To enable this option go into Tools->Options->Editor->Advanced->Unused Entities

Right now this only works for functions and variables. Let us know if you find it useful, and if there are other entities you want it added for.

We are still in scenic St George, near Zion National Park and less than two hours from Vegas. If you are in the area feel free to stop by and visit us!

Our new address is:

Scientific Toolworks, Inc.
249 East Tabernacle, Suite 200
St George, UT 84770

Many users have asked us in the past if Understand could have better support for Templates and Overloaded functions. We are excited to announce that this is now a reality. Our engineers have worked hard to add a completely new C++ parser to Understand, which is available for Beta testing in build 586.

Our current C++ parser was written with the goal of being able to use fuzzy logic to handle incomplete, non-compiling code gracefully and as accurately as possible. It does a great job at that and will continue to be an important part of our toolset. Unfortunately that same feature caused severe difficulties in parsing templates and recognizing overloaded functions.  The new parser is more strict than the old parser and requires a more accurate project definition. If you plan on using it, please follow the instructions from this post to ensure your project is as correct as possible:  Improving Project Accuracy (C/C++)

To access the new parser, just check the new checkbox on the Languages screen when creating a new project or in the Project Configuration dialog.

We welcome and appreciate your feedback and comments on this new parser – please send it to us at support@scitools.com

Key Bindings can still be accessed via Tools->Options->Key Bindings  but this page now lets you search for key binding, either by name or by the actual keystrokes. This page also has all of the key bindings in one place for easy browsing. The other change was to add a separate page for each Component(Category) of key bindings in the navigation pane.

While these are relatively small changes, we hope they will make life easier for those who rely heavily on keyboard navigation.

In India? Give them a ring:

Meteonic
www.meteonic.com
Tel: +91-9980070704, +91-080-40874900
moumita@meteonic.com

Getting Started

The Python API runs on your 3.x installation of Python, you can grab it from here if you need to install it.

Once you have Python installed you need to tell it where the Understand module is. The easiest way to do that is to add/modify the PYTHONPATH environment variable to include the module location, which is SciTools/bin/<System>/python. Also if you did not add Understand to the Path variable during installation, you will need to add the SciTools/bin/<System> directory to PATH.

Finally, to use the API you will need to put ‘import Understand’ in your script.

Documentation

The most up-to-date documentation will ship with Understand and can be accessed from the Python Console with:
   import understand
  help (understand)
A more readable version can be obtained with the python ‘pydoc’ command, which can generate an html version of the documentation. We also try to keep a current version of the Python documentation on the Manuals page.

Sample Scripts

The documentation includes some samples. More detailed example scripts are shipped with Understand in the SciTools/scripts/python folder.

Happy Scripting!

As with the dependency graphs, you can change what data these graphs display by using the graph customizer pane, to the right of the graphs. With this, you can show and hide nodes and edges, highlight nodes and edges of interest, and aggregate edges going into a file or architecture.

We hope this graph will provide a useful tool in helping you visual your code.

After the parse is complete the parse log will have a new button, Undefined Macros, that leads to this new tool. You can access the previous parse log from the View menu if you have already closed it.

And you get the Undefined Macros dialog, which lets you sort and filter the list of macros that are referenced in your project but not defined. It also shows the number of times that macro is used and the number of files it is used in. To give a macro a global definition, simply select it and enter the new value in the text box near the bottom.

If the macro needs to have different values in different folders or files, the Detail View button at the bottom will provide access to the the Override dialog that will let you specify the value for a macro for any file or folder.

Once you have sent the macro values you want, the save button will prompt you to reparse the project, and large swaths of inactive (pink) code will be activated and the results of the analysis will be even more accurate.

The commands have been standardized and the tool should be much easier to use. Because of the extensive changes, this new version is not backwards compatible with older versions of und. The old und will still ship and has been renamed ‘undlegacy’ – current users will need to change the name of the binary for scripts to continue to work.

In general the syntax for running commands are similar to Subversion and should be much more intuitive than previous versions.

The new version also includes a cool new interactive mode that lets you specify a database and then continually run commands in it, similar to MySQL.

The help documentation has been flushed out extensively and should be much more useful – just run und help for a complete overview of how to use this great new tool. Also this post steps through each different method of using und and demonstrates some of the most common commands: Integrate Understand with your build system.

Grab it at www.getunderstand.com.

New in Understand 2.6 are:

• 64 bit Linux installation kit. This is a native kit, and does not require 32 bit compatibility libraries.
• UML Diagram. Class diagrams are now available for the Project and individual classes.
• Treemaps. A new way to visualize metrics.
• Codecheck. Implement coding standards and easily browse results.

For more information on these new features. Click below to see the details.

64 Bit Linux kit.

This is a native 64 bit Unix installation, for those with 64 bit Linux systems that do not want to install the 32 bit compatibility libraries.

UML Diagram.

