Graph Buddy

Semantic Code Graph seamlessly integrated with IDE

Typical software problems

Code structure degradations over time.
Problems with library updates or replacements.
Reading, browsing and understanding the poorly structured source code is hard.

Fixing current broken state

What are the natural candidates for separate modules?
What are the problematic parts?
Can we do that gradually?
Can we automate the process?

Maintaining a clear project structure

There are no tools to assist software development in that regard.

What about monitoring new releases and validating the project structure changes?
Is our piece of software going into right direction?
How do we prevent unintended dependency across different software modules?

Visual help

Applying graph theory

Particular nodes
- Betweenness centrality
- Clustering coefficient
- Modularity class
Whole graph
- Finding communities
- Average node degree
- Graph diameter
- Modularity
- Graph depth

Where we want to be

hypothesis:

the code structure of any program can be represented as a directed graph, precise enough to be valuable in various analyses and visualizations

Semantic Code Graph

Semantic Code Graph in Scala

class A()
object AFactory {
  def createA() = {
    new A()
  }
}

Semantic Code Graph in Scala

class A()
object AFactory {
  def createA() = {
    new A()
  }
}

Code Syntax + Semantics

Code Structure
- Scala Trees
Code Semantics
- SemanticDB

Common format

syntax = "proto3";

message Location {
    string uri = 1;
    int32 startLine = 2;
    int32 startCharacter = 3;
    int32 endLine = 4;
    int32 endCharacter = 5;
}

message Edge {
    string to = 1;
    string type = 2;
    Location location = 3;
    map<string, string> properties = 4;
}

message GraphNode {
    string id = 1;
    string kind = 2;
    Location location = 3;
    map<string, string> properties = 4;
    string displayName = 5;
    repeated Edge edges = 6;
}

message SemanticGraphFile {
    string uri = 1;
    repeated GraphNode nodes = 2;
}

Graph Buddy process

Graph Buddy architecture

Future use cases

Project visualizations
- getting insight on how the current software is structured
Project modularization guidance
- possible modules extractions
- exposing architectural smells
- finding critical for migration places
Release changes analysis
- are we on right track with our migration?
Choosing the right reviewer for code changes