NDepend

Improve your .NET code quality with NDepend

Author: Patrick Smacchia

My dad being an early programmer in the 70's, I have been fortunate to switch from playing with Lego, to program my own micro-games, when I was still a kid. Since then I never stop programming. I graduated in Mathematics and Software engineering. After a decade of C++ programming and consultancy, I got interested in the brand new .NET platform in 2002. I had the chance to write the best-seller book (in French) on .NET and C#, published by O'Reilly (> 15.000 copies) and also did manage some academic and professional courses on the platform and C#. Over the years, I gained a passion for understanding structure and evolution of large complex real-world applications, and for talking with talented developers behind it. As a consequence, I got interested in static code analysis and started the project NDepend. Today, with more than 8.000 client companies, including many of the Fortune 500 ones, NDepend offers deeper insight and understanding about their code bases to a wide range of professional users around the world. I live with my wife and our twin babies Léna and Paul, in the beautiful island of Mauritius in the Indian Ocean.

Simplifying a Visual Studio extension menu: A Case Study

NDepend version 2019.2.1 has just been released. This new version proposes a simplified menu for the NDepend Visual Studio extension.

Before going further I underline that we didn’t get rid of the standard menu, the user can switch back and forth simplified and standard menu within a single click. There is something in UI that all users worldwide dislike: don’t force a new UI just for the sake of it.

The simplified menu is shown per default on machines that never ran NDepend, else the standard menu is shown. Here is a view of the simplified/beginner menu vs. the standard/advanced menu.

NDepend simplified/beginner menu vs. standard/advanced menu

We introduced a simplified menu because we think that trial users and beginner users will benefit from it. Having most features available through a single level menu certainly makes the product features more discoverable.

More and Tools popup menus

A More… popup menu is here to show features and actions that are typically used less often. It is a UI trade off to force an extra-click to access these actions:

More Actions Menu

The Tools popup menu is an opportunity to switch to the advanced menu, and see the NDepend Start Page. It is also good to discover NDepend tooling outside Visual Studio, the standalone VisualNDepend.exe, NDepend API and OSS Power Tools, Azure DevOps extension and others Continuous Integration possibilities:

Tools Menu Actions

Opportunities to lean up the user experience

Having a simplified menu is also an opportunity to encourage the user to do some configuration steps. For example in the first screenshot we have the Explore Code Coverage button. With NDepend the code coverage by tests of a code base can be harnessed in multiple ways as explained here. But to harness code coverage data the user has to import it first. Hence, per default an Import Code Coverage button is shown to the user and the Explore Code Coverage button is shown only upon data imported.

Another important NDepend feature is comparing against a baseline. As far as I know NDepend is the only Visual Studio tool that lets the user diff the actual code base against a baseline. The user can then focus on new issues since baseline, or diff-related issues like API Breaking Changes or Code Smells Regression. The baseline can also be used to review code changes since the baseline. When NDepend analyzes a large legacy code base, letting the user focuses on new issues since the baseline is a very important facility to avoid letting the users lost in the prioritization of thousands of issues.

Per default the baseline is set to the first analysis result obtained. It means that the first time the user runs an analysis on a code base, this first analysis result is used both for the actual snapshot and the baseline snapshot. In this situation, when the user clicks the buttons New Issues since Baseline or Diff since Baseline, there is nothing to show. Thus we take a chance to show an informational message box that explains this no-diff situation. Doing so avoids the user being stuck with a no-result action or even worse, a button disabled with no obvious reason. We also hope these explanations will motivate the user to work on changes and then re-analyze to see what NDepend has to say about the new changes.

Having a single level menu just became mandatory

Another point to underline is that having a single level VS extension menu just became mandatory. Visual Studio 2019 just introduced the Extensions top level menu and extensions cannot have their top level menus anymore.

Visual Studio 2019 Extensions Menus

This move adds an extra click for accessing each extension feature. This extra click represents a UI regression for the millions of VS extensions users and de-facto discards features accessible only through a nested sub-menu. This move was unexpected because it solves a UI problem we (as a VS extension provider) have never heard of: having so many extensions menus that it becomes a cluttering problem. The only right way to solve such problem would be to let the user choose which extension have their top-level menu and which extension lies under the Extensions menu. An extension menu should be top-leveled by default upon installation: when a user installs an extension the goal is to spend the next minutes or hours trying it and using it. In this context it doesn’t make sense to put the extension menus in a second-zone, doing so degrades the so precious and fragile FTUE First-Time User Experience. A VS extension doesn’t get a second chance to offer a first impression to a trial user.

Several big names in the VS extension industry have already complained about this move here. You can vote and comment now because apparently Microsoft will monitor this thread only till mid May 2019.

 

We hope this simplified menu will help trial and beginner users getting started with all the NDepend goodies. Certainly some seasoned users will also prefer this less cluttered menu style. If you have comment or ideas to improve more let us know.

On forced UI change you can read further this 2012’s Scott Hanselman post Who moved my cheese?

People don’t like it when you move their cheese. They are just trying to get through the maze, they have it all under control and then, poof, someone moved their cheese. Now it’s a huge hassle to find it again. Change a hotkey or the case of the menus and all heck breaks loose.

 

An in-depth analysis of .NET Core 3.0 support for WPF and Winforms APIs

.NET Core 3.0 will be RTM soon and it supports WPF and Winforms APIs.

In my last post I’ve been exploring .NET Core 3.0 new APIs by comparing compiled bits with NDepend, of .NET Core 3.0 against .NET Core 2.2.

In this post I will compare .NET Core 3.0 Windows Forms (Winforms) and WPF APIs with .NET Framework 4.x.

I won’t make the suspense last: .NET Core 3.0 support for Winforms and WPF APIs is almost complete, I found very few breaking changes.

I will now explain what I’ve done with NDepend to explore this API diff, and then dig into the results. If you are wondering How to port desktop applications to .NET Core 3.0 see Microsoft explanations here.

Comparing .NET Core 3.0 Winforms and WPF APIs vs. NET Framework 4.x with NDepend

From the NDepend Start Page select Compare 2 versions of a code base menu. Then use Add assemblies in Folder buttons to add .NET Framework assemblies from folder C:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v4.0.30319 and Microsoft.WindowsDesktop.app nuget package assemblies (from folder C:\Users\psmac\.nuget\packages\microsoft.windowsdesktop.app\3.0.0-preview-27325-3\ref\netcoreapp3.0 on my machine).

Comparing .NET Core 3.0 Winforms WPF APIs with .NET Framework

A minor difficulty was to isolate the exact set of assemblies to focus on. Here is the list of concerned assemblies I came up with:

Notice that to preserve the correspondance between APIs and assemblies packaging, the attribute TypeForwardedToAttribute is massively used to delegate implementations.

Usage of TypeForwardedToAttribute

The few breaking changes

With the default NDepend rules about API breaking changes, I’ve only found 16 public types and 52 public methods missing. Here are the types:

16 types missing in WPF Winforms .NET Core 3.0 API

16 types missing on a total of 4.095 public types, well done!