Implemented via a plug-in script, this feature is available on the Right click menu for any class.

and draws a UML Class Diagram for the class selected:

A global version, drawing all project classes is also available via the Graphs->Project Graphs-> menu:

Graph drawing options can be found by right clicking in the “gray” area of the graph.

Treemaps

Available via the Metrics-> menu, Treemaps show metrics information via size of graph nodes and color gradient. Different metrics can be tied to size or color to help visualize the code:

Here node size is tied to the metric “CountLine” and color to “MaxCyclomatic” with dark blue representing the highest complexity:

So we learn that unzip.c is large, but not particularly complex, while inflate.c is large and highly complex.

By default the maps are nested by directory structure, although if you have built other architectures then they can be used as well.   Another example, using “SumCyclomatic” and “CountStmt” will show what files do a lot of work and are also complex:

SumCyclomatic, CountStmt -  “See where work and complexity reside”

CodeCheck

Many customers use Understand and Understand scripting to implement coding standards or to perform quality control checks on their source code.

With Understand 2.6, we’ve implemented that feature directly into a tool called “CodeCheck”, which is available from its own top level menu.

To use Codecheck, you specify what files you want to check, and then what checks to perform. It runs and then integrates the results into an easy to browse/organize results viewer:

Selecting Checks

Scripts are explained in the Rationale section and can be configure.

Results ordered by file. Note counts of violations on left.

Results ordered by violation

Violations in table, and filtered to find a .cpp/.h pair

Treemap of violations (size) and number of distinct violations (color).

We’re excited about this new feature and would like your feedback, please let us know what you think or if you run into any problems.

We are focusing the new forum on Understand 2.5 so are not migrating the content from the old forum. If you need to access old posts for some reason you can temporarily find them here.

You will need to create a new user account, and to prevent spam, all new user registrations are reviewed before you can post the first time. We apologize for the initial inconvenience but feel it will make the forum much more useable for everyone in the long run.

You can access the forum on the support page of the website, or here:

http://www.scitools.com/support/forum

Abstract:

Recent studies have repeatedly found that smaller modules are proportionally more defect-prone. In this article, the authors formulate and test a hypothesis stating that smaller modules are proportionally more coupled, given that dependencies caused by coupling have been consistently associated with defect-proneness. Strong evidence supports this hypothesis. Furthermore, refactoring exacerbates this effect. On the basis of this study’s highly consistent results, the authors state the empirically based theory of relative dependency. That is, in large-scale software systems, smaller modules will be proportionally more dependent compared to larger ones. These findings have two implications for practice. First, we now have an empirically supported mechanism explaining the observations that defect concentration is higher in smaller modules. Practitioners can use this mechanism as evidence while seeking resources and support to revise or amend their organizations’ quality assurance and quality control practices. Second, particularly for the projects that refactor extensively, such as those using agile methods, focusing defect detection activities on smaller modules will increase their efficiency and effectiveness even more.

They used Understand to generate the C++ measurements of many large open source projects.  We donate licenses of Understand to worthy research projects frequently. We’ve e-mailed many times with Dr. Koru to support his efforts and are pleased his work was accepted by IEEE.

The team extensively used the DIT (Depth Inheritance Tree) and CBO (Coupling Between Objects) that Understand provides.

We’ve noted a few ideas for product enhancements from reading their article.

You will notice, however, that the Support Forum hasn’t been moved.  We’ve had trouble with it and our searching for a replacement.

It will come back on line, but not until we have a replacement we think we can stick with long term.

For now, use support@scitools.com or the Chat available on the website for support.

This weekend we released Understand 2.5 (build 507).  Its main changes include:

• Instant Search – a new feature which permits instant searching in even the largest bodies of code. Indexing starts after parsing ends. It operates in the background without holding up any other activities. When complete the search box in the upper right instantly answers your queries.
• Dependency Graphs -  these replace our old dependency graphs with new layout, saving, and cool clustering, save, undo, and redo options. They use a much updated layout engine, which we will roll into our other graphs and use to create new ones in the coming months.
• Simplified Licensing – Understand 2.5 includes all languages and all features. The only licensing difference, in terms of price, is the use of floating or specific developer licenses.  Understand 2.5 does use a new license – your old one will not run it permanently. Instead, it will operate for 30 days, giving you time to request a replacement license if you are under maintenance. This is done directly from Understand or via our website.
• Pricing -  we’ve removed all levels and language variants. Understand 2.5 has it all. This will be our path going forward with new features as well.  The new price is a little higher and the only differentiation is if you need a Single Developer or Floating License.   If you are under maintenance you can update to Understand 2.5 without any cost. Nor will the higher price affect your maintenance going forward. It will remain 18% of your purchase price annually.
• TrackBack Removed – this will be missed by many users, but we needed to focus on core analysis capabilities.
  Take heart, the engineer who wrote much of it will be taking it open source very soon. Look for an announcement here. To be notified by e-mail send a request to support@scitools.com.
• Menu Revamping – menus were moved about and standardized to be more in common with most applications. Additionally, edit menu items are now contextual with editor and graph operations. As an application ages, menus become complex and suffer from bloat. We wanted to simplify and reduce clutter.
• License Manager GUI with Improved Diagnostics – our old license manager does not need to be updated. If it is updated, or for new installations, a new License Manager GUI simplifies operation. Additionally, the server and clients have many more diagnostics embedded to diagnose any licensing manager problems.
• And many hundreds of bug fixes and minor improvements.

