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Removing all unused references from a project in Visual Studio projects
(16 answers)
Closed 2 years ago.
In relation to this question: "Remove unused references (!= "using")", I would like to know if there is a tool for removing unused classes, structs, delegates, etc from a Visual Studio solution.
Scenario:
I have an unorganised Visual Studio Solution which consists of 1000's of:
Native method imports
Structures
Delegates
Enumerations
Rather than trawling through each file clicking "Find All References" and determining if the code is being used somewhere, is there any mechanism by where I can simply remove redundant code files easily?
Example:
//This class contains a method called getRandomValue which returns type RANDOM
public class NativeMethods
{
[DllImport("random.dll")]
public static extern RANDOM getRandomValue();
}
//This is the RANDOM object as referenced by getRandomValue();
[StructLayout(LayoutKind.Sequential)]
public struct RANDOM
{
uint a;
uint b;
uint c;
}
//This is redundant since nothing is referencing it.
[StructLayout(LayoutKind.Sequential)]
public struct MESSAGE
{
IntPtr sender;
IntPtr recipient;
char[] mText;
}
Note to self:
My gut feeling is that this is going to be tricky since unlike Java, object names do not have to be identical to the file name, and multiple object declarations can reside within a single file, however in this instance (my scenario) every object is declared within its own file (with an identical name).
ReSharper is the best choice to clean up your code.
You can use it for free thanks to ReSharper Early Access Program.
There are several tools that you can use to do this:
FxCop (free)
NDepend (paid)
Resharper (paid)
FxCop will only find unused internal and private code. Of course if you make sure you only publicly expose code that needs to be accessible outside your assembly, then that should be good enbough.
As pointed #Ergwun the tool NDepend can help to find unused methods, fields and types.
To elaborate a bit, NDepend proposes to write Code Rule over LINQ Query (CQLinq). Around 200 default code rules are proposed, 3 of them being dedicated to unused/dead code detection
Basically such a rule to detect unused method for example looks like:
// <Name>Dead Methods</Name>
warnif count > 0
from m in Application.Methods where !m.MethodsCallingMe.Any()
select m
But this rule is naive and will return trivial false positives. There are many situations where a method is never called yet it is not unused (entry point, class constructor, finaliser...) this is why the 3 default rules are more elaborated:
Potentially dead Types (hence detect unused class, struct, interface, delegate...)
Potentially dead Methods
Potentially dead Fields
NDepend integrates in Visual Studio 2022, 2019, 2017,2015, 2013, 2012, 2010, thus these rules can be checked/browsed/edited right inside the IDE. The tool can also be integrated into your CI process and it can build reports that will show rules violated and culprit code elements. NDepend has also a VS Team Services extension.
If you click these 3 links above toward the source code of these rules, you'll see that the ones concerning types and methods are a bit complex. This is because they detect not only unused types and methods, but also types and methods used only by unused dead types and methods (recursive).
This is static analysis, hence the prefix Potentially in the rule names. If a code element is used only through reflection, these rules might consider it as unused which is not the case.
In addition to using these 3 rules, I'd advise measuring code coverage by tests and striving for having full coverage. Often, you'll see that code that cannot be covered by tests, is actually unused/dead code that can be safely discarded. This is especially useful in complex algorithms where it is not clear if a branch of code is reachable or not.
Disclaimer: I work for NDepend.
Related
Could you please tell me which are the differences between rules of StyleCop and Code Analysis ? Should it be used together or not ?
Thanks.
Style cop essentially parses the file looking for formatting issues and other things that you could think of as "cosmetic". Code analysis actually builds your code and inspects the compiled runtime IL for characteristics about how it behaves when it runs and flag potential runtime problems.
So, they are complimentary, and you are perfectly fine to use them together.
Short answer:
stylecop: takes your source code as input and checks for potential code style issues. For instance: using directives are not alphabetically ordered...etc.
fxcop (now code analysis): takes a compiled assembly as input and checks for potential issues related to the executable/dll itself when it'll be executed. For instance: in your class you have a member of type IDisposable that is not disposed properly.
However, there are some rules that are common to both tools, for instance rules related to naming convention for public exposed types.
