We have a rather large solution with many projects under it. I am looking for a way to determine which dependencies are being used and which are not. We need to audit the solution and determine what is being used and what can be removed.
I have searched google and the visual studio gallery with no luck, does anyone know if a tool like this exists?
There's a couple different ways to define what "being used" means. If it's just a case of stale nuget packages that aren't referenced it's one thing, project/DLL references in individual projects that are referenced but not actually called is something else.
I can think of a couple different ways to do this. If you have Visual Studio Ultimate, you can use the "Generate Dependency Graph" under the Architecture menu to get a visualization of your various pieces, but that gets really message really fast.
Another option if you've got the cash it to buy a copy of ndepend. This thing lets you slice and dice your source code any number of ways; looking for unused dependencies is just one of the many ways you can use it to evaluate your code.
Related
Suppose I have a Visual Studio solution called MySolution. MySolution contains a project with a public method defined like this: public void MyMethod(){...}.
If I have Resharper installed I can find the usages of MyMethod in MySolution by right clicking it and choosing Find Usages. However, suppose I have a number of other Visual Studio solutions on my hard drive which may or may not make use of MyMethod. Is there a simple way to track down these usages?
EDIT: Here's an attempted clarification of what I'm looking for. Suppose we have two other solutions MySolution2 and MySolution3. Each of these solutions contains a number of projects. Some of these projects may reference the assembly containing MyMethod. Let's call these projects referring projects. Some of the referring projects may actually make direct use of MyMethod. Let's call these projects client projects. I'm both interested in finding the referring projects (less ambitious) and the client projects (more ambitious).
How would the other solutions make use of MyMethod other than having its containing assembly referenced in the end?
If you mean is there a way to know if a particular method from a particular assembly referenced from a particular project is actually used in this project or not, then no, to my knowledge there's no way to do that other than going to each of these solutions, jumping to the method (say, with ReSharper's Go to symbol) and searching for its usages.
I see developers frequently developing against a solution containing all the projects (27) in a system. This raises problems of build duration (5 minutes), performance of Visual Studio (such as intellisense latency), plus it doesn't force developer's to think about project dependencies (until they get a circular reference issue).
Is it a good idea to break down a solution like this into smaller solutions that are compilable and testable independent of the "mother" solution? Are there any potential pitfalls with this approach?
Let me restate your questions:
Is it a good idea to break down a solution like this into smaller solutions
The MSDN article you linked makes a quite clear statement:
Important Unless you have very good reasons to use a multi-solution model, you should avoid this and adopt either a single solution model, or in larger systems, a partitioned single solution model. These are simpler to work with and offer a number of significant advantages over the multi-solution model, which are discussed in the following sections.
Moreover, the article recommends that you always have a single "master" solution file in your build process.
Are there any potential pitfalls with this approach?
You will have to deal with the following issues (which actually can be quite hard to do, same source as the above quote):
The multi-solution model suffers from
the following disadvantages:
You are forced to use file references when you need to reference
an assembly generated by a project in
a separate solution. These (unlike
project references) do not
automatically set up build
dependencies. This means that you must
address the issue of solution build
order within the system build script.
While this can be managed, it adds
extra complexity to the build process.
You are also forced to reference a specific configuration build of a
DLL (for example, the Release or Debug
version). Project references
automatically manage this and
reference the currently active
configuration in Visual Studio .NET.
When you work with single solutions, you can get the latest code
(perhaps in other projects) developed
by other team members to perform local
integration testing. You can confirm
that nothing breaks before you check
your code back into VSS ready for the
next system build. In a multi-solution
system this is much harder to do,
because you can test your solution
against other solutions only by using
the results of the previous system
build.
Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate has several tools to help you better understand and manage dependencies in existing code:
Dependency graphs and Architecture Explorer
Sequence diagrams
Layer diagrams and validation
For more info, see Exploring Existing Code. The Visualization and Modeling Feature Pack provides dependency graph support for C++ and C code.
We have a solution of ~250 projects.
It is okay, after installing a patch for Visual Studio 2005 for dealing fast with extremely large solutions [TODO add link].
We also have smaller solutions for teams with selection of their favorite projects, but every project added has also to be added to the master solution, and many people prefer to work with it.
We reprogrammed F7 shortcut (build) to build the startup project rather than the whole solution. That's better.
Solution folders seem to address the problem of finding things well.
Dependencies are only added to top-level projects (EXEs and DLLs) because, when you have static libraries, if A is dependency of B and B is dependency of C, A might often not need to be dependency of C (in order to make things compile and run correctly) and this way, circullar dependencies are OK for compiler (although very bad for mental health).
I support having fewer libraries, even to the extent of having one library named "library". I see no significant advantage of optimizing process memory footprint by bringing "only what it needs", and the linker should do it anyway on object file level.
