One of the first things I do whenever I download a new project or start a new job is take a look at the build system. In Java, this is fairly easy whether it is using Ant or Maven but with C, I generally let it go since I don't have the autoconf-fu necessary to really understand all that is going on.
I've found that understanding the build system is the first step in understanding the code. You begin to see how pieces are put together. You can see if custom Ant tasks are being used and why they are needed.
I'm doing this now with the code here at work. One of the tough things about doing this is seeing all the places you'd like to adjust things but can't quite do it yet because you haven't been here enough to see if your changes cause a downstream problem.
Posted by Josh at January 5, 2005 09:00 AM | TrackBack