Removing Redundant code with NDepend

As we refactor our code, some design changes make some existing code redundant. When you have unit tests on all your code you can't find this using coverage. So finding this redundant code can be tricky.

What you need is a tool that can analyze your code base. The best I have found for .Net is NDepend.

NDepend provides a query language for code.

I started a project and added all assemblies except the test ones. I then ran the query :
SELECT TYPES WHERE TypeCa == 0

TypeCa refers to the 'Afferent Coupling' of the type.. ie. how many other types refer to this one.

This found 40 files I could delete.

I used Resharper to double check each one was not used (except in tests).

I got a couple of false positives with types I am only using to pass as type parameters to generic classes. This is the only thing stopping me adding this check as part of our build script.

Finding all those classes by hand would have taken much longer, so...

Works for us!

Mocking Generic Method with NMock2 (part2)

Well although this feature has been mentioned on the web it doesn't seen to exist in any version of NMock2 I can find. With a bit of digging I worked out how to implement it myself.

You can download the assembly from NMock2Extensions try it out, or download the source from svn.

Here's an example of using it...

Stub.On(childScope)
      .Method(new GenericMethodMatcher("Get", typeof(IControl)))
      .Will(Return.Value(control));

Expect.Once.On(childScope)
      .Method(new GenericMethodMatcher("Get",typeof(IDocument)))
      .Will(Return.Value(NewMock()));

As you can see, you can Stub or Mock on the same method with different generic types and they are handled differently, as you would expect.

Happy Mocking

Getting Started with NDI

Check out Getting Started with NDependencyInjection. I'm looking for some feedback. How readable/followable is it?

NDI: Unexpected bonus

NDependencyInjection Update:

Now that most of the code-base is using NDI we are really seeing the benefits.

The main bonus I'm getting is with how simple refactoring has become. Once you have the architecture modeling reality, whenever a class needs a service the correct instance is already available in the scope. This means all you need to do is ask for it in the constructor and it all just works. No wiring changes.