The Bauhaus project supports program understanding on both architectural level and source code level, which requires a graphical user interface tool for source code navigation. In this thesis a source code navigator is designed and implemented as part of the Bauhaus toolkit.
The source code navigator cooperates with other tools in the Bauhaus toolkit. In particular, it is fully integrated with Gravis, the tool for architectural view, to provide an integrated environment for program understanding from the general view on existing software to the particular view on source code in every detail.
Besides displaying source code, the source code navigator visualizes source-code-related information to pass users the power of Bauhaus. Source-code-related information includes reference information, points-to and side-effects information, class information, program slicing information and source code metrics information.
The source code navigator also makes an experimental study of navigation semantics. Navigation activities are modeled and navigation history is maintained to assist users in managing the progress of program understanding.
Some similar tools on the market are evaluated in this thesis, to give readers a picture of the state of the art in source code navigation.
Emphasis of this thesis is placed on conception of the source code navigator, while implementation is done in the associated program.
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