Java Architecture Analysis

ArCheck is a tool that analyses the structure of Java source code using the top level directories as a way of splitting the code into separate components and can produce a Java dependency diagram. Dividing large programs into smaller more manageable components is a fundamental principle of programming.

Installation

The installation steps are as follows:

1. Ensure the Java runtime is installed
2. Download and unzip the archeck release.
3. Ensure that chcheck executable is added to you path.
4. Optionally install graphviz. Required for the graphical dependency diagrams.
5. Ensure the graphviz executable is added to your path.

Running

To produce dependency diagrams ensure graphviz is installed and added to your path.

Choose a project that you want analyze and type the following:

archeck <path-to-source-code>

Where <path-to-source-code> is the directory of just the java source code e.g. archeck src/main/java/

To generate an html output type the following:

archeck --html <html-output-dir> <path-to-source-code>

You can also pass a configuration file to archeck

archeck --config <config-file> --html <html-output-dir>

The default config file archeck.config will automatically be loaded if found in the current directory.

NOTE: Ensure all unused imports are removed as these may generate unwanted dependencies.

The Configuration file

The configuration file is a json file in which comments and unquoted field names are allowed.

item	Description
root-dir:	The path to the root directory of the project. Can be either absolute or relative to the location of the configuration file.
report-dir:	Generates an HTML report in the specified directory.
modules:	A json array with details of the list of modules in the project.
name:	The name of the module.
path:	The path from the root dir to the source code. For multiple source paths use a json string array.
max-depth:	Controls the maximum depth to descend into package directories before the sub-dirs are merged together.

Example configuration file

An example of configuration is as follows:

// Example Json config for Googles bazel project
{
    root-dir: "project/bazel/",
    modules: [
        {
            name: "bazel",
            path: "bazel/src/main/java/com/google/devtools/build/lib/",
            max-depth: 0
        }
    ]
}

Building

Requirements:

• Java
• gradle

Type the following on the command line:

gradle installApp

The executable will be in the build/install/archeck/bin directory

To generate an archeck report on archeck using the default archeck.config file type:

gradle run
OR
build/install/archeck/bin/archeck