for this purpose.
Do not copy headers. Include them directly from the public include directory for the component. Copying headers into a shared tree seems like a great idea until you do it. Then you find that you're editing the copy rather than the real one, or you're editing the real one, but not actually copying it. In any case, it makes development a headache.
Use xcconfig files, not the build pane. The build pane will drive you crazy in these kinds of big projects. Mine tend to have lines like this:
common="../../common"
foo="$(common)/foo"
HEADER_SEARCH_PATHS = $(inherited) $(foo)/include
Within your public header path, include your own bundle name. In the example above, the path to the main header would be common/foo/include/foo/foo.h. The extra level seems a pain, but it's a real win when you import. You then always import like this: #import <foo/foo.h>. Keeps everything very clean. Don't use double-quotes to import public headers. Only use double-quotes to import private headers in your own component.
I haven't decided the best way for Xcode 4, but in Xcode 3, you should always link your own static libraries by adding the project as a subproject and dragging the ".a" target into your link step. Doing it this way ensures that you'll link the one built for the current platform and configuration. My really huge projects haven't been able to convert to Xcode 4 yet, so I don't have a strong opinion yet on the best way there.
Avoid searching for custom libraries (the -L and -l flags at the link step). If you build the library as part of the project, then use the advice above. If you pre-build it, then add the full path in LD_FLAGS. Searching for libraries includes some surprising algorithms and makes the whole thing hard to understand. Never drop a pre-built library into your link step. If you drop a pre-built libssl.a into your link step, it actually adds a -L parameter for the path and then adds -lssl. Under default search rules, even though you show libssl.a in your build pane, you'll actually link to the system libssl.so. Deleting the library will remove the -l but not the -L so you can wind up with bizarre search paths. (I hate the build pane.) Do it this way instead in xcconfig:
LD_FLAGS = "$(openssl)/lib/libssl.a"
If you have stable code that is shared between several projects, and while developing those projects you're never going to mess with this code (and don't want the source code available), then a Framework can be a reasonable approach. If you need plugins to avoid loading large amounts of unnecessary code (and you really won't load that code in most cases), then bundles may be reasonable. But in the majority of cases for application developers, one large executable linked together from static libraries is the best approach IMO. Shared libraries and frameworks only make sense if they're actually shared at runtime.
My suggestion would be:
Use Frameworks. They're the most easily reusable build artifact of the options you list, and the way you describe the structure of what you are trying to achieve sounds very much like creating a set of Frameworks.
Use a separate project for each Framework. You'll never be able to get the compiler to enforce the kind of access restrictions you want if everything is dumped into a single project. And if you can't get the compiler to enforce it, then good luck getting your developers to do so.
Upgrade to XCode4 (if you haven't already). This will allow you to work on multiple projects in a single window (pretty much like how Eclipse does it), without intermingling the projects. This pretty much eliminates the cons you listed under the Frameworks option.
And if you are targeting iOS, I very strongly recommend that you build real frameworks as opposed to the fake ones that you get by using the bundle-hack method, if you aren't building real frameworks already.
I've managed to keep my sanity working on my project which has grown over the past months to fairly large (number of classes) by forcing myself to practice Model-View-Control (MVC) diligently, plus a healthy amount of comments, and the indispensable source control (subversion, then git).
In general, I observe the following:
"Model" Classes that serialize data (doesn't matter from where, and including app's 'state') in an Objective-C 1 class subclassed from NSObject or custom "model" classes that inherits from NSObject. I chose Objective-C 1.0 more for compatibility as it's the lowest common denominator and I didn't want to be stuck in the future writing "model" classes from scratch because of dependency of Objective-C 2.0 features.
View Classes are in XIB with the XIB version set to support the oldest toolchain I need to support (so I can use a previous version Xode 3 in addition to Xcode 4). I tend to start with Apple provided Cocoa Touch API and frameworks to benefit from any optimization/enhancement Apple may introduce as these APIs evolve.