Number of public types per assemblies

The 52 public methods missing are: (on a total of 42.645 public methods)

Parent Assembly Name Parent Type Name Method name
System.Security.Principal.Windows System.Security.Principal.WindowsIdentity .ctor(String,String)
System.Security.Principal.Windows System.Security.Principal.WindowsIdentity Impersonate()
System.Security.Principal.Windows System.Security.Principal.WindowsIdentity Impersonate(IntPtr)
System.Security.Principal.Windows System.Security.Principal.IdentityReferenceCollection get_IsReadOnly()
System.Security.Permissions System.Net.EndpointPermission ToString()
System.Security.Permissions System.Security.HostProtectionException GetObjectData(SerializationInfo,StreamingContext)
System.Security.Permissions System.Security.Policy.ApplicationDirectory Clone()
System.Security.Permissions System.Security.Policy.ApplicationTrust Clone()
System.Security.Permissions System.Security.Policy.PermissionRequestEvidence Clone()
System.Security.Permissions System.Security.Policy.Site Clone()
System.Security.Permissions System.Security.Policy.StrongName Clone()
System.Security.Permissions System.Security.Policy.Url Clone()
System.Security.Permissions System.Security.Policy.Zone Clone()
System.Security.Permissions System.Security.Policy.GacInstalled Clone()
System.Security.Permissions System.Security.Policy.Hash Clone()
System.Security.Permissions System.Security.Policy.Publisher Clone()
System.Security.Cryptography.Pkcs System.Security.Cryptography.Pkcs.EnvelopedCms .ctor(SubjectIdentifierType,ContentInfo)
System.Security.Cryptography.Pkcs System.Security.Cryptography.Pkcs.EnvelopedCms .ctor(SubjectIdentifierType,ContentInfo,AlgorithmIdentifier)
System.Security.Cryptography.Pkcs System.Security.Cryptography.Pkcs.EnvelopedCms Encrypt()
System.Security.Cryptography.Pkcs System.Security.Cryptography.Pkcs.ContentInfo Finalize()
System.Security.Cryptography.Cng System.Security.Cryptography.ECDiffieHellmanCng FromXmlString(String)
System.Security.Cryptography.Cng System.Security.Cryptography.ECDiffieHellmanCng ToXmlString(Boolean)
System.Security.Cryptography.Cng System.Security.Cryptography.ECDsaCng FromXmlString(String)
System.Security.Cryptography.Cng System.Security.Cryptography.ECDsaCng ToXmlString(Boolean)
System.Security.Cryptography.Cng System.Security.Cryptography.RSACng DecryptValue(Byte[])
System.Security.Cryptography.Cng System.Security.Cryptography.RSACng EncryptValue(Byte[])
System.Security.Cryptography.Cng System.Security.Cryptography.RSACng get_KeyExchangeAlgorithm()
System.Security.Cryptography.Cng System.Security.Cryptography.RSACng get_SignatureAlgorithm()
System.Printing System.Printing.PrintQueue set_Name(String)
System.Printing System.Printing.IndexedProperties.PrintInt32Property op_Implicit(PrintInt32Property)
System.Printing System.Printing.IndexedProperties.PrintStringProperty op_Implicit(PrintStringProperty)
System.Printing System.Printing.IndexedProperties.PrintStreamProperty op_Implicit(PrintStreamProperty)
System.Printing System.Printing.IndexedProperties.PrintQueueAttributeProperty op_Implicit(PrintQueueAttributeProperty)
System.Printing System.Printing.IndexedProperties.PrintQueueStatusProperty op_Implicit(PrintQueueStatusProperty)
System.Printing System.Printing.IndexedProperties.PrintBooleanProperty op_Implicit(PrintBooleanProperty)
System.Printing System.Printing.IndexedProperties.PrintThreadPriorityProperty op_Implicit(PrintThreadPriorityProperty)
System.Printing System.Printing.IndexedProperties.PrintServerLoggingProperty op_Implicit(PrintServerLoggingProperty)
System.Printing System.Printing.IndexedProperties.PrintDriverProperty op_Implicit(PrintDriverProperty)
System.Printing System.Printing.IndexedProperties.PrintPortProperty op_Implicit(PrintPortProperty)
System.Printing System.Printing.IndexedProperties.PrintServerProperty op_Implicit(PrintServerProperty)
System.Printing System.Printing.IndexedProperties.PrintTicketProperty op_Implicit(PrintTicketProperty)
System.Printing System.Printing.IndexedProperties.PrintByteArrayProperty op_Implicit(PrintByteArrayProperty)
System.Printing System.Printing.IndexedProperties.PrintProcessorProperty op_Implicit(PrintProcessorProperty)
System.Printing System.Printing.IndexedProperties.PrintQueueProperty op_Implicit(PrintQueueProperty)
System.Printing System.Printing.IndexedProperties.PrintJobPriorityProperty op_Implicit(PrintJobPriorityProperty)
System.Printing System.Printing.IndexedProperties.PrintJobStatusProperty op_Implicit(PrintJobStatusProperty)
System.Printing System.Printing.IndexedProperties.PrintDateTimeProperty op_Implicit(PrintDateTimeProperty)
System.Printing System.Printing.IndexedProperties.PrintSystemTypeProperty op_Implicit(PrintSystemTypeProperty)
System.Printing System.Windows.Xps.XpsDocumentWriter raise__WritingProgressChanged(Object,WritingProgressChangedEventArgs)
System.Printing System.Windows.Xps.XpsDocumentWriter raise__WritingCompleted(Object,WritingCompletedEventArgs)
System.Printing System.Windows.Xps.XpsDocumentWriter raise__WritingCancelled(Object,WritingCancelledEventArgs)
System.Drawing System.Drawing.FontConverter Finalize()

Portability to .NET Core 3.0 analysis

Microsoft offers a Portability Analyzer tool to analyze changes in desktop API that will break your desktop app. I’ve tested it on NDepend but I just got very coarse results. Did I miss something? At least it is mostly green 🙂

Portability Analyzer analysis on NDepend

I wrote last year a post named Quickly assess your .NET code compliance with .NET Standard let me know in comment if it is worth revisiting this post for desktop APIs. Btw, my guess is that desktop APIs won’t be part of .NET Standard vNext (since there is no plan to support it on all platforms) but I haven’t found any related info on the web.

Why migrate your desktop app to .NET Core 3.0?

This is a great news that Microsoft embeds good-old desktop APIs in .NET Core 3.0 with such an outstanding compatibility. It is worth noting that so far (February 2019) there is no plan to port Windows Forms and WPF on other platforms than Windows.  So, what are the benefits of porting an existing application to .NET Core 3.0?

I found answers in this recent How to Port Desktop Applications to .NET Core 3.0 Channel9 30 minutes video at 5:12. Basically you’ll get more deployment flexibility, Core Runtime and API improvements and also more performances.

Microsoft promises to not urge anyone to port existing Winforms and WPF application to .NET Core 3.0. However for a Visual Studio extension shop like us if it is decided that VS will run on .NET Core 3.0 in the future, we hope to be notified many months ahead. We discussed that on twitter with Amanda Silver in January 2019. It looks like this spring 2019 they will take a decision. As a consequence to support both Visual Studio past versions running on .NET fx and new versions running on .NET Core 3, an extension will need to support both .NET Fx and .NET Core 3 desktop APIs.

Exploring .NET Core 3.0 new API

.NET Core 3.0 is representing a major step for the .NET community. It is interesting to analyze what’s new in the API directly from the compiled bits. In this post I will first explain how to diff .NET Core 3.0 against .NET Core 2.2 with NDepend, and then how to browse diff results.

Arguably the biggest progress of .NET Core 3.0 will be the support for Winforms and WPF on the Windows platform. Since everything is new here, compare to .NET Core 2.2, we won’t analyze this part. However it will be interesting to analyze .NET Fx Winforms/WPF APIs vs .NET Core 3.0 Winforms/WPF APIs in another post (that I finally wrote here).

Analyzing two versions of .NET Core with NDepend

It takes a few minutes to download NDepend trial, install it and start VisualNDepend.exe, and it takes a few minutes to compare .NET Core 3.0 against .NET Core 2.2. If you want to browse the diff on your machine, expect 5 to 10 minutes to get hands-on.

First Start VisualNDepend.exe and click Compare 2 versions of a code base:

How to compare 2 versions of a code base

For both builds, choose Add Assemblies in Folder:

  • Choose C:\Program Files\dotnet\shared\Microsoft.NETCore.App\2.2.2  for Older Build
  • Choose C:\Program Files\dotnet\shared\Microsoft.NETCore.App\3.0.0-preview-27324-5 for Newer Build
Choose assemblies in folder to analyze

Respectively 156 and 161 assemblies are gathered. Click Ok to run two analysis, on older and newer build. Both analysis results will be then diffed automatically.

