Software maintenance is a perennial problem that will be with us for many years. This view is confirmed by the number, of existing Software systems that require maintaining and thdr predicted lifespan. The majority of software maintenance activity is performed on systems that are poorly documented and were built without the benefit of modern design practices. When working on such systems it is often useful to record knowledge gained about the system from examination of the source code. This knowledge can then be used by other, perhaps less experienced programmers, working in the same area or by the original programmer when working in the same area at a later date. This paper discusses the importance of documentation in the maintenance phase and proposes a tool based on hypertext technology that can meet a number of the documentation needs of the maintenance programmer.
The Software Maintenance ProblemThe phrase 'software maintenance' has been defined in varying ways by many people. Any disagreement usually occurs on the number of activities that the term encompasses. I shall use a broad definition given by Foster [5].Software maintenance is the set of activities associated with keeping operational software in tune with the requirements of its users and operators, and of all other people and systems with which the operational system interacts.Within the software industry an awareness of the significance of software maintenance as an activity that deserves specific attention is growing. This awareness can be attributed to a small group of academic and industrial guru's who over the %ponsored by British Telecom Research Laboratories for a one year Research MSc in Software Redocumentation at the University of Durham.