ReSharper Architecture Tools

JetBrains introduced Architecture tools in Resharper 8. It lets you visualize dependencies between projects and types.

To start using it, open a solution in Visual Studio and go to Resharper – Architecture menu. “Show Project Dependency Diagram” menu item opens a new tab with graph of project dependencies:

resharper-architecture-2

Strangely, low-level projects which have no dependencies are at the top of the diagram, and high-level projects are in the bottom. Line thickness represents number of type dependencies between two projects. You can drill down to a type dependency diagram using a context menu:

resharper-architecture-3

For these two projects, I selected, type dependency diagram looks scary and not much useful:

resharper-architecture-4

But for more well-defined projects it looks nicer:

resharper-architecture-5

Then the tool allows to drill down to individual usages:

resharper-architecture-6

ReSharper Architecture Tools are definitely much easier to use than Visual Studio built-in tools, and they can be handy for software archaeologists, who explore top-level architecture of a Visual Studio solution, as well as for software architects when assessing component dependencies.

More about Architecture Tools: http://blog.jetbrains.com/dotnet/2013/06/13/resharper-8-architecture-tools/

  • kskrygan

    Thanks for the post!
    We appreciate any feedback about these two features. If you have any ideas how we can improve arch tools or if there is something really missing – please send us a feedback via youtrack.jetbrains.com