Ready to compare 2 versions of .NET Core

Querying new API

Let’s start with a few CQLinq code queries to explore the new .NET Core 3.0 APIs:

This query match all new public code elements, including new assemblies, namespace, types, methods and fields:

Use the NDepend query result to browse this large new API set : 5 new assemblies, 83 new namespaces, 297 new types, 4 924 new methods and 307 new fields. Note that code elements with pink background are not matched by the query, they are just here for preserving the code hierarchy in the result:

.NET Core 3.0 new public API

Download here this long list obtained by exporting the query result to excel. For a better result formatting I actually used this refined query to show properly parent assemblies/namespaces/types in excel columns:

It is interesting to just focus on the 297 new public types with the code query below. Download the list here or browse the same list at the end of this post.

New .NET Core 3.0 Public Types

It is also interesting to browse the new 1.101 public methods and 38 public fields added on public types that existed already in .NET Core 2.2.  Download this list here.

API Breaking Changes

NDepend proposes 6 default rules to browse API breaking changes.

These rules matche 19 public types removed from .NET Core 2.2 (see list below) 176 public methods removed and 36 public fields removed

.NET Core 2.2 Types Removed

Listing Methods Changed

Exploring the API evolution is useful for API consumers. For those working on the framework .NET Core itself, it is interesting to also browse implementation changes. The NDepend search by change panel proposes various options for that. Note that this search panel is actually a code query generator. The Edit query button proposes to edit and refine the currently generated query.

Another interesting point is that it is a semantic implementation change. All matched methods do behave differently at runtime. This makes this tool ideal to plan code change review without bothering with formatting and comments change.

Matched code elements can be highlighted in the metric view. From the screenshot above we can see at a glance that System.Xml and System.Data are much more stable than System.RunTime for example. By zooming in the view, we can get more information about which code was churned.

Highlight methods where code was changed

In the query result panel, a code element is underlined when its implementation changed. If you have compiled both source versions on your machine and analyzed those compiled versions, you can right click an underlined method and directly compare the diff in source code.

I hope you see value both in the results offered and in the how-to-diff procedure that can be applied to any .NET code base, assuming you have 2 versions to compare.

New .NET Core 3.0 types

Here is the list of the 297 new types added to .NET Core 3.0.

