[off topic] fallow code removal

[Bernd Jendrissek]

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On Fri, May 05, 2006 at 06:20:19AM -0500, John Love-Jensen wrote:
> One of my project's general on-going tasks is to eliminate dead code.
> Sort of following the Extreme Programming principle.

If you're doing XP then you also have a test suite that covers all the
code that you *actually* need, because you wrote the tests first to
reflect the requirements, and then edited the code until it passed.

Compile your codebase with -fprofile-arcs -ftest-coverage, and then run
the test suite.  Use gcov to find code that never gets around to getting
run; either it purports to implement correct behaviour under strange
circumstances (fix the bug in your test suite - it is incomplete - write
a test!), or someone was trying to be too cleverer and added untested
(and un-run!) code: eliminate it once you agree it is indeed fallow.

(I speak of wishful thinking about my own code base, not out of positive
experience with this technique.)

- --
It is manipulative to not be manipulative.
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