We’ve made several changes to the Understand Perl API recently. The largest change was upgrading from Perl 5.6.0 to 5.10.0 in build 473.
In addition to several cool new features like the smart match operators and switch statements, Perl 5.10 runs faster and has a smaller memory footprint. For more details on what the changes are and how to use
them, see the Perl 5.10 Release Announcement.

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. (more…)

We’ve had dependency analysis in Understand for many years.  With B471 of Understand 2.0 we have consolidated it into a functional area of the tool, improved what it does and also added a few new dependency views.

The Dependency Analysis capability provides these features:

• rapid browsing of dependencies for files and Understand architectures
• Dependents, Depends On, and Butterfly graphs for files and architectures
• Spreadsheet export of dependency relationships
• A new Dependency Browsing dock that shows all depedency information

Read on to learn more about the Dependency Analysis capability and what we plan for it.

Or watch the video here.

(more…)

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.