Call graph analysis of perl source?

[Roy Smith]

I have been given the "interesting" task of figuring out and documenting
16,000 lines perl. It's typical crud -- no comments, lots of global
variables, etc.

After poking at it for a while, it's obvious that what I need to do is
build a call graph. Are there any tools to help me do this?

 

[Ben Morrow]

I have been given the "interesting" task of figuring out and documenting
16,000 lines perl. It's typical crud -- no comments, lots of global
variables, etc.

After poking at it for a while, it's obvious that what I need to do is
build a call graph. Are there any tools to help me do this?

B::Xref

Ben

 

[Mark Clements]

I have been given the "interesting" task of figuring out and documenting
16,000 lines perl. It's typical crud -- no comments, lots of global
variables, etc.

After poking at it for a while, it's obvious that what I need to do is
build a call graph. Are there any tools to help me do this?

Devel::Graph ? May be a little verbose for your needs.

I've had good results with Autodia, but this builds graphs of a class
hierarchy rather than calls themselves.

Your next task will probably be refactoring: in order to do this
successfully you'll need to have automatic testing in place. Even an
application that wasn't designed for testing can be tested to some
degree at the top level using something like Test::WWW::Mechanize (if
it's a web application). If you have a well-designed barrage of
automatic tests you can be more certain (OK - less uncertain) that your
refactoring hasn't broken anything.

Mark

 

[Roy Smith]

Devel::Graph ? May be a little verbose for your needs.

Thanks for the pointer. I just looked at Devel::Graph, and I don't think
it's what I want. I meant "graph" in the data structure sense of the word,
not in the pretty pictures sense.

However, the docs for Devel::Graph contained a pointer to PPI, which does
look interesting.

 

[xhoster]

I have been given the "interesting" task of figuring out and documenting
16,000 lines perl. It's typical crud -- no comments, lots of global
variables, etc.

After poking at it for a while, it's obvious that what I need to do is
build a call graph. Are there any tools to help me do this?

dprofpp -T (and friends)

Xho