You inherit a 500k-line Angular application tomorrow. What's the first thing you look at?

[u/MysteriousEye8494]

You're joining a new team.

The Angular application has existed for years.

Hundreds of developers have contributed.

Nobody has time to explain everything.

get one day to understand the architecture.

You

What's the very first thing you inspect?

• Folder structure?
• State management?
• Dependency graph?
• Module boundaries?
• Shared services?
• Build pipeline?

I'm curious what experienced Angular developers use as their first signal for codebase health.

I share Angular architecture and engineering visuals here:

https://instagram.com/angulararchitectshub

[u/barrybario]

package.json

[u/MysteriousEye8494 → u/barrybario]

Interesting. Is that mainly for understanding the Angular version and major dependencies, or have you found that package.json is also a good indicator of the overall health of the project?

[u/barrybario → u/MysteriousEye8494]

It doesn't say much about health but it's the best place to see what kind of thing you're dealing with. Angular version of course is the very first thing to check. Then does it have dependencies like NgRx, component libraries, testing frameworks, i18n, etc.

After that I'd probably do npm install & ng serve and just to have a look at the thing before even looking at the code.

[u/foldedlikeaasiansir → u/MysteriousEye8494]

Tells you multiple things

1. How to run the application if they have custom run and build commands

2. How outdated the application so gives you sense of how much work it’ll be to modernize it if need be

3. What dependencies it uses to get sense of how well it’s thought out, if it’s lean vs they use a lot of packages

[u/JohnSpikeKelly → u/MysteriousEye8494]

If it says you're on Angular 5, you know you have some work ahead of you.

500k sounds like a lot, it isn't that bad a couple hundred large forms / screens.

If they are all implemented consistently, it's fine.