Controller Classes contain usual code that manages display/animation of views (programmatically as well as from XIBs) and data serialization of data from "model" classes.
If I find myself reusing a class a few times, I'd explore refactoring the code and optimizing (measured using Instruments) into what I call "utility" classes, or as protocols.
Hope this helps, and good luck.
This depends largely on your situation and your own specific preferences.
If you're coding "proper" object-oriented classes then you will have a class structure with methods and variables hidden from other classes where necessary. Unless your project is huge and built of hundreds of different distinguishable modules then its probably sufficient to just group classes and resources into folders/groups in XCode and work with it that way.
If you've really got a huuge project with easily distinguishable modules then by all means create a framework. I would suggest though that this would only really be necessary where you are using the same code in different applications, in which case creating a framework/extra project would be a good way to effectively copy code between projects. In practically all other cases it would probably just be overkill and much more complicated than needed.
Your last idea seems to be a mix of the first two. Plugins (as I understand you are describing - tell me if I'm wrong) are just separated classes in the same project? This is probably the best way, and should be done (to an extent) in any case. If you are creating functionality to draw graphs (for example) you should section off a new folder/group and start your classes and functionality within that, only including those classes into your main application where necessary.
Let me put it this way. There's no reason to go over the top... but, even if just for your own sanity - or the maintainability of your code - you should always endeavour to group everything up into descriptive groups/folders.
Suppose I am working on exposing some of my server-side classes to a GWT application, but certain parts could be done much better using GWT-specific components (like JSNI, for instance).
What are some techniques for doing so without being too hacky?
For instance, I am aware of using a subpackage and using the <super-source/> tag, but this requires the package names to be different, which causes eclipse to complain. The general solution in the community is to then tell eclipse to use that as a source folder, but then eclipse complains about there being two classes with the same name.
Ideally, there would just be a way to keep everything in a single source tree, and actually have different classes which apply the alternate implementations. This would feel like a more OO approach.
I would like to add a suffix to a class like _gwt which accomplishes this automatically, and I know I could write a script to do this kind of transformation, but that is a kludge for sure.
I've been considering using Google's GIN/GUICE libraries for my projects in general, and I think there might be some kind of a solution there, but I am not sure as I have not thoroughly investigated it.
What are some solutions you have tried in the past on GWT projects?
The easiest way to have split implementations is to use super-source code, but only enough to instantiate a uniquely-named instance or dispatch to a different method. Ideally, the super-source implementation is just a few lines long, and not so bad that you can't roll it by hand.
To work around the Eclipse / javac double-mapping and package name issues, the GWT source uses two top-level roots for user code: user/src and user/super. For example, the AutoBeans package has a split-implementation of JSON quoting and evaluation, one for the JVM and one for the browser.
There's really no non-kludgy way to implement super-source, as this is a feature way outside what you can specify in the language. There's nothing that lets you say "use this implementation in this environment" without the use of some external tool.
We've got a large codebase of Java (with a smattering of Groovy mixed in) that, by and large, has no javadocs written for it.
However, much of the code is reasonably well documented in "old-school" comments scattered throughout the body.
We're now on something of a push to try and get things documented a little better - Javadocs are now being generated on a regular basis, for example. As a stopgap measure, it would be really nice if javadoc would "scrape" the body of the class (or function, or whatever) and toss all the comments within into a "stub" javadoc.
Is there a way to do that?
Sounds like a bad idea, given that javadocs typically describe purpose and usage of elements, and code body comments are (or should be) about the details of implementation.
But if you must, you clearly need to write your own custom doclet that works in concert with a java source file parser (either 3rd party or your own). For each processed class, you would first run the parser on the source file for that given java class and harvest the internal comments, and then augment the (standard) html produced by the (standard) doclet to add the code comments.
A possible strategy that would help make the resultant javadocs sensible would be to include a given method's internal comments for the javadoc for that method. Just use a 'pre' closure and append the parsed comments of the method at the end of the generic javadoc html.