- Introduction
- Installation
- Quick Start
- Icon Description
- Sample Screenshots
- Plugin-in SPI
- CDA API
- Release Notes
- Planned Features
- License
- Credits
- Feedback
- Download Page
A major strength of CDA is that it can analyze on different levels:
It is capable of finding the dependencies of
- a single class
- all classes in one package
- all classes in one container (i.e. Java Archive or file directory)
- class level
- package level
- or container level
- all dependencies
- only direct dependencies
- or only indirect dependencies
- Unzip the archive pf-cda-x.x.zip to any directory you want to have CDA located in.
- Then ensure that environment variable JRE_HOME or JAVA_HOME is set to a Java Runtime Environment 1.8.0 or higher.
- As an alternative to the environment variables you can modify the cda.bat or cda.sh to do java execution as you prefer on your machine.
To start with your own workset select the menu item File/New.... That starts a wizard you can use to create a new workset which refers to classes you want to analyze. As an alternative you can use the example workset (worksets/CDA.ws) to learn more about the tool's capabilities.
To do this, select menu item File/Open.... In the succeeding file selection dialog go to the folder where you installed CDA. From there move to sub folder worksets and open workset file CDA.ws. This example workset contains all CDA JAR files. After opening it you will see the workset on the left in the tree view. Here you may select any child element and analyze it using either the popup menu or the accelerator key Alt+D.
Since analyzing can last a while a progress monitor window pops up. It shows how many classes of all classes in the workset have been analyzed so far. Though usually not all classes have to be analyzed for one dependency detection process it is still recommended to wait until all loaded classes are analyzed. Find here a brief description of each icon that is used in CDA:
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A Workset. |
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This represents a dummy container which doesn't exist in reality. All classes and interfaces that have been referred to but cannot be found in any container of the workset are assigned to this dummy container. |
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Class container (i.e. a Java Archive or a file directory containing class files) This class container has been found and its content can be loaded into memory. |
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An element that has been specified in the classpath but could not be found or cannot be loaded into memory. |
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A Java package that has not yet been checked for its contained classes. |
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A Java package that has been checked already for its contained classes. |
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A class file that has not yet been loaded. Thus it is not clear whether it contains a Java class or interface. |
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A class file that cannot be found or was corrupt so it could not be loaded into memory. |
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A Java class that is part of the current workset and has been loaded into memory. |
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A Java class with a main() method that is part of the current workset and has been loaded into memory. |
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A Java interface that has been referred to but cannot be found and therefore is not in memory. |
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A Java interface that is part of the current workset and has been loaded into memory already. |
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A Java annotation that is part of the current workset and has been loaded into memory already. |
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A Java enum that is part of the current workset and has been loaded into memory already. |
A table that shows all classes and interfaces the class ClassTableModel depends on.
Shows all dependency paths from class RepeatedTest to TestListener.
Sub-Window that shows all classes that depend on TableEditorModel Since version 1.9.1 CDA supports a plug-in mechanism that allows developers to add their own custom extensions to the tool.
Therfore the open source component Object Dependency Exploration Model (ODEM) was created to define an independent object model for dependency analyzers. The Javadoc of ODEM is included in the Extension SPI Javadoc. Beside the Javadoc for the CDA plug-in SPI the developer guide and a sample implementation (inluding source code) should make it very easy to develop your own plug-in. Adding a plug-in to CDA is just as simple as to follow these few steps:
- Create a subclass of one of the extension-points (these are abstract classes)
- Declare the plug-in in a (new) file META-INF/ui.plugins
- Bundle all that together in a JAR file and copy it to ${CDA_HOME}/lib/ext
- Restart CDA
There's also a guide that helps with exporting dependencies to external files programatically. Current version of CDA is 2.8.0. It requires at least Java 8 to be executed. Should work with java 9 to 13 as well. Have a look at release-notes.txt for details or get a quick overview of the most important changes below. V2.8.0
- Optionally calculating hashes for all analyzed classes and containers
- Performance improvement: fixed undesired closing of archive containers
- Fixed undetected dependency on generic type in local variables
- Analysis of spring beans configurable (enable/disable)
- Support Spring Boot loader JARs
- Ignore "module-info.class" files for minimum required java version calculation
- Showing different images for different container types in overview panel
- Upgrade to Apache BCEL 6.4.1 due to bugfix BCEL-328 (EmptyStackException)
- Improved EAR file handling for WebLogic special folders /lib, APP-INF/classes and APP-INF/lib.