ParentAssembly Full Name
WindowsBase System.Windows.Markup .ValueSerializerAttribute
System.Xml.Linq System.Xml.XPath.XDocumentExtensions
System.Threading.ThreadPool System.Threading.IThreadPoolWorkItem
System.Threading.Tasks System.Runtime.CompilerServices .AsyncIteratorMethodBuilder
System.Threading.Tasks System.Runtime.CompilerServices .ConfiguredCancelableAsyncEnumerable<T>
System.Text.Json System.Text.Json.JsonCommentHandling
System.Text.Json System.Text.Json.JsonTokenType
System.Text.Json System.Text.Json.JsonDocument
System.Text.Json System.Text.Json.JsonElement
System.Text.Json System.Text.Json .JsonElement+ArrayEnumerator
System.Text.Json System.Text.Json .JsonElement+ObjectEnumerator
System.Text.Json System.Text.Json.JsonProperty
System.Text.Json System.Text.Json.JsonValueType
System.Text.Json System.Text.Json.JsonReaderException
System.Text.Json System.Text.Json.JsonReaderOptions
System.Text.Json System.Text.Json.JsonReaderState
System.Text.Json System.Text.Json.Utf8JsonReader
System.Text.Json System.Text.Json.JsonWriterOptions
System.Text.Json System.Text.Json.JsonWriterState
System.Text.Json System.Text.Json.Utf8JsonWriter
System.Security.Principal.Windows System.Security.Principal .WindowsAccountType
System.Security.Cryptography.Primitives System.Security.Cryptography .PbeEncryptionAlgorithm
System.Security.Cryptography.Primitives System.Security.Cryptography .PbeParameters
System.Security.Cryptography.Algorithms System.Security.Cryptography.AesCcm
System.Security.Cryptography.Algorithms System.Security.Cryptography.AesGcm
System.Runtime.WindowsRuntime.UI.Xaml Windows.UI.Xaml.CornerRadius
System.Runtime.WindowsRuntime.UI.Xaml Windows.UI.Xaml.DurationType
System.Runtime.WindowsRuntime.UI.Xaml Windows.UI.Xaml.Duration
System.Runtime.WindowsRuntime.UI.Xaml Windows.UI.Xaml.GridUnitType
System.Runtime.WindowsRuntime.UI.Xaml Windows.UI.Xaml.GridLength
System.Runtime.WindowsRuntime.UI.Xaml Windows.UI.Xaml.Thickness
System.Runtime.WindowsRuntime.UI.Xaml Windows.UI.Xaml.LayoutCycleException
System.Runtime.WindowsRuntime.UI.Xaml Windows.UI.Xaml.Markup .XamlParseException
System.Runtime.WindowsRuntime.UI.Xaml Windows.UI.Xaml.Automation .ElementNotAvailableException
System.Runtime.WindowsRuntime.UI.Xaml Windows.UI.Xaml.Automation .ElementNotEnabledException
System.Runtime.WindowsRuntime.UI.Xaml Windows.UI.Xaml.Media.Matrix
System.Runtime.WindowsRuntime.UI.Xaml Windows.UI.Xaml.Media.Media3D.Matrix3D
System.Runtime.WindowsRuntime.UI.Xaml Windows.UI.Xaml.Media.Animation.KeyTime
System.Runtime.WindowsRuntime.UI.Xaml Windows.UI.Xaml.Media.Animation .RepeatBehaviorType
System.Runtime.WindowsRuntime.UI.Xaml Windows.UI.Xaml.Media.Animation .RepeatBehavior
System.Runtime.WindowsRuntime.UI.Xaml Windows.UI.Xaml.Controls.Primitives .GeneratorPosition
System.Runtime.WindowsRuntime Windows.UI.Color
System.Runtime.WindowsRuntime Windows.Foundation.Point
System.Runtime.WindowsRuntime Windows.Foundation.Rect
System.Runtime.WindowsRuntime Windows.Foundation.Size
System.Runtime.WindowsRuntime System.WindowsRuntimeSystemExtensions
System.Runtime.WindowsRuntime System.IO .WindowsRuntimeStorageExtensions
System.Runtime.WindowsRuntime System.IO.WindowsRuntimeStreamExtensions
System.Runtime.WindowsRuntime System.Threading.DispatcherQueueHandler
System.Runtime.WindowsRuntime System.Threading.DispatcherQueuePriority
System.Runtime.WindowsRuntime System.Runtime.InteropServices .WindowsRuntime.AsyncInfo
System.Runtime.WindowsRuntime System.Runtime.InteropServices .WindowsRuntime.WindowsRuntimeBuffer
System.Runtime.WindowsRuntime System.Runtime.InteropServices .WindowsRuntime .WindowsRuntimeBufferExtensions
System.Runtime.Serialization System.Runtime.Serialization .ISerializationSurrogateProvider
System.Runtime.Loader System.Runtime.Loader .AssemblyDependencyResolver
System.Runtime.Intrinsics System.MidpointRounding
System.Runtime.Intrinsics System.Runtime.Intrinsics.Vector64
System.Runtime.Intrinsics System.Runtime.Intrinsics.Vector64<T>
System.Runtime.Intrinsics System.Runtime.Intrinsics.Vector128
System.Runtime.Intrinsics System.Runtime.Intrinsics.Vector128<T>
System.Runtime.Intrinsics System.Runtime.Intrinsics.Vector256
System.Runtime.Intrinsics System.Runtime.Intrinsics.Vector256<T>
System.Runtime.Intrinsics System.Runtime.Intrinsics.X86 .FloatComparisonMode
System.Runtime.Intrinsics System.Runtime.Intrinsics.X86.Aes
System.Runtime.Intrinsics System.Runtime.Intrinsics.X86.Avx
System.Runtime.Intrinsics System.Runtime.Intrinsics.X86.Avx2
System.Runtime.Intrinsics System.Runtime.Intrinsics.X86.Bmi1
System.Runtime.Intrinsics System.Runtime.Intrinsics.X86.Bmi2
System.Runtime.Intrinsics System.Runtime.Intrinsics.X86.Fma
System.Runtime.Intrinsics System.Runtime.Intrinsics.X86.Lzcnt
System.Runtime.Intrinsics System.Runtime.Intrinsics.X86.Pclmulqdq
System.Runtime.Intrinsics System.Runtime.Intrinsics.X86.Popcnt
System.Runtime.Intrinsics System.Runtime.Intrinsics.X86.Sse
System.Runtime.Intrinsics System.Runtime.Intrinsics.X86.Sse2
System.Runtime.Intrinsics System.Runtime.Intrinsics.X86.Sse3
System.Runtime.Intrinsics System.Runtime.Intrinsics.X86.Sse41
System.Runtime.Intrinsics System.Runtime.Intrinsics.X86.Sse42
System.Runtime.Intrinsics System.Runtime.Intrinsics.X86.Ssse3
System.Runtime.Intrinsics System.Runtime.Intrinsics.Arm.Arm64.Aes
System.Runtime.Intrinsics System.Runtime.Intrinsics.Arm.Arm64.Base
System.Runtime.Intrinsics System.Runtime.Intrinsics.Arm.Arm64.Sha1
System.Runtime.Intrinsics System.Runtime.Intrinsics.Arm.Arm64 .Sha256
System.Runtime.Intrinsics System.Runtime.Intrinsics.Arm.Arm64.Simd
System.Runtime.InteropServices System.Runtime.CompilerServices .IDispatchConstantAttribute
System.Runtime.InteropServices System.Runtime.InteropServices .StandardOleMarshalObject
System.Runtime.InteropServices System.Runtime.InteropServices .NativeLibrary
System.Runtime.Extensions System.AppDomainSetup
System.Runtime.Extensions System.Security.IStackWalk
System.Runtime.Extensions System.Security.PermissionSet
System.Runtime.Extensions System.Security.Permissions .PermissionState
System.Runtime.Extensions System.Runtime.ProfileOptimization
System.Runtime System.ArgIterator
System.Runtime System.IAsyncDisposable
System.Runtime System.Index
System.Runtime System.Range
System.Runtime System.Text.Rune
System.Runtime System.Text.StringRuneEnumerator
System.Runtime System.Globalization.ISOWeek
System.Runtime System.Threading.Tasks.Sources .ManualResetValueTaskSourceCore<TResult>
System.Runtime System.Runtime.Remoting.ObjectHandle
System.Runtime System.Runtime.CompilerServices .AsyncIteratorStateMachineAttribute
System.Runtime System.Runtime.CompilerServices .CallerArgumentExpressionAttribute
System.Runtime System.Collections.Generic .IAsyncEnumerable<T>
System.Runtime System.Collections.Generic .IAsyncEnumerator<T>
System.Private.CoreLib System.IAsyncDisposable
System.Private.CoreLib System.Index
System.Private.CoreLib System.Range
System.Private.CoreLib System.Text .StringBuilder+ChunkEnumerator
System.Private.CoreLib System.Text.Rune
System.Private.CoreLib System.Text.SpanRuneEnumerator
System.Private.CoreLib System.Text.StringRuneEnumerator
System.Private.CoreLib System.Globalization.ISOWeek
System.Private.CoreLib System.Buffers.OperationStatus
System.Private.CoreLib System.Buffers.StandardFormat
System.Private.CoreLib System.Buffers.Text.Utf8Formatter
System.Private.CoreLib System.Buffers.Text.Utf8Parser
System.Private.CoreLib System.Buffers.Binary.BinaryPrimitives
System.Private.CoreLib System.Threading.Tasks.Sources .ManualResetValueTaskSourceCore<TResult>
System.Private.CoreLib System.Runtime.Remoting.ObjectHandle
System.Private.CoreLib System.Runtime.Loader .AssemblyDependencyResolver
System.Private.CoreLib System.Runtime.CompilerServices .AsyncIteratorMethodBuilder
System.Private.CoreLib System.Runtime.CompilerServices .AsyncIteratorStateMachineAttribute
System.Private.CoreLib System.Runtime.CompilerServices .CallerArgumentExpressionAttribute
System.Private.CoreLib System.Runtime.CompilerServices .ConfiguredCancelableAsyncEnumerable<T>
System.Private.CoreLib System.Runtime.CompilerServices .ConfiguredCancelableAsyncEnumerable<T >+Enumerator
System.Private.CoreLib System.Runtime.Intrinsics.Vector64
System.Private.CoreLib System.Runtime.Intrinsics.Vector128
System.Private.CoreLib System.Runtime.Intrinsics.Vector256
System.Private.CoreLib System.Runtime.Intrinsics.X86.Bmi1+X64
System.Private.CoreLib System.Runtime.Intrinsics.X86.Bmi2+X64
System.Private.CoreLib System.Runtime.Intrinsics.X86.Lzcnt+X64
System.Private.CoreLib System.Runtime.Intrinsics.X86.Popcnt+X64
System.Private.CoreLib System.Runtime.Intrinsics.X86.Sse+X64
System.Private.CoreLib System.Runtime.Intrinsics.X86.Sse2+X64
System.Private.CoreLib System.Runtime.Intrinsics.X86.Sse41+X64
System.Private.CoreLib System.Runtime.Intrinsics.X86.Sse42+X64
System.Private.CoreLib System.Runtime.InteropServices .DllImportResolver
System.Private.CoreLib System.Runtime.InteropServices .NativeLibrary
System.Private.CoreLib System.Runtime.InteropServices .ComActivationContext
System.Private.CoreLib System.Runtime.InteropServices .ComActivationContextInternal
System.Private.CoreLib System.Runtime.InteropServices .ComActivator
System.Private.CoreLib System.Runtime.InteropServices .ComEventInterfaceAttribute
System.Private.CoreLib System.Runtime.InteropServices .DefaultParameterValueAttribute
System.Private.CoreLib System.Diagnostics.DebugProvider
System.Private.CoreLib System.Collections.Generic .IAsyncEnumerable<T>
System.Private.CoreLib System.Collections.Generic .IAsyncEnumerator<T>
System.Private.CoreLib Internal.Resources.PRIExceptionInfo
System.Private.CoreLib Internal.Resources .WindowsRuntimeResourceManagerBase
System.Private.CoreLib Internal.Threading.Tasks .AsyncCausalitySupport
System.Private.CoreLib Internal.Runtime.InteropServices .WindowsRuntime.ExceptionSupport