We know change can make winners and losers. We’ve tried to make every user a winner with Understand 2.5. If we failed for you, let us know how, and we will try to sort it out and make you as happy as we can.

For Input you can chose to use the selected text, the text of the entire current file, or not to use any input. You can output your results into the command output window like previous versions allowed, discard it, copy it to the clipboard, or overwrite the current selected text or file.

For example, the following would replace the word int with float in the currently highlighted text:

Yes, Find & Replace would do the same thing, it’s just an example

An example of replacing an entire file would be when using astyle to format your code. In that blog posting we had to overwrite the current file, and then reload it. Now we can feed the file text straight into the command and then the editor contents get automatically overwritten. No need to confirm the file reload every time:

As with many new Understand features, this was requested by a cutomer, we thought it was a good idea and that other people would use it, so we implemented it. If you have a good idea don’t hesitate to let us know. Just drop us an email at support@scitools.com

We are also in the process of adding Snapshot support for the Perl API for build 476. Now you can access historical versions of the code through your scripts as well. For example you can compare versions of files or write a script to compare metrics between versions.

What does this mean to you as an Understand script user?
In addition to the new features, the main side effect might be that some scripts might no longer work.

If any of your scripts stop working, review this list of incompatabilites in the Perl delta document. You can also make sure the scripts are still valid syntax by running maintain_uperl -c myscipt.pl.

The new snapshot changes modify the API in a few different ways:

• Db::snapshots() to get a list of snapshots for the db.
• $snapshot->name() to get the name of a snapshot and
• $snapshot->open() to open the snapshot and return a $db variable that represents the snapshot.
• The $db object is now “live”. It never used to be and it was never important that a script pass around and use the correct object. It is now critical.
• Entity objects carry with them knowledge of the database/snapshot they belong to. Multiple databases/snapshots can be open and you can have entities from them all at once.
• Any scripts which used entity ids $ent->id() as keys in hashes must be updated – the $ent->id is no longer unique across snapshots and multiple databases
  • At the beginning of the script add:   use Tie::RefHash;
  • declare the hash with:  tie my %my_hash, ‘Tie::RefHash’;
  • use the actual entity object as the key $my_hash{$ent}, not the dereference of the entity $my_hash{$ent->id}.
  • Don’t use Understand::ent->new($id) to reconstruct an Ent object from the id.

If you run into any problems that you need help with, feel free to post a question on the scripting forum, or shoot us an email at support@scitools.com

UPDATE- We found some issues with the above approach to $ent->id and changed it with build 477. Using a Tie::RefHash for entities does not work as intended and is no longer recommended. We added a new call $db->ent_from_id($id), to reconstruct entity objects from ids.  To use entities as hash keys without later retrieving the entities from keys, it is sufficient to simply use $ent for the key. To later retrieve an entity from a key, instead, use the entity id as the key ($ent->id()), and retrieve the entity from the key with $db->ent_from_id($key). Note, it is not possible to safely store entities from different db’s into the same hash using this technique, since id’s are not unique across multiple open db’s.

Customers tell us frequently that they appreciate our weekly builds. They provide a constant stream of new features and bug fixes to Understand users. We like weekly builds because it means we don’t have to provide patch binaries to customers in dire need of an update and also because we hate the idea of a crash or bug existing in the wild longer than necessary.

But what do we do with new capabilities that we want feedback on, but aren’t quite “production ready”? We faced this with Understand 2.0, which had lots of new features/capabilities.  Frankly, I think we took too long getting feedback and had to redo more than we would have liked once we did get user experiences.

Going foward we have big plans for Understand and the core technology it is based on. And so that we can get rapid feedback, we will be exposing features much earlier than we have in the past using a vehicle called “Scitools Labs”.

Scitools Labs isn’t some effort to make us look bigger than we are. We are still the 20 something person company we’ve always been.  Instead, it is our way of asking… “this is where we are heading, what do you think?”.

Build 471, which will be released tomorrow, includes three Scitools Labs features:

• Dependence Analysis, Graphing and metrics for files and architectures
• Stack Analysis specific to Microchip Corporation’s compiler/micro-controllers
• UnderstandYourCode.Com – a website hosting free tools, online analysis and new web oriented features we are putting into Understand.

I’ll write more specifically about each new Scitools Labs technology in blog postings prefixed with “Scitools Labs:“.

And remember, your input is the whole idea, so don’t be shy – let us know what you think.