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Getting Started with NDepend A Comprehensive Guide to Boosting Code Quality

By Shady Nagy
Published in dotnet
July 03, 2024
4 min read
Getting Started with NDepend A Comprehensive Guide to Boosting Code Quality

Table Of Contents

01
Introduction
02
Step 1: Preparing for Installation
03
Step 2: Starting NDepend
04
Step 3: Integrating with Your IDE
05
Step 4: Analyzing a Solution
06
Step 5: Reviewing the Analysis Report
07
Step 6: Continuous Integration and Deployment (CI/CD) Integration
08
Step 7: Configuring Baselines and Code Coverage
09
Key Features and Use-Cases of NDepend
10
Examples
11
Conclusion
12
References and Further Reading
13
Feedback and Questions

Introduction

NDepend is a powerful tool designed to help developers maintain high-quality code by providing a suite of analysis features. This guide will walk you through the initial setup, key features, and use-cases of NDepend to help you get started and understand its benefits.

Dashboard
Dashboard

Step 1: Preparing for Installation

Before installing NDepend, prepare a folder on your disk where you will unzip the NDepend zip file.

  1. Download NDepend: Visit the NDepend website and download the latest version of the tool.
  2. Unzip the File: Extract the contents of the NDepend zip file into the prepared folder.

Step 2: Starting NDepend

  1. Run the Executable: Navigate to the folder where you unzipped NDepend and start the executable VisualNDepend.
  2. Start Evaluation: Click the “Start Evaluation” button to begin your 14-day trial. Read and accept the license agreement to proceed.

Step 3: Integrating with Your IDE

NDepend works side-by-side and interacts with popular IDEs such as Visual Studio and JetBrains Rider. Here’s how to integrate it with Visual Studio:

  1. Install the Visual Studio Extension: Open Visual Studio and you should see the NDepend extension menu under the “Extensions” menu.
  2. Check NDepend Status: The circle icon on the bottom right of Visual Studio indicates the current status of NDepend.

Step 4: Analyzing a Solution

  1. Attach NDepend Project: Attach a new NDepend project to your solution. This prompts a dialog to create an NDepend project to analyze your solution’s projects.
  2. Start Analysis: Start the analysis process. The blue progress circle on the bottom right will indicate that NDepend is analyzing the solution.

Step 5: Reviewing the Analysis Report

Once the analysis is complete, NDepend generates an interactive HTML web report. This report contains various diagrams and dashboards summarizing key metrics such as:

  • Technical Debt Estimation
  • Quality Gates Status
  • Number of Issues

Step 6: Continuous Integration and Deployment (CI/CD) Integration

NDepend reports can be integrated with any CI/CD technology such as Azure DevOps, GitHub Actions, TeamCity, Jenkins, Bamboo, or AppVeyor. This ensures continuous monitoring and analysis of your code.

Step 7: Configuring Baselines and Code Coverage

For the purposes of maintaining high code quality, you can configure a baseline to compare against future changes. Import code coverage data from your tests and issues emitted by Roslyn analyzers. This is configurable from the NDepend project properties panel.

Key Features and Use-Cases of NDepend

NDepend offers a variety of features to help you maintain code quality:

  1. Maintain a Clean Architecture:

    • Dependency Graph and Dependency Matrix: These tools help visualize dependencies within the codebase, allowing developers to identify and manage dependencies more effectively, ensuring a clean and maintainable architecture.
  2. Generate Web Reports from CI/CD Pipeline:

    • Comprehensive, Interactive, and Lightweight Web Reports: Integrating with the CI/CD pipeline, these reports provide insights into code quality and changes, helping developers make informed decisions and track progress continuously.
  3. Ensure Adherence to Code Rules:

    • Over 200 Code Rules for Quality and Security: By enforcing a set of predefined rules, developers can ensure their code adheres to best practices and security standards, reducing the risk of bugs and vulnerabilities.
  4. Import Issues from Roslyn Analyzers:

    • Monitor Code Quality: Importing issues from Roslyn analyzers helps keep a close eye on code quality by integrating with existing analysis tools.
  5. Quality Gates Engine:

