New to Large Projects

Question

I think I'm in somewhat of a unique situation: I have a decent amount of coding experience in C/C++ in a Linux environment. However, I don't really have "project experience." For example, I'm familiar with the concept of version control, but I've never used any. Or, i've never worked on a project with more than a half dozen source files.

So, where I am now is that I'm working on this project with a large amount of code already existing. I have to write all my code in a windows environment using Visual Studio 2008 (Visual C++ to be specific) So I have a few questions:

How do integrate the already existing code into VC++? I'm using tortoise SVN and I have all the code on my machine...

Does anyone have any general advice on moving from small projects to larger projects?

Any help/advice would be greatly appreciated

Answer 1

Get to know Visual Studio well, if you live in it, you really have to know it well.
AnkSVN is a free plug-in for Visual Studio 2008, and it works very well. Also, Refactor for C++ is another free plug-in and one of the only ways to get refactoring support in Visual C++.

Also, you will soon learn that on large projects, 80% of your time is going to be spent doing code maintenance, so do yourself a favour and make your code a place in which you want to live, not a place of terror that you shrink back from. Clean code, the occasional comment, and unit tests will go a long way to making you want to get up and go to work in the morning, rather than dreading that you have to work on that monstrosity where anytime you touch anything it breaks.

Answer 2

Just dive in. Hopefully whoever has been working on this project so far organized the code into logical groups (namespaces, class hierarchies, folders).

I'll also second Matt J on learning how to use the IDE: I'm not familiar with Visual Studio specifically, but there should be contextual menu items when you click on a class or method to take you to the place where it was declared, and from there to the classes it was derived from.

Get version control set up first though: you'll feel more comfortable poking around once you learn how to "revert" ;)

Answer 3

Some of the keys to coming to grips with a large codebase:

• Learn the ins and outs of source control. For now, start with just learning how all the SVN commands work. SVNBook is a good resource for this. Use VisualSVN or a similar plugin to interact with your repository within your IDE (Tortoise is still useful when you want to interact from elsewhere). Down the road, you'll want to become intimately familiar with branching and merging (and the tools for doing so quickly and correctly), and perhaps learn a DVCS (distributed version control system) like Git or Mercurial. This will at the very least expand your mind a bit, and likely teach you some lessons that will be useful even in projects where you use more traditional (centralized) version control.
• Learn how to quickly look for things, find the declarations of unfamiliar classes and variables, and trace the execution of the larger application. There are lots of approaches for this, and you'll likely use most of them at one point or another, but some of them are your IDE's built-in features (most of them are quite robust in this regard, you should be able to right-click on a class name and find its declaration easily), grep and the like (ack is a variant that is very suitable for code spelunking), and CTAGS if you swing that (C/C++) way.
• Learn the basics of unit testing, maybe even try out a framework like NUnit. Personally I'm not big into unit tests, but I recognize their utility and many swear by them, so don't knock it 'til you've tried it, at least.
• Even if you're a flawless programmer with a robust battery of unit tests, large codebases demand a higher level of debugging skill, due to the inherent complexity of the problems that crop up. Whether it's learning how to write concise, descriptive debug printf()-like statements, becoming more familiar with your debugger, or even learning the ins and outs of your language (e.g. the corner cases of the type system/object model) can be helpful in unwinding these complex issues.

Unfortunately, I haven't used Visual Studio, but I think getting to know your IDE's project import/migration flow will be instructive too. Maybe somebody else will chime in with more concrete advice on that front. The process can be onerous, especially if you had a non-standard custom build system before and you want everything to be done The One True Visual Studio Way henceforth, but the tools for automatic dependence extraction from code are getting better and better.

Answer 4

The ideas already given are very good. But you also might want to read Mike Gunderloy's Coder to Developer. From your description of your current experience, I think you'll find it useful. Also read The Pragmatic Programmer; I keep it in my office by my desk, and often find myself loaning it to younger developers.

Answer 5

Unit tests. Use them or you'll regret it.

Answer 6

I have been using VisualSVN for quite a while without problems. It integrates perfectly with vs2008. As for moving on to large projects, a great way to see how things are done is to download the source of a decent size existing project and see how it was put together. After you've got a good idea of how things are structured, the best thing you can do for yourself is to write code. Brainstorm a project and go at it. Depending on how you feel about your outcome after completion, you could use it as part of your portfolio as well.