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Projects and Data CollectionAs its sources of information, Imagix 4D uses a number of software artifacts that describe different aspects of your software. Most of these data sources already exist in your environment. For example, Imagix 4D can extract class, function, variable and type information directly from the most critical artifact, your source code itself. And Imagix 4D is able to analyze your makefiles to generate information about your build dependencies.To examine other aspects of your software, you need to explicitly generate the data sources, and then collect data from them using Imagix 4D. Typically, the tool you'll use to generate the data is your compiler. For example, to analyze test coverage results generated in Unix environments, Imagix 4D extracts information from the .d files. These are generated by setting your compiler's -(x)a flag, compiling your code, and then running the executable. By selecting which data sources to import, you control the type and scope of information collected about your software. The information from these data sources is integrated in Imagix 4D's database. The resulting collection of information is called a project, and is stored in your file system. Typically, you'll create a number of projects, and use each to examine a different portion of your software. The process of importing data into a project consists of
1. choosing which data source contains the information you'd like to add
2. generating that data source if it does not currently exist 3. adding the data source into the project Once you have imported the data, you have various options for keeping it synchronized with your source code.
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