An ideal set of documentation for a bigger project -

if assignment work on 2 years old project 200k lines of code, sufficient 1 pesky 10 packages 3 components uml diagram , 2 pages of documentation?

what think ideal amount of documentation startet reasonably fast, or there advice me me comprehension of virtualy undocumented project classes spanning 5k lines.

thank answers.

you have sympathies :) think more general issue of "how understand new appplication" make great community wiki question

start reading source. 200k lines isn't huge.

take quick read on source. isn't attempt learn everything, idea of structure, key things mentioned, naming schemes , on. idea come out idea of things are, can go , have more detailed rummage when proves necessary.

i asked once when reading code in similar situation doing. interesting question , had think answer. in case, aim idea of key flows of application, , key data structures , how managed , changed.

do know application or supposed do? work? has been released? or still in development? build?

are there test suites? if so, review idea of functionality. if not, start writing you'll need these give confidence changes make correct.

what need application? add functionality or fix defects? in either case, reproduce "defect" (if it's feature, write test case fails because of missing feature. if it's defect, write test case fails because of defect).

then start tracing through execution see relevant code is.

repeat until familiar.