Welcome to the dtangler project home page.

dtangler is a suite of tools to analyze dependencies. dtangler's primary features currently are:

• DSM GUI (Dependency Structure Matrix)
• DSM text-based output
• command line dependency analyzer (primary targeted for use in automated builds)
• support for reading dependency info from a text file
• built in support for Java dependency analysis (jar/class folder, package, and class level)
• the user can write dependency rules that dtangler enforces

Please read about_dtangler if you wish to know more about the dtangler project and its background

Recent changes on dtangler Wiki

Runar Jordahl has created a package that integrates dtangler to the Visualworks Smalltalk environment! This package allows to analyze dependencies on Smalltalk packages and bundles.

Analyze Dependencies in VisualWorks using DTangler

Analyzing Dependencies in Seaside

— Marko Oikarinen

We're having programmer's holiday until further notice. This is done due we're short of resources for a while. During this time we'll focus to implementing smaller improvements and planning future development. — Pertti Lehtisaari 2009-03-18 13:08

dtangler 2.0.0. is released! The major new feature is the ability to read dependency information from a plaintext file. In other words: it's not just for java - now you can generate a dependency structure matrix that describes whatever you want! — Marko Oikarinen 2009-03-06 14:47

Sprint 13 has just started. We're planning to have next release after this sprint. — Pertti Lehtisaari 2009-02-19 15:47

Sprint 10 failed to meet definition of done because of problems related to technical problems. (Mini)Sprint 11 will focus to fix these matters. — Pertti Lehtisaari 2009-01-28 12:36

We are happy to inform you that we are back in business again and new sprint just started. — Pertti Lehtisaari 2009-01-13 20:42

It has been very quiet on the dtangler project for the last 3 months because our developers have been very buzy with other projects. However, it looks like we will get the project back on rails after the holidays. First up on the backlog will be supporting non-java domains through plaintext dependencies input.

Happy Holidays! — Daniel Wellner 2008-12-12 10:02

I am very pleased to announce that my Master's Thesis, featuring dtangler, has been approved! You can download it from the About dependencies page. — Kaisa Kittilä 2008-10-09 18:20

dtangler 1.2.1 is now released; it improves the performance of DSM navigation.

This was an exceptionally short and small sprint because, unfortunately, our resources got cut mid-sprint. Also, we'll have to switch back to Scrummish dtangler development due to the resource issue. — Kaisa Kittilä 2008-09-10 14:03

We are happy to inform you that we have resources again and the next sprint will start at beginning of week 37. — Pertti Lehtisaari 2008-09-04 18:13

Would you like to help us improve dtangler? Please take a few minutes to answer a user experience questionnaire. The results will be analysed in my thesis. — Kaisa Kittilä 2008-08-27 14:17

Some serious performance problems slipped into version 1.2.0 when working with large models. A lot of them are fixed in the latest buildbuild, so if you are working with large models, we recommend you to use that build instead of the 1.2.0 release. — Daniel Wellner 2008-08-26 10:15

Thank you, Markku Pesonen, for doing an Open Space demo on developing Dtangler into an Eclipse plugin! This will help us get started. — Daniel Wellner 2008-08-25 19:43

Dtangler 1.2.0 is now released, it can be downloaded from the download page.

For now, until we get new resources, our operation mode is 'Scrummish', which basically means that we cannot stick to a pre-determined schedule. — Pertti Lehtisaari 2008-08-14 12:02

Dtangler 1.1.1 is now released.

Kaisa will be working on her thesis fulltime, starting next week. Therefore, we will run out of committed resources for the time being.

We will now do a very short mini-sprint and release 1.2.0 on the end of this week. 1.2.0 will support jar files as input, and improved DSM sort algorythm.

After 1.2.0, until we get new resources, we will change our operation mode from SCRUM into 'Scrummish', which basically means that we cannot stick to a pre-determined schedule. — Daniel Wellner 2008-08-11 11:40

Unfortunatily, due to a combination of Kaisa catching a flue and me being on holiday next week, we will have to reschedule the demo and release of dtangler 1.1.1 to week 33. Sorry for that. — Daniel Wellner 2008-07-31 11:33

The dtangler Continuous Integration has been improved. The builds page now provides straight download,documentation and log links for each successfull build. It is now also possible to webstart any release version starting from 1.0.2. — Daniel Wellner 2008-07-28 15:44

During this sprint, we are replacing our old user documentation with a new one, created with a tool called Bumblebee.

The basic idea behind Bumblebee is that writing the documentation for a feature is integrated with writing tests for that particular feature. In other words, every feature in the documentation is a tested feature. By keeping the documentation and tests closely together, we can also ensure that the documentation is always up-to-date.

For an appetizer, you can take a look at the release documentation of our most recent builds in continuous integration!

— Kaisa Kittilä 2008-07-11 14:51

Sprint 6 demo was held, and the release 1.1.0 of dtangler can be downloaded from the download page. The team will have a programmer's holiday during 19.06. - 14.07.2008 and focus on updating documentation and resolving technical debt. — Pertti Lehtisaari 2008-06-19 13:48

Sprint 5 demo was held, and the latest verified version of dtangler can be downloaded from the download page — Kaisa Kittilä 2008-05-30 10:47

Finally we got some time on our hands to set up continuous integration for the dtangler project.

First of all, special thanks to the people that came to our open space and helped us do it: Arto Esko, Marko Oikarinen, Janne Kipinä, Pertti Erkkilä, Jani Löthman, Juho Juopperi and Geir Sande.

Our CI is implemented using unix shell scripts. The actual build is done with rake so it can be performed also on windows machines. At this stage, the CI is still very limited in it's features, but we will continue developing it — Daniel Wellner 2008-05-29 14:59

After some intensive brainstorming with Marko an Ville about what the dtangler core domain should probably look like. We came up with the analogies of 'cube' and slice' as illustrated here: dtangler_domain — Daniel Wellner 2008-05-13 12:40

Burndown charts of current and previous sprints are now added to development and Sprint Archive sections.

— Pertti Lehtisaari 2008-05-11 10:34

Whuhuu! :)

Sprint 4 went as planned, which means that dtangler 1.0.1 is now available (download, webstart)

The biggest improvements are group support in the GUI and support for java 1.5.

dtangler 1.0.1 also provides Java class level analysis and DSM, but is still missing a lot of critical functionality, so have a little patience with us. Class level support should be pretty good by the end of sprint 6.

— Daniel Wellner 2008-05-09 10:50

The class level support is well under it's way, now at the end of Sprint 4. It seems, however, that we need a few more stories than expected to get the most value out of the class level functionality. Therefore, the jar level support - originally planned for release 2 - is now rescheduled to release 3 — Daniel Wellner 2008-05-07 08:42

dtangler.org now provides the latest version of dtangler gui as a Java web-start application to help you to keep up to date.

You can start the dtangler from here or from the link on the left side of the page

dtangler's first official release, 1.0.0 is now available!

features for 1.0.0:

• core
  • package level text-based DSM
  • java class file reading
  • package level dependency analysis
  • configuration file reading
  • forbidden and allowed dependency configuration support
  • group support
• GUI
  • graphical DSM
  • cell-based violations reporting
  • open and save configuration files
  • modify input settings
  • modify forbidden and allowed dependency configuration
  • refresh
  • rule configuration straight from DSM cells.
  • Group and allowed dependency support unfortunately did not make it into the 1.0.0 release. They will be added as soon as possible.