Understand now fully supports Python access to its underlying database! The new Python API allows you to write your own scripts that can create custom reports, generate your own metrics and in general make Understand deliver exactly what you want it to.

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!

The new interactive Clustered Call Graphs show the function call graph, organized by file. There are several variants of this graph: Call, Call-by, Butterfly and Internal Call. They can also be accessed from the function, class, file or architecture level. These graphs can all be accessed from the Graphical View right click menu for the entity.

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There is a new option for identifying and defining missing macros. The new tool shows what macros are not defined as well as how and where they are referenced. This makes it easy to see which missing Macro definitions would have the largest impact on your project.

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Many teams want to quickly generate Understand’s HTML reports and metrics as part of their regular build process. The new version of the command line tool ‘und’ provides a lot of options for doing exactly this. In this case, I am going to create an Understand project from the latest version of my source code, and generate the html reports and metrics for that version of the code. Since the new version of und has several different modes, I will show how this would be done in each mode.

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Build 571 contains a completely re-written version of ‘und’, the command line interface for Understand.

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.

With Understand 2.6 Build 560 we’ve added a powerful new tool for creating C/C++ projects. The Parse Improvement Tool helps you quickly find missing include paths for your project which will lead to more accurate parsing and project information. Previously Understand relied on you knowing exactly where the include files were and specifying the path. Now there is a tool to help you find those missing files.

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With this weekend’s release of Understand 2.6 Build 551, we are pleased to announce support for the COBOL language.  We’d love your feedback on it, and if you have some sample code you would like us to look at, we’d love to see it.

Grab it at www.getunderstand.com.

With this week’s Build 529, we’ve also incremented the major release version of Understand to 2.6.  The changes released in 2.6 represent over a year or so of development, and we felt the new features big enough to warrant a version bump.

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.

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As of build 523, the .udb extension on Windows is associated with Understand and when a .udb file is double clicked it will open the Understand Project. Some users have asked for similar functionality with code files. In the past if you setup Understand to open a code file, by default it would open a new instance of Understand. As of build 525 it will open up in the existing instance of Understand instead of a new one. Keep reading for instructions on registering Understand to open code files.

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You can now analyze PHP, HTML, CSS and JavaScript files with Understand. Just select “Web” In the New Project Wizard and add your files.

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.