    • Track Critical Quality Criteria: This feature continuously tracks essential quality metrics, helping developers focus on maintaining high standards and preventing quality regressions.
  6. Set a Baseline for Recent Changes:

    • Focus Efforts on Recent Changes: By setting a baseline, developers can prioritize recent code changes, ensuring new code meets quality standards and does not introduce new issues.
  7. Identify Code Smells and Conduct Code Reviews:

    • Improve Code Quality Before Merging: Identifying code smells and conducting reviews before merging helps maintain a high-quality codebase and prevents problematic code from being integrated.
  8. Code Query Engine Based on LINQ:

    • Write Custom Code Rules: This engine allows developers to write their own code rules using LINQ, providing flexibility to enforce project-specific standards and practices.
  9. Monitor Trends with Charts and Code Metrics:

    • Track Progress Over Time: Visualizing trends and metrics helps developers understand how their codebase evolves, identifying areas of improvement and tracking progress.
  10. Import Code Coverage:

    • Ensure Thorough Testing: By importing code coverage data, developers can ensure new code is adequately tested, improving the overall reliability of the software.
  11. Smart Technical Debt Estimations:

    • Track and Audit Legacy Code: Estimating technical debt allows developers to prioritize refactoring and maintenance tasks, ensuring legacy code does not hinder progress.
  12. Comprehensive Tools to Search Code:

    • Find and Manage Code Easily: Advanced search tools help developers quickly locate and manage code, improving productivity and efficiency.
  13. Issues Tab: Displays issues per source file, allows sorting, searching by file name, and viewing diffs since the baseline.

  14. Project Tab: Lists projects along with their metrics, number of issues, code coverage, and more.

  15. Rules Tab: Shows NDepend code rules and Roslyn analyzers violated. You can click on a rule to see its issues.

  16. Quality Gates Tab: Displays the status of quality gates.

  17. Trend Tab: Shows trend charts over time.

  18. Logs Tab: Lists analysis logs for identifying issues during analysis.

Additional Tools

  • Dependency Graph: Helps explore code dependencies at various levels (project, namespace, class).
  • Call Graphs and Coupling Graphs: Provide insights into code structure and interactions.
    Graph
    Graph
  • Dependency Matrix: Useful for scenarios where a matrix view is more effective than a graph.
    Matrix
    Matrix
  • Heat Map: Visualizes code metrics like code coverage and cyclomatic complexity.
    Metric
    Metric

Examples

Check out this live example.

Query
Query
Search
Search

Conclusion

NDepend is a comprehensive tool that significantly enhances code quality and maintainability. By following this guide, you can start leveraging its powerful features to ensure your codebase is robust, secure, and easy to maintain. Install the full-featured trial today and explore all that NDepend has to offer.

Stay tuned for our next posts where we will dive deeper into using NDepend with live examples. Future tutorials will cover advanced features and real-world scenarios to help you get the most out of this powerful tool.

References and Further Reading

  • NDepend Official Website: Visit the official website to learn more about NDepend, its features, and to download the latest version.
  • Getting Started with NDepend: A quick start guide to help you begin using NDepend effectively, including installation and basic usage instructions.
  • NDepend Videos: Explore the comprehensive documentation for detailed information on how to use NDepend and its various capabilities.
  • Practical NDepend Pluralsight Course: A course by Erik Dietrich that introduces static analysis and shows how to use NDepend to analyze .NET code bases, improve code quality, and enhance team productivity.

Feedback and Questions

Your insights drive us! For any questions, feedback, or thoughts, feel free to connect:

  1. Email: shady@shadynagy.com
  2. Twitter: @ShadyNagy_
  3. LinkedIn: Shady Nagy
  4. GitHub: ShadyNagy

If you found this guide beneficial, don’t hesitate to share it with your network. Until the next guide, happy coding!


Tags

#.NETCore#NDepend#CSharp#CodeQuality#StaticCodeAnalysis#SoftwareDevelopment#CodeReview#CICD#VisualStudio#JetBrainsRider#SoftwareArchitecture

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