The only time I really see a need for multiple solutions is functional isolation. The required libs for a windows service may be different than for a web site. Each solution should be optimized to produce a single executable or web site, IMO. It enhances separation of concern and makes it easy to rebuild a functional piece of the application without building everything else along with it.
It certainly has its advantages and disadvantages anyway breaking a solution into multiple projects helps you find what you looking for easly i.e if you are looking for something about reporting you go to the reporting project. it also allows big teams to split the work in such a way that nobody do something to break someone else's code ...
This raises problems of build duration
you can avoid that by only building the projects that you modified and let the CI server do the entire build
Intellisense performance should be quite a bit better in VS2010 compared to VS2008. Also, why would you need to rebuild the whole solution all the time? That would only happen if you change something near the root of the dependency tree, otherwise you just build the project you're currently working on.
I've always found it helpful to have everything in one solution because I could navigate the whole code base easily.
Is it a good idea to break down a solution like this into smaller solutions that are compilable and testable independent of the "mother" solution? Are there any potential pitfalls with this approach?
Yes it is a good idea because:
You don't want VS to slow down on a solution with dozens of VS projects.
It can be interesting to only focus on a portion of the code, this enforce the notion of code locality which is a good thing.
But the important first thing to struggle for is to have as few VS projects/assemblies as possible. My company published two free two white books that explain the pro/cons of using assemblies/VS project/namespaces to partition a large code base.
Partitioning code base through .NET assemblies and Visual Studio projects (8 pages)
Defining .NET Components with Namespaces (7 pages)
The first white-book explains also that VS is pretty slow when working with a solution with dozens of projects, and shows tricks about how to remedy to this slowness.
What is the optimum number of projects in a Visual Studio 2008 solution?
We have one Visual Studio 2008 solution that is around 50 projects right now. It will likely continue to grow as the bulk of the projects within the solution consist of plugin assemblies for the main application.
If it seems like "too many projects" in one solution then how would you go about determining which projects should be grouped together in a solution? Given our example of approximately 50 projects in one solution with the bulk of the projects being plugins and with the number of plugins likely to grow, how should solutions be structured? Should all of the plugins be placed in their own solution? How should the organization change when the number of plugins in the plugins solution hits the magic number of "too many"?
We don't have any issues with this many projects in the solution ... it loads quickly, it builds quickly, it uses a reasonable amount of memory, and doesn't cause VS2008 to crash or bump up against any VS2008 bugs.
I've looked for documentation from Microsoft (there doesn't seem to be any) and Google searches yeild recommendations from "every project gets its own solution" to "place all projects in a single solution." Both extremes seem to be absurd. I'm looking for some reasonable guidance in the middle.
There have been other questions on Stackoverflow related to the maximum you've seen. That's not quite the same as what the optimum would be.
I'd say that you need at least 1 project for each layer on your system. If you need more projects, maybe it's a design problem. Meaning you can either "Over"-design or "Under"-design the application.
I nowdas use the following layers:
DataLayer - Responsible for the underlying data structure ( the database ). In the latest cases having the LINQ and partial classes for this in this project.
Interfaces - Having a layer for all interfaces, this to help extendabillity and not having to rely on some other layers to use these interfaces.
Logic - This defines itself, the business logic
GUI / Front - The Graphical user Interface ( Code )
These layers are the Minimum other Layers that COULD be possible would be Localization and other project that might grow.
But rahter simplify to directories and namespaces than using to many projects!
This is akin to discussions such as "how many functions should I have in a class?" and "should each enum be defined in its own .cs file?".
I would be interested to know how many classes each of your projects has. You can think of your classes, projects and solutions as organisational units. They are there to make your life easier, and to allow you (and your team) to break the overall project into managable conceptual chunks.
If VS2008 isn't complaining, and you and your developers have no problem with 50 projects in one solution then I would not worry about it.
That said, it does sound like a rather large number - but then we know nothing about the size of your overall codebase so it's hard to comment further.
Obviously when you get to 500 then you're starting to look at "too many" it becomes impractical even to manage it.
I might suggest that you analyse "what really constitutes my application" and package that as a single solution. Plugins are rarely considered part of the base application but add-ons to the base functionality.
If the application would cease to be useful without certain plugins, then include those in the base solution.
Other plugins might be grouped on Genre... much like the playlists on your iPod. What does each plugin achieve on a more general level? (These are obviously rhetorical questions) I would group plugins together in natural groups - much like PhotoShop plugins as they group on the menu. i.e. do they affect 3D, do they affect color, do they affect geometric effects, do they affect distortion etc etc.
When I see a slow down, I tend to create a solution that has references to built versions (assemblies) of dependent projects rather than the project files (for any projects that I don't need to see the source code). I only open the source for projects I am working on - surely nobody needs to work on the source of 50 projects at one time.
