From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.io!.POSTED.blaine.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Stefan Monnier Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.help Subject: Re: Exploring a code base? Date: Tue, 27 Oct 2020 10:15:39 -0400 Message-ID: References: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Injection-Info: ciao.gmane.io; posting-host="blaine.gmane.org:116.202.254.214"; logging-data="4374"; mail-complaints-to="usenet@ciao.gmane.io" User-Agent: Gnus/5.13 (Gnus v5.13) Emacs/28.0.50 (gnu/linux) To: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org Cancel-Lock: sha1:erGFlhVYpk9Xa3iYNuJaB9AuFcY= Original-X-From: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane-mx.org@gnu.org Tue Oct 27 15:28:58 2020 Return-path: Envelope-to: geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane-mx.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([209.51.188.17]) by ciao.gmane.io with esmtps (TLS1.2:ECDHE_RSA_AES_256_GCM_SHA384:256) (Exim 4.92) (envelope-from ) id 1kXPy6-0000zY-C7 for geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane-mx.org; Tue, 27 Oct 2020 15:28:58 +0100 Original-Received: from localhost ([::1]:50100 helo=lists1p.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.90_1) (envelope-from ) id 1kXPy5-0006uD-EC for geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane-mx.org; Tue, 27 Oct 2020 10:28:57 -0400 Original-Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([2001:470:142:3::10]:41812) by lists.gnu.org with esmtps (TLS1.2:ECDHE_RSA_AES_256_GCM_SHA384:256) (Exim 4.90_1) (envelope-from ) id 1kXPlS-000873-QI for help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org; Tue, 27 Oct 2020 10:15:54 -0400 Original-Received: from static.214.254.202.116.clients.your-server.de ([116.202.254.214]:47670 helo=ciao.gmane.io) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtps (TLS1.2:ECDHE_RSA_AES_256_GCM_SHA384:256) (Exim 4.90_1) (envelope-from ) id 1kXPlQ-0007L1-MB for help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org; Tue, 27 Oct 2020 10:15:54 -0400 Original-Received: from list by ciao.gmane.io with local (Exim 4.92) (envelope-from ) id 1kXPlL-0004Fr-1J for help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org; Tue, 27 Oct 2020 15:15:47 +0100 X-Injected-Via-Gmane: http://gmane.org/ Received-SPF: pass client-ip=116.202.254.214; envelope-from=geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane-mx.org; helo=ciao.gmane.io X-detected-operating-system: by eggs.gnu.org: First seen = 2020/10/27 10:15:48 X-ACL-Warn: Detected OS = Linux 2.2.x-3.x [generic] [fuzzy] X-Spam_score_int: -16 X-Spam_score: -1.7 X-Spam_bar: - X-Spam_report: (-1.7 / 5.0 requ) BAYES_00=-1.9, HEADER_FROM_DIFFERENT_DOMAINS=0.249, SPF_HELO_NONE=0.001, SPF_PASS=-0.001 autolearn=no autolearn_force=no X-Spam_action: no action X-BeenThere: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.23 Precedence: list List-Id: Users list for the GNU Emacs text editor List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane-mx.org@gnu.org Original-Sender: "help-gnu-emacs" Xref: news.gmane.io gmane.emacs.help:124734 Archived-At: > When the change I’m doing is not very invasive, the affected subgraph > fits completely in my head. However, when it doesn’t, I find myself > having to record my traversal state. I create an Org buffer and > manually maintain a queue of nodes, marking those I haven’t yet > visited with TODO and those I have with DONE. Then I pick the first > TODO, grep or xref-find-references on it, add any relevant nodes to > the queue, make the necessary changes in the code, and mark the node > DONE. Repeat until no TODO. > > This is rather tedious. It feels like there should exist a better way, > maybe with a visualization of the graph structure. That's a good question. I have resorted to writing down (in some arbitrary text file) the things that are still pending, like you describe (even in case it fits in your head, writing it down can be needed if you're interrupted in the middle), and indeed it's not satisfactory. In other cases, I try to make use of the compiler's checks to keep track of what I still need to do. Typically by renaming the functions/types I still need to investigate so the compiler points me to the places that still need to be changed (sometimes, this renaming is not really wanted and is hence temporary, so I use a "funny" name which I can easily fix later with a simple search&replace). Obviously, this only works if you can rely on something like a compiler to catch the problems. I'd be interested to hear if someone has a good solution for that. Maybe some way to "push" a particular file/location on a stack of pending issues (along with some brief description, maybe) and then some way to display it in a reasonable way... Stefan