System.ObjectModel System.Reflection.ICustomTypeProvider
System.ObjectModel System.ComponentModel .TypeConverterAttribute
System.ObjectModel System.ComponentModel .TypeDescriptionProviderAttribute
System.ObjectModel System.Windows.Markup .ValueSerializerAttribute
System.Net.Sockets System.Net.Sockets.SafeSocketHandle
System.Memory System.Text.SpanRuneEnumerator
System.Memory System.Buffers.SequenceReader<T>
System.Memory System.Buffers.SequenceReaderExtensions
System System.StringNormalizationExtensions
System System.Reflection.ICustomTypeProvider
System System.Windows.Markup .ValueSerializerAttribute
System System.Runtime.InteropServices .StandardOleMarshalObject
System System.Diagnostics.ConsoleTraceListener
System System.Diagnostics .XmlWriterTraceListener
System System.Diagnostics.StackFrameExtensions
System System.Security.SecureStringMarshal
System System.Net.Sockets .SocketReceiveFromResult
System System.Net.Sockets .SocketReceiveMessageFromResult
System System.Net.Sockets.SocketTaskExtensions
System.Diagnostics.TextWriterTraceListener System.Diagnostics.ConsoleTraceListener
System.Diagnostics.TextWriterTraceListener System.Diagnostics .XmlWriterTraceListener
System.Data System.Xml.XmlDataDocument
System.Data System.Data.Common.DbColumn
System.Data System.Data.Common .DbDataReaderExtensions
System.Data System.Data.Common .IDbColumnSchemaGenerator
System.Core System.Security.Cryptography.AesCng
System.Core System.Security.Cryptography.DSACng
System.Core System.Security.Cryptography .TripleDESCng
System.Core System.Security.Cryptography.ECCurve
System.Core System.Security.Cryptography .ECParameters
System.Core System.Security.Cryptography.ECPoint
System.Core System.Security.Cryptography .IncrementalHash
System.Core System.Security.Cryptography .X509Certificates.CertificateRequest
System.Core System.Security.Cryptography .X509Certificates .DSACertificateExtensions
System.Core System.Security.Cryptography .X509Certificates .SubjectAlternativeNameBuilder
System.Core System.Security.Cryptography .X509Certificates.X509SignatureGenerator
System.ComponentModel.TypeConverter System.ComponentModel.VersionConverter
System.ComponentModel.Primitives System.ComponentModel .InvalidAsynchronousStateException
System.ComponentModel.DataAnnotations System.ComponentModel.DataAnnotations .AssociatedMetadataTypeTypeDescriptionPr ovider
System.ComponentModel.DataAnnotations System.ComponentModel.DataAnnotations .MetadataTypeAttribute
System.ComponentModel.Annotations System.ComponentModel.DataAnnotations .AssociatedMetadataTypeTypeDescriptionPr ovider
System.ComponentModel.Annotations System.ComponentModel.DataAnnotations .MetadataTypeAttribute
mscorlib System.TupleExtensions
mscorlib System.AppDomainSetup
mscorlib System.Globalization .GlobalizationExtensions
mscorlib System.Threading.ThreadPoolBoundHandle
mscorlib System.Threading.PreAllocatedOverlapped
mscorlib System.Runtime.ProfileOptimization
mscorlib System.Runtime.Remoting.ObjectHandle
mscorlib System.Runtime.CompilerServices .RuntimeFeature
mscorlib System.Runtime.CompilerServices .IsByRefLikeAttribute
mscorlib System.Runtime.CompilerServices.ITuple
mscorlib System.Runtime.CompilerServices .IsReadOnlyAttribute
mscorlib System.Runtime.CompilerServices .TupleElementNamesAttribute
mscorlib System.Runtime.CompilerServices .IDispatchConstantAttribute
mscorlib System.Runtime.InteropServices .RuntimeInformation
mscorlib System.Runtime.InteropServices .Architecture
mscorlib System.Runtime.InteropServices .OSPlatform
mscorlib System.Reflection.Emit.DynamicILInfo
mscorlib System.Security.IStackWalk
mscorlib System.Security.PermissionSet
mscorlib System.Security.Permissions .PermissionState
mscorlib System.Security.Principal .WindowsAccountType
mscorlib System.Diagnostics.Tracing .EventSourceCreatedEventArgs
Microsoft.VisualBasic Microsoft.VisualBasic.Collection
Microsoft.VisualBasic Microsoft.VisualBasic.CompareMethod
Microsoft.VisualBasic Microsoft.VisualBasic.ComClassAttribute
Microsoft.VisualBasic Microsoft.VisualBasic.ControlChars
Microsoft.VisualBasic Microsoft.VisualBasic.DateAndTime
Microsoft.VisualBasic Microsoft.VisualBasic.Information
Microsoft.VisualBasic Microsoft.VisualBasic .MyGroupCollectionAttribute
Microsoft.VisualBasic Microsoft.VisualBasic.VariantType
Microsoft.VisualBasic Microsoft.VisualBasic .VBFixedArrayAttribute
Microsoft.VisualBasic Microsoft.VisualBasic .VBFixedStringAttribute
Microsoft.VisualBasic Microsoft.VisualBasic.VBMath
Microsoft.VisualBasic Microsoft.VisualBasic.FileIO.FileSystem
Microsoft.VisualBasic Microsoft.VisualBasic.FileIO .DeleteDirectoryOption
Microsoft.VisualBasic Microsoft.VisualBasic.FileIO .RecycleOption
Microsoft.VisualBasic Microsoft.VisualBasic.FileIO .SearchOption
Microsoft.VisualBasic Microsoft.VisualBasic.FileIO .UICancelOption
Microsoft.VisualBasic Microsoft.VisualBasic.FileIO.UIOption
Microsoft.VisualBasic Microsoft.VisualBasic.FileIO .MalformedLineException
Microsoft.VisualBasic Microsoft.VisualBasic.FileIO .SpecialDirectories
Microsoft.VisualBasic Microsoft.VisualBasic.FileIO .TextFieldParser
Microsoft.VisualBasic Microsoft.VisualBasic.FileIO.FieldType
Microsoft.VisualBasic Microsoft.VisualBasic.CompilerServices .BooleanType
Microsoft.VisualBasic Microsoft.VisualBasic.CompilerServices .DecimalType
Microsoft.VisualBasic Microsoft.VisualBasic.CompilerServices .Versioned
Microsoft.VisualBasic Microsoft.VisualBasic.CompilerServices .DoubleType
Microsoft.VisualBasic Microsoft.VisualBasic .ApplicationServices.StartupEventArgs
Microsoft.VisualBasic Microsoft.VisualBasic .ApplicationServices .StartupNextInstanceEventArgs
Microsoft.VisualBasic Microsoft.VisualBasic .ApplicationServices .UnhandledExceptionEventArgs
Microsoft.VisualBasic Microsoft.VisualBasic.Devices .NetworkAvailableEventArgs
Microsoft.VisualBasic.Core Microsoft.VisualBasic.CallType
Microsoft.VisualBasic.Core Microsoft.VisualBasic.Collection
Microsoft.VisualBasic.Core Microsoft.VisualBasic.CompareMethod
Microsoft.VisualBasic.Core Microsoft.VisualBasic.ComClassAttribute
Microsoft.VisualBasic.Core Microsoft.VisualBasic.Constants
Microsoft.VisualBasic.Core Microsoft.VisualBasic.ControlChars
Microsoft.VisualBasic.Core Microsoft.VisualBasic.DateAndTime
Microsoft.VisualBasic.Core Microsoft.VisualBasic .HideModuleNameAttribute
Microsoft.VisualBasic.Core Microsoft.VisualBasic.Information
Microsoft.VisualBasic.Core Microsoft.VisualBasic .MyGroupCollectionAttribute
Microsoft.VisualBasic.Core Microsoft.VisualBasic.Strings
Microsoft.VisualBasic.Core Microsoft.VisualBasic.VariantType
Microsoft.VisualBasic.Core Microsoft.VisualBasic .VBFixedArrayAttribute
Microsoft.VisualBasic.Core Microsoft.VisualBasic .VBFixedStringAttribute
Microsoft.VisualBasic.Core Microsoft.VisualBasic.VBMath
Microsoft.VisualBasic.Core Microsoft.VisualBasic.FileIO.FileSystem
Microsoft.VisualBasic.Core Microsoft.VisualBasic.FileIO .DeleteDirectoryOption
Microsoft.VisualBasic.Core Microsoft.VisualBasic.FileIO .RecycleOption
Microsoft.VisualBasic.Core Microsoft.VisualBasic.FileIO .SearchOption
Microsoft.VisualBasic.Core Microsoft.VisualBasic.FileIO .UICancelOption
Microsoft.VisualBasic.Core Microsoft.VisualBasic.FileIO.UIOption
Microsoft.VisualBasic.Core Microsoft.VisualBasic.FileIO .MalformedLineException
Microsoft.VisualBasic.Core Microsoft.VisualBasic.FileIO .SpecialDirectories
Microsoft.VisualBasic.Core Microsoft.VisualBasic.FileIO .TextFieldParser
Microsoft.VisualBasic.Core Microsoft.VisualBasic.FileIO.FieldType
Microsoft.VisualBasic.Core Microsoft.VisualBasic.CompilerServices .BooleanType
Microsoft.VisualBasic.Core Microsoft.VisualBasic.CompilerServices .Conversions
Microsoft.VisualBasic.Core Microsoft.VisualBasic.CompilerServices .DecimalType
Microsoft.VisualBasic.Core Microsoft.VisualBasic.CompilerServices .DesignerGeneratedAttribute
Microsoft.VisualBasic.Core Microsoft.VisualBasic.CompilerServices .SiteDelegate0
Microsoft.VisualBasic.Core Microsoft.VisualBasic.CompilerServices .SiteDelegate1
Microsoft.VisualBasic.Core Microsoft.VisualBasic.CompilerServices .SiteDelegate2
Microsoft.VisualBasic.Core Microsoft.VisualBasic.CompilerServices .SiteDelegate3
Microsoft.VisualBasic.Core Microsoft.VisualBasic.CompilerServices .SiteDelegate4
Microsoft.VisualBasic.Core Microsoft.VisualBasic.CompilerServices .SiteDelegate5
Microsoft.VisualBasic.Core Microsoft.VisualBasic.CompilerServices .SiteDelegate6
Microsoft.VisualBasic.Core Microsoft.VisualBasic.CompilerServices .SiteDelegate7
Microsoft.VisualBasic.Core Microsoft.VisualBasic.CompilerServices .IncompleteInitialization
Microsoft.VisualBasic.Core Microsoft.VisualBasic.CompilerServices .NewLateBinding
Microsoft.VisualBasic.Core Microsoft.VisualBasic.CompilerServices .ObjectFlowControl
Microsoft.VisualBasic.Core Microsoft.VisualBasic.CompilerServices .ObjectFlowControl+ForLoopControl
Microsoft.VisualBasic.Core Microsoft.VisualBasic.CompilerServices .Operators
Microsoft.VisualBasic.Core Microsoft.VisualBasic.CompilerServices .OptionCompareAttribute
Microsoft.VisualBasic.Core Microsoft.VisualBasic.CompilerServices .OptionTextAttribute
Microsoft.VisualBasic.Core Microsoft.VisualBasic.CompilerServices .ProjectData
Microsoft.VisualBasic.Core Microsoft.VisualBasic.CompilerServices .StandardModuleAttribute
Microsoft.VisualBasic.Core Microsoft.VisualBasic.CompilerServices .StaticLocalInitFlag
Microsoft.VisualBasic.Core Microsoft.VisualBasic.CompilerServices .Utils
Microsoft.VisualBasic.Core Microsoft.VisualBasic.CompilerServices .Versioned
Microsoft.VisualBasic.Core Microsoft.VisualBasic.CompilerServices .DoubleType
Microsoft.VisualBasic.Core Microsoft.VisualBasic .ApplicationServices.StartupEventArgs
Microsoft.VisualBasic.Core Microsoft.VisualBasic .ApplicationServices .StartupNextInstanceEventArgs
Microsoft.VisualBasic.Core Microsoft.VisualBasic .ApplicationServices .UnhandledExceptionEventArgs
Microsoft.VisualBasic.Core Microsoft.VisualBasic.Devices .NetworkAvailableEventArgs

