Source code visualization tools?

[Joel Konkle-Parker]

Mike Hearn wrote:
> On Sun, 28 Mar 2004 19:05:55 -0600, Joel Konkle-Parker wrote:
> 
>>I'm basically looking for something that will help me "see" how a
>>program is laid out so that I can start working on it.
> 
> 
> I don't think an automatic tool would be very good at this with Wine. It's
> a ridiculously complicated codebase, not through choice mind you, that's
> just the way Windows is.
> 
> Really at some point we should provide better high level developer
> documentation like this - I remember finding it confusing too.
> 
> Basically, the most important code is all in the dlls/ directory. The
> other directories are either supporting code (for booting the emulator,
> unicode tables etc) or are holdovers from the old code layout (windows/)
> and is being slowly moved into the dlls/ directories. The code in windows/
> is a part of USER, basically.
> 
> Knowing the windows architecture helps. Basically in NT based systems you
> get:
> 
> * NTDLL - low level OS services, threading, file io etc). the so called
> "native" API
> * KERNEL - Win32 "layer", really mostly a set of forwarders to NTDLL 
> * USER - random stuff - core windowing mostly, as well as clipboard and a
> few widgets like the button control, edit box, menus etc
> * COMCTL32 - Widget library. More advanced/modern controls like the
> toolbar, rebar, tree view etc. Pretty straightforward
> * OLE* - Our COM/OLE implementation.
> 
> Is that what you meant? Best way to learn the source is by reading it, and
> then asking about the parts you don't understand basically.

Thanks for the quick explanation. If I come up against something, I'll 
post here...


-- 
Joel Konkle-Parker
Webmaster  [Ballsome.com]

E-mail     [jjk3 at msstate.edu]