- Bugfix: Open resources from extracted archive folder rather than from archive directly
- Upgraded to Apache BCEL 6.4.0
- Bugfix for not unique nameSuffix in *.ws files for some use cases
- Bugfix for files not being removed from temp folder if loaded workset gets edited and saved/accepted
- Moved UI related plugin from PF-CDA-Extensions to new component PF-CDA-UI-Extensions
- Added guide on how to export dependencies programatically
- Bugfix: NPE at org.pfsw.nls.NLSIniFileLoader.loadText(NLSIniFileLoader.java:123) at start with Java version > 8
- Bugfix: ClassNotFoundException: com.sun.image.codec.jpeg.JPEGImageEncoder with Java version > 8
- In WAR files ignoring class files under WEB-INF/lib and sub-folders
- In WAR files ignoring JAR files files under sub-folders of WEB-INF/lib
- Ensured that dependencies are first looked for in own container and only if not found there in other containers.
- Added class file versions for Java 10-13
- Optional inclusion of resources files
- Improved clean-up of temporary files
- pf-cda-extesions.jar gets now added to the distribution bundle, which enables exporting of dependencies to an XML ODEM file
- New display scope option "N/A" in dependency table view to show only classes/packages/containers that have not been found (not resolved)
- Loading now all JARs from inside a WAR file, not only those that are under WEB-INF/lib
- Support for EAR files
- Support for OSGi bundles
- Default alias names for containers
- Detection of circular dependencies
- Support for WAR files
- Exclude patterns in filter definitions
- Bugfix: java.lang.ClassCastException: org.pf.tools.cda.base.model.ClassInformation cannot be cast to java.util.List
- Supporting mouse wheel for scrolling and zooming
- Bugfix for detection of invalid class names
- Bugfix for exceptions that prevented analyzing Java 8 classes with lambda expressions
- New filter in graphs to show only inheritance dependencies
- Javadoc package for core CDA implementation classes
- New section in CDA Developer Guide for programmatic CDA usage
- Programmatic-CDA.zip with sample code for programmatic CDA usage
- In graph views the popup menu of visible elements now provides a new menu item: "Add dependants"
- In graph views the popup menu of visible interfaces now provides a new menu item: "Add implementors"
- It is now possible to specify alias names for containers
- An experimental decompiler
- Dialog sizes have been adjusted to a reasonable size
- Updated libraries from JGoodies for better Windows 7 support
- Added support for PNG and BMP file export
- New function that allows to find ALL dependants of any element in the tree view
- Improved classpath definition in the workset wizard
- Bugfix: Problem with starting CDA under Linux due to properties file loading error
- New feature that allows to look-up all classes that implement a static main(String[]) method.
- Clicking on a disabled "Dependency" tab automatically executes the "Analyze Dependencies" action.
- Versions determined from manifest files are shown in tree view for class containers.
- Bugfixes
- Introduced the Dependency Analyzer Remote Control (DARC)
- Bugfixes
- Package of ODEM has changed to org.pfsw.odem
- All DTD files (workset-1.6.dtd, odem-1.1.dtd) are now declared by a public logical name and a URI that points to the file location in the web.
- CDA now supports ODEM/XML (export) files in a workset's classpath.
- Re-initialization of workset has been changed to be executed only when needed.
- A progress monitor window is shown now during the whole initialization process of a workset.
- Bugfixes
- Well documented plug-in API (including ODEM)
- Find dependants (for all levels)
- Find duplicate classes in a workset
- N/A container for all classes that have not been found
- Showing class file version and minimum required JVM version
- For most table views a graph view can be opened via toolbar button
- Requires JRE 1.5
- More details (visibility, abstract, final) about classes
- Many new graph views on all levels (i.e. class, package, container)
- Drag & Drop support to add elements from tree to graph view
- Detailed list of class dependencies that cause dependencies between packages or between containers
- Statistics aubout number of classes, packages, containers
- Improved navigation (direct jump to element in tree vew)
- Container's display names can now be shortened
- New graph library (yFiles)
- Auto-Layout
- Zooming
- Printing
- Saving to JPG, GIF or GML
- Support of Java 5 annotations, enums and generic types
- Performance tuning: Up to 5 times faster than V1.5
- Search feature to find all implementors of an interface
- Search feature to find dependants of a class, an interface, an annotation or an enum
- Support for Java 9 modules
- Deriving dependencies from Spring beans declarations
- Capability to define components (or modules) as a set of packages.
- Verification of a workset against a defined component model
- Calculation of some metrics
- Saving graph view as TGF, XGML
- Hiding of containers in the tree view, so that only packages are visible on the first level.
- Support Ivy dependency definitions in classpath
- Support Maven dependency definitions (pom.xml) in classpath
- XML Export for dependency and search result tables
- Java decompiler
However, the source code is not available for download on the Programmer's Friend website. Only the binaries are free. At this place I want to thank all open source programmers who created great Java libraries that enabled me to efficiently build CDA on top.
Currently CDA uses the following open source libraries:
- JGoodies: for better Swing UI - http://www.jgoodies.com/
- BCEL: for reading class files - http://jakarta.apache.org/bcel/
- yFILES: for all graph views - http://www.yworks.com/en/products_yfiles_about.html