Advanced Code Search : A Case Study

This morning I stumbled on a complex test to write. The need was to create and show a custom Form (written with Windows Form) that relies on the System.ComponentModel.BackgroundWorker to do initialization stuff without freezing the UI. The test is complex because after creating and showing the form, it must wait somehow to release the UI thread for a while to let the BackgroundWorker achieve the RunWorkerCompleted on the UI thread.

I know that this is something we’ve done in the past and I know this is tricky enough to not reinvent the wheel. But with a test suite of over 13.000 tests this is quite challenging to find where we did that. So I decided to use NDepend querying facility to search.

First I analyze all NDepend assemblies, test assemblies included. Then I generate a code query to match all classes that derive from Form. This can be done from the NDepend Search panel : search Form by name in third-party types and then use a right-click menu to generate the code query:

The CQLinq code query generated is:

60 classes are matched:

Let’s refine this query to match all methods that create any of those form classes.This could be achieved by iterating over (all methods) x (all form classes), but the NDepend.API extension method ThatCreateAny() acts like a join and operates in a linear time. For our search scenario, waiting a few seconds to get a search result is not a problem. But for a code rule written with CQLinq, this is important to run it as fast as possible in a few milliseconds, to run all queries and rules often in Visual Studio within a few seconds, hence the query performance entry on the documentation.

280 methods are instantiating some form classes. Let’s refine the query to match only tests method. The cleanest way would be to check for the usage of TestAttribute, but here just checking for parent assemblies names that contain “Test” is enough:

Still 122 test methods matched.

Before filtering the result even more, let’s refine the query to display for each test the form class(es) it instantiates. This can be achieved with a LINQ range variable formsCreated that we use in the result:

We can now browse which form(s) are instantiated by each test:

Finally let’s browse only tests that use some asynchronous related code. Many ways can be used to check for asynchronous usages. The easiest way is certainly to look at methods called by a test method, and check which ones have named related to async stuff. I tried a few words like “Async” “Sync” “Thread” “TimeOut” “Wait”… and “Wait” worked:

In the source code of the highlighted test I had everything I needed for my scenario, including a link to a tricky stackoverflow answer that we found years ago. I found what I needed within a few minutes and had a bit of fun. I hope the methodology and the resulting query can be adapted to your advanced search scenarios.

NDepend and .NET Fx v4.7.2: an extension method collision and how to solve it easily

In Oct 2017 I wrote about the potential collision problem with extension methods. At that time the .NET Framework 4.7.1 was just released with this new extension method that is colliding with our own NDepend.API Append() extension method with same signature.

The problem was solved easily because just one default rule consumed our Append() extension method, we just had to refactor this method to use it as a static method call instead of an extension method call:  ExtensionMethodsEnumerable.Append(...)

 

Unfortunately with the recent release of .NET Framework 4.7.2, the same problem just happened again, this time with this extension method:

This time 22 default code rules are relying on our ToHashSet() extension method. This method is used widely because it is often the cornerstone to improve significantly performances. But this means that after installing the .NET Fx v4.7.2, 22 default rules will break.

This time the problem is not solved easily by calling our ExtensionMethodsSet.ToHashSet<TSource>(this IEnumerable<TSource>)  extension method as a static method because in most of these 22 rules source code, changing the extension method call into a static method call require a few brain cycle. Moreover it makes the rules source code less readable: For example the first needs to be transformed into the second:

We wanted a straightforward and clean way for NDepend users to solve this issue on all their default-or-custom code rules.  The solution is the new extension method ToHashSetEx().

Solving the issue on an existing NDepend deployment is now as simple as replacing .ToHashSet()  with  .ToHashSetEx()  in all textual files that contain the user code rules and code queries (the files with extension .ndproj and .ndrules).

We just released NDepend v2018.1.1 with this new extension method  ExtensionMethodsSet.ToHashSetEx<TSource>(this IEnumerable<TSource>). Of course all default rules and generated queries now rely on ToHashSetEx() and also a smart error message is now shown to the user in such situation:

We hesitated between ToHashSetEx() and ToHashSet2() but we are confident that this problem won’t scale (more explanation on suffixing a class or method name with Ex here).

