Finding "dead code" in a large C++ legacy application
I'm currently working on a large and old C++ application that has had many developers before me. There is a lot of "dead code" in the project, classes and functions that aren't used by anyone anymore.
What tools are available for C++ to make a analysis of large code base to detect and refactor dead code? Note: I'm not talking about test coverage tool like gcov.
How do you find dead code in your project?
Answer
You'll want to use a static analysis tool
- StackOverflow: What open source C++ static analysis tools are available?
- StackOverflow: C++ static code analysis tool on Windows
- Wikipedia: List of tools for static code analysis
The main gotcha I've run into is that you have to be careful that any libraries aren't used from somewhere that you don't control/have. If you delete a function from a class that gets used by referencing a library in your project you can break something that you didn't know used the code.