Visual hierarchical breakdown of all features implemented in Core Flight System (cFS) codebase

[axelreichwein]

I've built a tool which identifies all the features implemented in a codebase using AI and then displays the identified features hierarchically visually, along with their related code.

I did this for the Core Flight System (cFS) codebase. Link: https://product-map.ai/app/public?url=https://github.com/nasa/cfe

I'm wondering if this kind of feature map is useful. I would very much appreciate your feedback.

• Can it help developers with onboarding?
• Can it help quickly identify where code related to a feature is located?
• Would it make sense to include a link to this feature map in the documentation (e.g. possibly in the readme)?
• Can you think of other use cases for this feature map?
• besides the hierarchical breakdown, are there other feature-first visualizations that you would need (e.g. feature-first sequence or state machine diagrams)?

[RichLandau]

Very cool, thanks for sharing! I removed the link in your post for now because I want to make sure it isn't leading anywhere malicious. Are you able to post a screenshot of your tool's analysis instead?

[axelreichwein]

Hi @RichLandau below is a screenshot. However, it's hard to review the feature map with just a an image. The cFS codebase has more than 120,000 lines of code and more than 4000 identified features. These features are best explored in an interactive visual way in the link that I shared by expanding/collapsing the map, and zooming in and out, as needed. Is there anything that I can do to prove that the link is not malicious?

[RichLandau]

Thanks, you can go ahead and put it back, I just wanted to make sure there was something real on the other end. This looks really cool!

[axelreichwein]

ok, thanks!

[mbeltran]

I find tools like this very useful for learning or reverse engineering an existing code base. My goto tool for this has been Understand, which might be EOL and is definitely not open source. My only reservation to using this particular tool is that there seems to be a fee involved, but maybe viewing will always be free? It would be best if a standalone web page could be generated for self contained inclusion in any wiki. Is that possible?

[axelreichwein]

@mbeltran Thanks for your comment.

Yes viewing public maps is always free (no login, no account required). When you generate a map, you can decide to make it public and viewable by anyone.

It's certainly possible to export the map into a self contained web page. We don't have that capability yet.

We are right now using the AI-identified implemented features to compare them with the requirements (aka design spec), in order to know how well the implementation matches the requirements. Example requirement alignment result at this link: https://product-map.ai/app/35a079360c9e4de1bebbfe25335186d2/req-code

The alignment results between requirement and code, or between test cases and test code, can be generated on a regular basis through the CI/CD pipeline helping all team members know what is missing and collaborate more efficiently. The comparison of requirements with implemented features can detect issues in the code before test results would, if at all, reveal them.

Would you consider this useful?