You've just inherited a legacy C++ codebase, now what?

This is pretty great advice for any legacy code project. Even outside of C++ there is a huge amount of code bases out there that do not compile/run on a dev machine without tons of work. I once worked on a Java project that due to some weird dependencies, the dev mode was to run a junit test which started spring and went into an infinite loop. Getting a standard run to work helped a ton.

> Rewrite in a memory safe language?

like c++11 and later?

>worry not, by adding std::cmake to the standard library and you’ll see how it’s absolutely a game changer

I'm pretty sure my stomach did somersaults on that.

But as for the advice:

>Get out the chainsaw and rip out everything that’s not absolutely required to provide the features your company/open source project is advertising and selling

I hear you, but this is incredibly dangerous. Might as well take that chainsaw to yourself if you want to try this.

It's dangerous for multiple reasons. Mainly it's a case of Chesterton's fence. Unless you fully understand why X was in the software and fully understand how the current version of the software is used, you cannot remove it. A worst case scenario would be that maybe a month or so later you make a release and the users find out an important feature is subtly broken. You'll spend days trying to track down exactly how it broke.

>Make the project enter the 21st century by adding CI, linters, fuzzing, auto-formatting, etc

It's a nice idea, but it's hard to do. One person is using VIM, another is using emacs, another is using QTCreator, another primarily edits in VSCode.. Trying to get everyone on the same page about all this is very, very hard.

If it's an optional step that requires that they install something new (like commit hook) it's just not going to happen.

Linters also won't do you any good when you open the project and 2000+ warnings appear.

Fair point!

You can access a vector with a function that throws an exception if you so desire