cppdep 0.1.0

Differences from dep_utils

• Rewrite in Python, unifying adep/cdep/ldep into one tool

• Project analysis configuration with an XML file

• No file alias support for the archaic file-name length limitations.

• An extended notion of Component (header- or source-only)

• Support for multiple packages and package groups

• Support for exporting final dependency graph to Graphviz dot format

Limitations

• Indirect extern declarations of global variables or functions instead of including the proper component header with the declarations.

• Embedded dynamic dependencies, such as dynamic loading and configurable internal services.

• Preprocessing or macro expansion is not performed. Dependency inclusion via preprocessor meta-programming is not handled.

• Dependency exclusion with C style multi-line comments or macros is not respected.

Requirements

1. Python 2.7 / 3.3+

2. NetworkX

3. pydotplus

4. (Optional) Graphviz

5. (Optional) xdot

The dependencies can be installed with pip.

$ sudo pip install networkx pydotplus

Installation

The latest stable release from PyPi:

$ sudo pip install cppdep

Usage

Create an XML configuration file that describes the project. config_example.xml and config_schema.rng are given for guidance.

In the root directory of the project with the configuration file, run the following command to generate dependency analysis reports and graphs.

$ cppdep -c /path/to/config/xml

Graph to Image Conversion

To view the generated graph dot files without converting to other formats.

$ xdot graph.dot

Here’s how to convert a Graphviz dot file to PDF format.

$ dot -Tpdf graph1.dot -o graph1.pdf

Apply -O flag to automatically generate output file names from the input file names.

$ dot -T pdf graph1.dot -O  # The output file is graph1.dot.pdf

To run dot on files in directories and sub-directories recursively.

$ find -type f -name "*.dot" directory_path | xargs dot -Tpdf -O

To create output file names without .dot in the name.

$ find -type f -name "*.dot" directory_path -exec sh -c 'dot -Tpdf "${0}" -o "${0%.*}.pdf"' {} \;

External links

1. The last known location of John Lakos’ dep_utils source code: http://www-numi.fnal.gov/computing/d120/releases/R2.2/Dependency/

2. Experimental packaging of dep_utils source code: https://sourceforge.net/projects/introspector/files/lsc-large-scale-c/first-release/

3. Nmdepend, a lightweight ‘link-time’ dependency analyzer for C++ using object files and libraries instead of source-code as input.

Acknowledgments

• John Lakos for inventing the analysis and providing dep_utils.

• Zhichang Yu for rewriting dep_utils into Python.