C# Static Code Analysis with NDepend

I was fortunate enough to recently obtain a Pro license for NDepend. If you've never heard of NDepend, it is a powerful .NET code analysis tool which provides useful information to support you in writing better code. As I work on a large codebase, my initial worry was that NDepend may slow down my user experience with Visual Studio. However, after using it for one month, I have not come across a single moment in which NDepend slowed my IDE experience.

I'll quickly admit that I have no extensive experience of using code analysis tools, therefore I can't comment on how NDepend compares to other tools in the market - but I can comment on the features that I've found very useful. A quick glance on the documentation section of the NDepend website shows the powerful feature set that the tool supports. Below I briefly go through some of the features that I've found useful to date. I still feel that I've barely scratched the surface of some of the features that NDepend supports (particularly CQLinq), so the hope is to come back and update this post as and when I find something else I like.

Visual Studio Support and Integration - NDepend supports all the major versions of Visual Studio (2008, 2010, 2012 and 2013). I installed NDepend (the Pro license) on Visual Studio 2010 Professional Edition and have had no issues since installation. I have also installed a trial version of NDepend on the more later Visual Studio 2013 and found that it works just as good. The installation process was quick and straight forward. I particularly like the non intrusive nature of the tool - after installation, you get an "NDepend" menu option in Visual Studio. From this menu you can run an analysis on your projects. There is also a small circle icon which appears in the bottom right corner of Visual Studio - if you hover your mouse over it you'll get quick access to certain options (like running an analysis or viewing the dashboard) and also information on the number of NDepend code rules violated (more on Code Queries and Rules below).

NDepend Dashboard - Once an NDepend analysis completes, you get the option to view the NDepend Dashboard. The dashboard itself opens within Visual Studio as a new tab and provides a comprehensive array of information. Some of the information you get is:

- Lines of code (split by the number of lines you've written and the number of lines not written by you)
- Method complexity information
- Quantity information on assemblies, namespaces, methods, fields, source files and lines of comments
- Code coverage by tests
- Third party usage
- Information on violated code rules

Note that NDepend also is able to create a report in HTML which provides all this information and more. I imagine that saving "snapshots" of these reports over time would really help in assessing how your codebase is growing in terms of quality over time.

Code Rules and Queries - Perhaps one of the main features which makes NDepend so powerful is CQLinq. CQLinq stands for Code Query LINQ which allows you to query your codebase using LINQ-based queries. NDepend comes with a large number of predefined queries which give you useful information out of the box. Using the "Queries and Rules Explorer" panel you can see the CQLinq code for each query and also define your own query. You can think of CQLinq as a way to very easily reflect on your codebase using simple LINQ-based syntax that you'll already be familiar with. CQLinq provides a very useful mechanism for you to extend NDepend based on the information you want to extract from your code base. It also opens the opportunity for you to share your CQLinq queries with other NDepend users. You can find out more about CQLinq here.

Additional Visual Studio Features - In addition to its core features, NDepend provides a number of extra useful features like code diffing, dependency analysis, visualisation of code metrics and richer code search features. From what I understand, NDepend search is essentially a user interface over CQLinq.

As mentioned above, I'm a fairly new NDepend user. I find it an intuitive tool to use and quickly found myself benefitting from the information the tool provides. I'm particularly now interested in trying out NDepend on a greenfield project and seeing how it affects and shapes the day-to-day development of a new codebase. The features mentioned above are a very small subset of NDepends full feature set. If you're interested in trying out and knowing more about the tool - you can download it from here and read about all the supported features here. I also encourage you to go through the very useful documentation part of the site.