First Steps Towards a Tool for Legacy Systems

III-LIDI, Fac. de Inform¶atica, Universidad Nacional de La Plata,50 y 120, La Plata, ArgentinaAbstract. After its flrst release, software must face change, becausechange is a part of its true essence. Often, programmers have to dealwith software built by others. When an improvement, change or updatemust be introduced, programmers need flrst to understand the existingsoftware. In order to achieve that understanding, development tools arecrucial. This paper describes some key features required by a tool to helpprogrammers to understand and handle existing software. We propose toput all these features together so as to add them to an IDE (IntegratedDevelopment Environment). This paper purports to characterize a set ofsteps in order to help in and/or manage that transformation process.Key words: Software Transformation, Legacy Systems, Fortran LegacySystems

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