depclipse

Description

depclipse is a dependency checker plugin for Eclipse developed by Jens Cornelis. It evolved as a branch of JDepend4Eclipse by Andrei Loskutov. The focus of this branch lies on the definition of project rules for dependencies allowed between the java packages and the automated check for dependencies not explicitly allowed.

depclipse is a wrapper for running JDepend from within Eclipse and checking the projects dependencies in order to create rules for which of these correspond to the expected architecture of the project.

Installation

The easiest way to install depclipse is to use the Eclipse Update Manager (available since Eclipse 3.5 Galileo):

Go to Help-> Install new Software

Add the Update Site: http://kelloggs.github.io/depclipse/ .

Kudos

depclipse originally branched from JDepend4Eclipse by Andrei Loskutov.

The Core of both depclipse and JDepend4Eclipse is JDepend from Clarkware. Please visit their website to obtain information about JDepend.

Requirements

depclipse requires Eclipse Kepler 4.3. Older versions might work, but are not maintained anymore.

Usage - running depclipse for the first time

You can run depclipse by right-clicking on your source folder from the Package Explorer.

If the root folder of your project does not already contain a file with your project's dependency rules, a new file is created. By default, this file is called DependencyRules.jdr. You can change this file name in the preferences of depclipse (Preferences -> Java -> depclipse).

depclipse automatically opens its perspective, to show you the results. If you are already used to JDepend4Eclipse, this view will be familiar to you. If you are interested in the metrics shown, you are welcome to visits the websites of JDepend4Eclipse and JDepend. On the right side of this view, you can see the prohibited dependencies that were found. Using the Packages Explorer, you can select Packages of Classes in order to see which prohibited dependencies they are causing.

At this moment, you haven't yet allowed any of the dependencies within your project, which means that all of them will be shown to you as prohibited. You can edit your project rules using the depclipse Rule Editor. You can open the editor by opening your jdr file or by clicking the paragraph icon in the Prohibited Dependencies view.

On the left side of the editor, you can see the prohibited dependencies which were found during the last run of depclipse. You can allow these dependencies by just double-clicking on them. You can also mark multiple dependencies and allow all of them by clicking the "Allow" button on the bottom of the editor. Of course it is also possible to prohibit formerly allowed dependencies.

If your project evolves, your dependencies might change and there might exist rules for dependencies, which do not occur within your project anymore. They are marked as "Obsolete". You can remove all of them by clicking the "Remove obsolete Dependencies" button.

Remember, that you can use the depclipse preferences to specify filters. This comes in handy, if you do not want to check dependencies against java core classes, like java.*.

Further reading

The usage of depclipse has been discussed in the publication

Cornelis J, Dorer K (2010) Vermeidung der Abhängigkeitsdivergenz zwischen Design und Implementierung in Java, (2010)

which had been accepted for the STEP2010 conference in Furtwangen.

For further information about the metrics used, we suggest to visit the JDepend website.