Here an interesting use case.
I am currently working on a reuse project. We have a large legacy Java application that we are trying to farm for implementations of some high level functions in a new application. To do this we are identifying the top-level classes that provide the initial entry point(s) to the desired high level functionality and then trying to discover all of the classes in the old system needed to support the identified top-level classes.
I have been doing this manually by going to the collaboration perspective in Structure101, selecting the “go to suppliers” option of a top-level class, and then manually drilling down through all of the classes the top-level class uses (that is, for every class the top-level class uses, I select “go to suppliers” and find out all the classes that class uses, etc. etc. etc.), tracking the needed classes as I go. This is not feasible to do given the size of the project.
Is there anyway I can get Structure101 to basically give me the transitive closure of all the classes used by the identified top-level classes, preferably as plain old ASCII text? Stucture101 seems to have already computed all the information I need, I just cannot figure out a non-manual way of getting the information.
As it happens, there is no first class support in Structure101 for this specific feature. However, it is do-able by leveraging other features and model options. Here’s how you would go about it.
First step is to set Overview granularity in the project properties. With this setting, the model stops at the outer class level but still takes account of all the member-level dependencies. So if Foo.x() calls Bar.y(), the model shows Foo and Bar and a “uses” dependency from Foo to Bar.
Second, tagging. Select a top-level class A in e.g. the Composition perspective, right click and choose Tag / Used by selected / Indirectly. Tag adornments (little blue dots) will appear on all the classes that A uses directly or indirectly (transitive closure of A). Then right click again and choose Tag / Selected so that A is also tagged. Repeat this for other top-level classes.
Now you have all the classes tagged, so all you need to do is export the tag list. Unfortunately, Structure101 does not have a button for that (grrrr) so we have to find another way of getting there…
From the main menu choose Tag / Invert item tags followed by Tag / Hide tagged. You have just subsetted the model to contain only those classes that you are interested in. Now all we have to do is get them into one table where we can right click and choose Copy / Copy all. Easiest for this is probably to switch to the Slice perspective, choose the “Outer class” level, and then you’ll likely see a single main cluster. Select this (actually it will get automatically selected for you). Hey presto, the table bottom left (Items tab of the Graph Contents viewer) contains the full list so a right-click should seal the deal.
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