 

Actually we could have detected this particular problem earlier in October 2017 because Microsoft claimed that the .NET Fx will ultimately support .NET Standard 2.0 and  .NET Standard 2.0 already presented this ToHashSet() extension method. So this time we analyzed both C:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v4.0.30319\netstandard.dll and NDepend.API.dll to double-check with this code query that there is no more risk of extension method collision:

We find back both Append() and ToHashSet() collisions and since NDepend.API is not concerned with queryable, there is no more risk of collision:

 

 

Quickly assess your .NET code compliance with .NET Standard

Yesterday evening I had an interesting discussion about the feasibility of migrating parts of the NDepend code to .NET Standard to ultimately run it on .NET Core. We’re not yet there but this might make sense to run at least the code analysis on non Windows platform, especially for NDepend clones CppDepend (for C++), JArchitect (for Java) and others to come.

Then I went to sleep (as every developers know the brain is coding hard while sleeping), then this morning I went for an early morning jogging and it stroke me: NDepend is the perfect tool to  assess some .NET code compliance to .NET Standard, or to any other libraries actually! As soon on my machine I did a proof of concept in less than an hour.

The key is that .NET standard 2.0 types and members are all packet in a single assemblies netstandard.dll v2.0 that can be found under C:\Program Files\dotnet\sdk\NuGetFallbackFolder\netstandard.library\2.0.3\build\netstandard2.0\ref\netstandard.dll (on my machine).  A quick analyze of netstandard.dll with NDepend shows 2 317 types in 78 namespaces, with 24 303 methods and 884 fields. Let’s precise that netstandard.dll doesn’t contain any code, it is a standard not an implementation. The 68K IL instructions represent the IL code for throw null which is the method body for all non-abstract methods.

.NET Standard 2.0 analyzed by NDepend

(Btw, I am sure that if you read this  you have an understanding of what is .NET Standard but if anything is still unclear, I invite you to read this great article by my friend Laurent Bugnion wrote 3 days ago A Brief History of .NET Standard)

Given that, what stroke me this morning is that to analyze some .NET code compliance to .NET Standard, I’d just have to include netstandard.dll in the list of my application assemblies and write a code query that  filters the dependencies the way I want. Of course to proof test this idea I wanted to explore the NDepend code base compliance to .NET Standard:

NetStandard assembly included in the NDepend assemblies to analyze

The code query was pretty straightforward to write. It is written in a way that:

  • it is easy to use to analyze compliance with any other library than .NET standard,
  • it is easy to explore the compliance and the non-compliance with a library in a comprehensive way, thanks to the NDepend code query result browsing facilities,
  • it is easy to refactor the query for querying more, for example below I refactor it to assess the usage of third-party non .NET Standard compliant code

The result looks like that and IMHO it is pretty interesting. For example we can see at a glance that NDepend.API is almost full compliant with .NET standard except for the usage of System.Drawing.Image (all the 1 type are the Image type actually) and for the usage of code contracts.

NDepend code base compliance with .NET standard

For a more intuitive assessment of the compliance to .NET Standard we can use the metric view, that highlights the code elements matched by the currently edited code query.

  • Unsurprisingly NDepend.UI is not compliant at all,
  • portions of NDepend.Core non compliant to .NET Standard are well defined (and I know it is mostly because of some UI code here too, that we consider Core because it is re-usable in a variety of situations).

With this information it’d be much easier to plan a major refactoring to segregate .NET standard compliant code from the non-compliant one, especially to anticipate hot spots that will be painful to refactor.

The code query to assess compliancy can be refactored at whim. For example I found it interesting to see which non-compliant third-party code elements were the most used. So I refactored the query this way:

Without surprise UI code that is non .NET Standard compliant popups first:

.NET Standard non-compliant third-party code usage

There is no limit to refactor this query to your own need, like assessing usage of non-compliant code — except UI code– for example, or assessing the usage of code non compliant to ASP.NET Core 2 (by changing the library).

Hope you’ll find this content useful to plan your migration to .NET Core and .NET Standard!

Checking DDD Ubiquitous Language with NDepend

Since NDepend version 2018.1, the tool proposes a default rule to check Domain Driven Design (DDD) Ubiquitous Language validity.

DDD Ubiquitous Language

Let’s quote Martin Fowler on Ubiquitous Language:

Ubiquitous Language is the term Eric Evans uses in Domain Driven Design for the practice of building up a common, rigorous language between developers and users. This language should be based on the Domain Model used in the software – hence the need for it to be rigorous, since software doesn’t cope well with ambiguity.

Evans makes clear that using the ubiquitous language between in conversations with domain experts is an important part of testing it, and hence the domain model. He also stresses that the language (and model) should evolve as the team’s understanding of the domain grows.

–Martin Fowler

Eric Evans coined the term DDD, let’s quote him:

By using the model-based language pervasively and not being satisfied until it flows, we approach a model that is complete and comprehensible, made up of simple elements that combine to express complex ideas.

Domain experts should object to terms or structures that are awkward or inadequate to convey domain understanding; developers should watch for ambiguity or inconsistency that will trip up design.

–Eric Evans

See below a sample of ubiquitous language usage in the real-world. We end up with clean and readable code:

The TrainTrain Code Base

To explain and demonstrate the rule, we’ll conduct our experiment on the TrainTrain code base.

This OSS code base has been developed by Bruno Boucard and Thomas Pierrain from 42Skillz, a French consultancy company specialized in DDD and developers coaching. TrainTrain has been developed in order to illustrate concretely most of DDD concepts (including Ubiquitous Language) in a session named How To Distill The Core Domain From Your Legacy App (Live Coding). In this session, a legacy version of the code is live-refactored to a DDD-compliant version. It has been performed both at Explore DDD 2017 (Denver, Sept 2017) and DDD Europe 2018 (Amsterdam, Jan 2018).

We worked with Bruno and Thomas to develop this first rule related to DDD and we expect that more rules will follow from this collaboration.

The Rule

See below the full source code of the new rule named DDD ubiquitous language check that can be found in the rule group Naming Convention. This rule is disabled by default because before using it, the user must customize both:

  • The core domain namespace name (by default set to “TrainTrain.Domain”)
  • The vocabulary list

The idea is to centralize in this rule source code the vocabulary. The rule then checks that all code elements defined in the core domain namespace are named with one or several terms found in the vocabulary list. Code elements checked include classes, enumerations, structures, interfaces, methods, properties and fields. If a term needs to be used both with singular and plural forms, both forms need to be mentioned, like Seat and Seats for example.

The NDepend rule system makes easy to modify the source code of an existing rule. There is no Visual Studio project to create and store, no NuGet package to reference, no assembly to compile, version and maintain, no integration. Just textual edition with code completion, API documentation and live result while editing, and then Ctrl+S, that’s it. As a consequence, the NDepend rule system is well suited to implement such rule that must be customized with some user data before usage.

Notice that this rule relies on the new NDepend API method ExtensionMethodsString.GetWord(this string identifier). This method extracts words from code identifiers. For example from the field identifier _seatsRequestedCount it extracts the 3 words seats, Requested, Count. To be compliant with the vocabulary list, we then set the first char to upper, for example seats becomes Seats.

Running the Rule

See below a screenshot on running this rule on a TrainTrain version. An issue is spotted on a core domain class named TreasholdCapacity. Both words are reported in the column wordsNotInVocabulary because both words are not in the vocabulary list. Moreover the word Treashold has a typo. At this point, to fix this issue:

  • either this class should be renamed with existing core domain vocabulary words
  • either these words should be added to the vocabulary list (with the typo fix)

 

DDD is nowadays a popular concept. We are proud to innovate with a static analysis code rule related to DDD. We have plans for more DDD related rules and we would like to hear both your feedback on using this rule, and your needs for more DDD related rules.

 

New .NET Core 2.1 and ASP.NET Core 2.1 APIs

.NET Core 2.1 and ASP.NET Core 2.1 Preview1 have just been released (see here the official announcement) and we are going to explore new APIs in this post. We’ll found out many of the new features announced in the .NET Core 2.1 Roadmap and ASP.NET Core 2.1 Roadmap on the MSDN blog.

