Refactoring and Structure101

I'm in the middle of a fairly broad refactoring of the internals of the SpringSource dm Server to introduce an interface to some of the subcomponents and ensure that the rest of the code accesses those subcomponents via the interface rather than directly.

The Structure101 tool has proved invaluable in this process. It has excellent support for analysing the dependencies between components and identifying anomalous dependencies such as those from lower layers of the code to higher layers. But it also supports transformations and visibility settings which turn out to be extremely useful for refactoring.

I created transformations to collect together packages which I want to treat as a unit from the point of view of the current refactoring. This would not be possible using standard refactoring techniques as the packages in question cannot actually be renamed, for reasons I won't go into here. The transformations were of the form:

org.foo.* -> myunit.org.foo.*
org.bar.* -> myunit.org.bar.*

The transformations apply only in Structure101's model of the system and do not affect the actual code. The net is that I can then analyse dependencies on the myunit package hierarchy using Structure101's default mechanisms.

Visibility settings come in useful in identifying the pieces of code I need to refactor. By modifying the Structure101 model so that myunit is a private subcomponent of the new interface component, all dependencies on myunit from outside of the interface component show up as anomalies.

I can then use these anomalies as a 'to do' list for my refactoring. Clicking on one of them shows the precise code dependency which I can refactor by extending the interface component, if necessary, and then changing the using code to depend on the interface component. Refreshing the Structure101 model takes a few seconds after which there is one less anomaly showing on the diagram.

I've really appreciated the support from the Structure101 developers who have helped me get the best out of the tool. It sure beats some combination of grep, a cross-referencing tool like OpenGrok, plus a ton of yellow stickies...