Recently I have inherited thousands of lines of Perl code, all of which is poorly documented. The code comprises multiple applications which I must learn inside-and-out. I want to start documenting the code and figuring out how the different programs work together.

What I would like to do is create pages containing outlines of the software architecture and explanations of subroutines, variables, etc. It seems like a big job, but I think having those pages would be very useful and help me learn the various applications as well.

I prefer that the doc pages be viewable via a web browser. But this isn't a requirement. Perhaps some of docs would contain graphics (for diagrams and other things). Of course, my first thought is to investigate the various POD tools. But I have never attempted to create so much documentation and I am hoping to get some pointers before proceeding.

The code itself needs to be cleaned up and further commented. The code lives on Linux and is spread over different cgi scripts and custom modules. Another concern I have is whether to put all of the documentation on the same Linux machine (our production server). I also have a Windows server which is generally used for backup, but doesn't have the Perl code.

In reply to Large-scale code documentation by jacques

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