We just released NDepend v2018.1 and we took a chance to support analysis of .NET Core 2.1 and ASP.NET Core 2.1 applications. NDepend is often deemed as the Swiss-Army Knife for .NET developers thanks to its code query language (CQLinq). CQLinq can be used to write code rules, quality gates, trend code metrics, explore dependencies or advanced code search. One thing CQLinq excels at is exploring the diff between two snapshots of a code base. Exploring new APIs is a sub-task of exploring what was changed. Let’s harness this capability to explore new .NET Core 2.1 APIs.

New .NET Core 2.1 Preview1 APIs

We could have downloaded sources files of both .NET Core 2.1.0 Preview1 and 2.0.0, recompile and then do the diff. Instead, since NDepend can analyze raw assemblies even without sources available, we compared assemblies in these two folders:

  • C:\Program Files\dotnet\shared\Microsoft.NETCore.App\2.1.0-preview1-26216-03
  • C:\Program Files\dotnet\shared\Microsoft.NETCore.App\2.0.5

Here is the CQLinq code query that lists all new public classes and types. It is also refined to match public members (methods and fields) of each new type in the result.

Find the whole list here .NET Core 2.1 new public classes. Here is a first glimpse in the screenshot below. We highlighted the new great Span<T> capability.

.NET Core 2.1 new classes

Not only new public classes list is interesting, but also new public methods added on existing public classes. This query does list these 1.500 methods:

Here also find a screenshot below and the whole list here: .NET Core 2.1 new public methods on existing public classes. For this screenshot we used the new Dark theme support of NDepend v2018.1.

.NET Core 2.1 new public methods

Interestingly enough let’s list new namespaces that contain at least one public type:

.NET Core 2.1 new public namespaces

 

New ASP.NET Core 2.1 Preview1 APIs

To analyze ASP.NET Core assemblies it was a bit more difficult than just comparing assemblies in 2 folders. ASP.NET Core assemblies are stored in NuGet packages so we did explore assemblies in the folder C:\Program Files\dotnet\sdk\NuGetFallbackFolder and then tinker a bit to get the wanted versions in both 2.1 and 2.0 cases.

Let’s use the same code query to match ASP.NET Core 2.1 new public classes :

ASP.NET Core 2.1 new public class

The same way here is the ASP.NET Core 2.1 new public methods on existing public classes :

ASP.NET Core 2.1 new public methods in existing public classes

And finally, here are the new ASP.NET Core 2.1 namespaces that contain at least one public classes.

ASP.NET Core 2.1 new namespaces

 

 

A problem with extension methods

We like extension methods. When named accordingly they can both make the caller code clearer, and isolate static methods from classes on which they operate.

But when using extension methods, breaking change can happen, and this risk is very concrete, it actually just happened to us.

Since 2012, NDepend.API proposes a generic Append() extension:

Two default rules use this extension method: Avoid namespaces dependency cycles and Avoid types initialization cycles

Last month, on Oct 17th 2017, Microsoft released .NET Framework v4.7.1 that implements .NET Standard 2.0. Around 200 .NET Standard 2.0 were missing in .NET Framewok v4.6.1, and one of those missing API is:

Within NDepend, rules, quality gates, trend metrics … basically everything, is a C# LINQ query stored as textual and compiled and executed on-the-fly. Since the compilation environment uses both namespaces NDepend.Helpers and System.Linq, when running NDepend on top of the .NET Framework v4.7.1, both Append() extension methods are visible. As a consequence, for each query calling the Append() method, the compiler fails with:

Hopefully a user notified us with this problem that we didn’t catch yet and we just released NDepend v2017.3.2 that fixes this problem Only one clean fix is possible to make it compatible with all .NET Framework versions: refactor all calls to the Append() extension method,  into a classic static method invocation, with an explanatory comment:

We expect support on this within the next weeks and months when more and more users will run the .NET Fx v4.7.1 while not changing their rules-set. There is no lesson learnt, this situation can happen and it happens rarely, this shouldn’t prevent you from declaring and calling extension methods. The more mature the frameworks you are relying on, the less likely it’ll happen.

Static analysis of .NET Core 2.0 applications

NDepend v2017.3 has just been released with major improvements. One of the most requested features, now available, is the support for analyzing .NET Core 2.0 and .NET Standard 2.0 projects. .NET Core and its main flavor, ASP.NET Core, represents a major evolution for the .NET platform. Let’s have a look at how NDepend is analyzing .NET Core code.

Resolving .NET Core third party assemblies

In this post I’ll analyze the OSS application ASP.NET Core / EntityFramework MusicStore hosted on github. From the Visual Studio solution file, NDepend is resolving the application assembly MusicStore.dll and also two test assemblies that we won’t analyze here. In the screenshot below, we can see that:

  • NDepend recognizes the .NET profile, .NET Core 2.0, for this application.
  • It resolves several folders on the machine that are related to .NET Core, especially NuGet package folders.
  • It resolves all 77 third-party assemblies referenced by MusicStore.dll. This is important since many code rules and other NDepend features take into account what the application code is using.

It is worth noticing that the .NET Core platform assemblies have high granularity. A simple website like MusicStore references no fewer than 77 assemblies. This is because the .NET Core framework is implemented through a few NuGet packages that each contain many assemblies. The idea is to release the application only with needed assemblies, in order to reduce the memory footprint.

.NET Core 2.0 third party assemblies granularity

NDepend v2017.3 has a new heuristic to resolve .NET Core assemblies. This heuristic is based on .deps.json files that contain the names of the NuGet packages referenced. Here we can see that 3 NuGet packages are referenced by MusicStore. From these package names, the heuristic will resolve third-party assemblies (in the NuGet store) referenced by the application assemblies (MusicStore.dll in our case).

NuGet packages referenced in .deps.json file

Analyzing .NET Standard assemblies

Let’s be clear that NDepend v2017.3 can also analyze .NET Standard assemblies. Interestingly enough, since .NET Standard 2.0, .NET Standard assemblies reference a unique assembly named netstandard.dll and found in C:\Users\[user]\.nuget\packages\NETStandard.Library\2.0.0\build\netstandard2.0\ref\netstandard.dll.

By decompiling this assembly, we can see that it doesn’t contain any implementation, but it does contain all types that are part of .NET Standard 2.0. This makes sense if we remember that .NET Standard is not an implementation, but is a set of APIs implemented by various .NET profiles, including .NET Core 2.0, the .NET Framework v4.6.1, Mono 5.4 and more.

Browsing how the application is using .NET Core

Let’s come back to the MusicStore application that references 77 assemblies. This assembly granularity makes it impractical to browse dependencies with the dependency graph, since this generates dozens of items. We can see that NDepend suggests viewing this graph as a dependency matrix instead.

NDepend Dependency Graph on an ASP.NET Core 2.0 project

The NDepend dependency matrix can scale seamlessly on a large number of items. The numbers in the cells also provide a good hint about the represented coupling. For example, here we can see that  22 members of the assembly Microsoft.EntityFrameworkCore.dll are used by 32 methods of the assembly MusicStore.dll, and a menu lets us dig into this coupling.

NDepend Dependency Matrix on an ASP.NET Core 2.0 project

Clicking the menu item Open this dependency shows a new dependency matrix where only members involved are kept (the 32 elements in column are using the 22 elements in rows). This way you can easily dig into which part of the application is using what.

NDepend Dependency Matrix on an ASP.NET Core 2.0 project

All NDepend features now work when analyzing .NET Core

We saw how to browse the structure of a .NET Core application, but let’s underline that all NDepend features now work when analyzing .NET Core applications. On the Dashboard we can see code quality metrics related to Quality Gates, Code Rules, Issues and Technical Debt.

NDepend Dashboard on an ASP.NET Core 2.0 project

Also, most of the default code rules have been improved to avoid reporting false positives on .NET Core projects.

NDepend code rules on an ASP.NET Core 2.0 project

We hope you’ll enjoy using all your favorite NDepend features on your .NET Core projects!

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