If you are already referencing the dependent assemblies rather than source, then I think it is just a matter or organizational preference (organize in a way that is easiest for you to understand and maintain).
Is there a pre build action or some compiler switch that we can add?
I have just too many projects in our solution at the moment. I want to add new modules and compile them into separate assemblies.I am looking for options where I can avoid adding new projects for each assembly.
I am using Visual Studio 2005.
Also, It will be worthwhile to know if 2008 has better features over this space.
edit #1: There are two development teams working on this project and we want to cut the modules broadly into two verticals and keep the assemblies separate so that the ongoing patches ( post release ) do not overlap with the functionality in two verticals and also the testing footprint is minimized.
Currently the solution has about 8 projects and we need to setup the structure for the second team to start development.
I do not want to end up adding 5 or 6
new projects in the solution but
rather create folders in the existing
projects so separate code for the new
team or some easy way.
No, Visual Studio is still "one project per assembly". Do you really need to have that many different assemblies?
You may be able to write your own build rules which create multiple assemblies from a single project, but I suspect it's going to lead to a world of pain where Visual Studio gets very confused.
If you could give us more details about why you want lots of assemblies, we may be able to help you come up with a different solution.
EDIT: Having read your updated question, it sounds like you would possibly be better off just working off two branches in source control, and merging into the trunk (and updating from the trunk) appropriately. Alternatively, if the two teams really are working on independent parts of the code, maybe separate projects really is the best solution.
One of the problems (IMO) with Visual Studio is that the files in the projects are listed explicitly - which means that the project files become big merge bottlenecks. I prefer the Eclipse model where any source file under a source path is implicitly included in the build (unless you explicitly exclude it).
Neither Visual Studio 2005 nor 2008 lets you create multi-file assemblies. However, you can run the C# compiler at the command line with the '/addmodule:ModuleName' switch and it'll do what you want. For general details on command line usage of csc see this article. For description of the /addmodule switch see this one.
That said, however, you're most-likely taking a non-optimal approach here. In normal situations you should not have to want to create multi-file assemblies just because you have too many projects. Give more details of your general problem so that people can offer suggestions regarding that.
I'd heed the advice you've been given thus far--if you find yourself asking such questions, there's probably a deeper design issue that's being overlooked--but if you really must do what you're suggesting be done, you have several options. You can hack the project file to allow you to compile files into separate assemblies: the project file is an msbuild file, so there's a lot you can do with it. Also, you can simply use an msbuild file for building your projects and solutions. Or you can use a different build system entirely--NAnt is one example.
The likely problem with these suggestions is that they won't be feasible for your work environment. It's no good to start hacking away at project files that other people on your team use, or to just decide that this or that solution is going to be built using your custom msbuild file. There are many good reasons to use something like a single custom msbuild file, or NAnt, to build your projects, but it's always the wrong decision if it's not made with input from everyone the decision affects.
I've seen a lot of different takes on this subject so I figured if there's a preferred way on this.
Is there any best practices on how to setup Visual Studio Projects and Solutions in regards to multiple solutions for the same solutions?
For example:
Let's say I have a task that calls for a web app, a console application, and a shared business logic library.
I have seen this situation in a 1, 2, and 3 solutions at some time in my career. This is a simple example; however, what if number of projects grows? Is there a line when to keep it in one or break it apart?
Indeed, there are some guidelines for this sort of setup on MSDN. I wrote a short summary in my answer to a similar question on StackOverflow.
I blogged about this back in 2007. The advice still holds:
http://mikehadlow.blogspot.com/2007/07/how-to-structure-visual-studio.html
The bottom line is that I should be able to get your code out of source control, open it in Visual Studio, hit F5 and everything should work.
Solutions are for the developer, in a particular situation. Projects (.CSPROJ for C-Sharp) are where the real compilation takes place.
Theoretically if there are 4 different projects, there could be 24 different combinations of those projects a developer may want to combine into solutions.
If you keep everything at a project level, you won't need to worry about how a developer has arranged their .SLN files
You can have multipe solutions, and each one can reference the projects that it cares about. Extending your example, your shared business logic library may have a corresponding unit test library. These two projects can be contained in one solution. At the same time, you may have another solution that contains the three projects that you mention, but in this case the unit test library isn't included.
My solutions typically consist of:
Web Application project
'Common' folder for base & common helper classes
'Include' folder
'Styles' folder
'Scripts' folder
'Images' folder
'UserControls' folder
Web Services project
Web Framework project
Business Tier project
Business Framework project
Data Access project
I like to include all projects for a certain task, in a solution. So based on the example you mention, I would have a solution containing the three projects that belong to the solution I was asked to do. That keeps all elements to complete a task together, I find this simplifies the inclusion of other elements required to solve the task at hand.