Creating software Diagrams and documentation

VICTOR

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Mar 18, 2010, 12:06:19 PM3/18/10

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Hi,

i have a huge problem. I have inherited a large program. It is about
30,000 lines long and it is only commented, but not documented. I have
been thinking about creating flowcharts/activity diagrams,
documentation, etc. Anything that helps me learn the program a little
better. Can anyone tell me about the tools avaible for accomplishing
this task. Regards,

Victor

Jason Blevins

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Mar 18, 2010, 12:21:55 PM3/18/10

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There are a few tools described here that you might want to
consider:

http://fortranwiki.org/fortran/show/Automatic+documentation

I don't know if any of them will generate flowcharts, but you
can certainly generate documentation with comments, function
prototypes, etc. I use f90doc quite a bit for relatively simple
programs and libraries for generating HTML documentation.
FortranDOC generates nice PDF documentation via LaTeX. ROBODoc
seems to be capable of producing many different formats but
I've never used it myself.

I've assumed you have free-form code. I can't comment on the
available tools for processing fixed-format code.

Jason

dpb

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Mar 18, 2010, 12:35:47 PM3/18/10

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Look at SciTools' 'Understand for Fortran' -- it isn't inexpensive but
has (or at least used to have) a testing option that would allow one to
use it for a limited time. I used it for precisely the same purpose on
a couple of occasions and it is very capable/useful for the purpose.

<www.scitools.com> I think from memory so no guarantees there's not some
perturbation on that...

--

Ian

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Mar 18, 2010, 1:07:11 PM3/18/10

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Our Fortran Resource file

http://www.fortranplus.co.uk/resources/fortran_resources.pdf

has a chapter

Chapter 8
Fortran Analysis, Conversion and
Maintenance Tools

Most are commercial.

Given the size of the code it may be worth while
investing in one of the tools.

Ian Chivers

Paul Thomas

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Mar 18, 2010, 4:19:57 PM3/18/10

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I have never tried it for fortran source code but have found Doxygen
invaluable for gfortran documentation..... which reminds me, I need to
update the documentation at the gfortran wiki :-)

Most linices come with Doxygen already supplied.

Cheers

Paul

Jugoslav Dujic

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Mar 19, 2010, 4:15:37 AM3/19/10

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Seconded; I'm just playing with it and it works fairly well (except
that it requires setting some obscure options to make the Fortran
code work).

However, I'm not sure (not that I personally care) how well
it supports F77 style and fixed-form code. Victor didn't specify
what is his source like though.

--
Jugoslav
www.xeffort.com
Please reply to the newsgroup.
You can find my real e-mail on my home page above.

Terence

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Mar 20, 2010, 1:39:43 AM3/20/10

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Sometime in 1962 I wrote a program to do this for Fortran (II/IV).

Now I had already done a flowcharting program for the 1401 assembler,
which drew branch decision diamonds with 2 (later 3) exits, and square
boxes of start-to-end linear process line numbers, and ran flow lines
down the right side of the 15-inch printer paper. Applied to Fortran
(the old GO TO ( ) a,b,c needed a left to right cross-over line) gave
a Fortran flowcharter. It might still be around, especially in the UK.

A bit later I did another program. which I still have working, to
automatically change labels and format statements to be in separate
sequences for F77. As before. one reads the source, temporally numbers
each statement start line, finds the lables (including the GOTO
(,,,),index drop through defaults) and builds a label table on one
pass, then renumbers the labels on a second pass. Unused labels are
optionally discarded. This table of origin start lines and used labels
defines the flowchart paths, so I could have used the older programs
to flowchart F77 too. Unfortunately the many 800 bpi tapes I kept have
not been readable...

But it isn't hard job.