Anyway, using both is a good idea.
FxCop checks what is written. It works over the compiled assembly.
StyleCop checks how it is written. It works over the parsed source file, even without trying to compile it.
This leads to all the differences. For example, FxCop cannot check indentations, cause they are absent in a compiled assembly. And StyleCop cannot perform code-flow checks cause it doesn't know how your code is really being executed.
I need a tool I can run that will show me a list of unused methods, variables, properties, and classes. CSS classes would be an added bonus.
I heard FXCop can do this? or NDepend or something?
Look at ReSharper.
Code Analysis in VSTS will generate warnings about this during the build process. You can set it up to treat Warnings As Errors.
You can use ReSharper to find unused code and Dust-Me Selectors to find unused CSS.
The tool NDepend can help find unused code in a .NET code base. Disclaimer: I am one of the developer of this tool.
NDepend proposes to write Code Rule over LINQ Query (CQLinq). Around 200 default code rules are proposed, 3 of them being dedicated to unused/dead code detection:
Potentially dead Types (hence detect unused class, struct, interface, delegate...)
Potentially dead Methods (hence detect unused method, ctor, property getter/setter...)
Potentially dead Fields
NDepend is integrated in Visual Studio, thus these rules can be checked/browsed/edited right inside the IDE. The tool can also be integrated into your CI process and it can build reports that will show rules violated and culprit code elements.
If you click these 3 links above toward the source code of these rules, you'll see that the ones concerning types and methods are a bit complex. This is because they detect not only unused types and methods, but also types and methods used only by unused dead types and methods (recursive).
This is static analysis, hence the prefix Potentially in the rule names. If a code element is used only through reflection, these rules might consider it as unused which is not the case.
In addition to using these 3 rules, I'd advise measuring code coverage by tests and striving for having full coverage. Often, you'll see that code that cannot be covered by tests, is actually unused/dead code that can be safely discarded. This is especially useful in complex algorithms where it is not clear if a branch of code is reachable or not.
Gendarme has also different rules to find unused code.
I've been reading articles on how to program in a functional (i.e F#) style in C#, for example, foregoing loops for recursion and always returning a copy of a value/object instead of returning the same variable with a new state.
For example, what sort of code inspection things should I watch out for? Is there any way to tell if a method on a BCL class causes a mutation?
The tool NDepend can tell you where you have side effect. It can also ensure automatically that a class is immutable (i.e no side effect on its object instances) or a method is pure (i.e no side effects during the execution of the method. Disclaimer: I am one of the developers of the tool.
In short, trick is to define an attribute, such as, MyNamespace.ImmutableAttribute
and to tag classes that you wish to be immutable.
[Immutable]class MyImmutableClass {...}
If the class is not immutable, or more likely, if one day a developer modifies it and breaks its immutability, then the following Code Rule over LINQ Query (CQLinq) will suddenly warn:
warnif count > 0
from t in Application.Types
where !t.IsImmutable && t.HasAttribute("MyNamespace.ImmutableAttribute")
select t
On a side note, I wrote an article on immutability/purity/side-effects and NDepend usage:
Immutable Types: Understand Them And Use Them
Here are two things that would help you find variables and fields whose values are getting changed. Mutability is more complex than this, of course (for example these won't find calls to add to collections) but depending on what you're looking for, they may be helpful.
Make all of your fields readonly; then they can only be set from the constructor, and not changed thereafter.
Pick up a copy of ReSharper. It expands on Visual Studio's syntax highlighting, and has an option to set up custom highlighting for mutable local variables. This will let you see at a glance whether locals are being modified.
Unfortunately there's no easy way to do that in C# currently. If you're lucky the documentation will tell you, but generally that is not the case.
Inspecting the code with Reflector (assuming we're talking managed code) can reveal if the current implementation has any side effects, but since this is an implementation detail there's no guarantee that it will not change in the future, so basically you will have to repeat the verification every time you update the code in question.
Tools such as NDepend can help you find out dependencies between types - i.e. where you have too look for side effects.
For your own types, you can implement immutability, by making sure instances never leak references to internals. Make sure to copy the contents of reference type instances used to instantiate the objects as other may otherwise keep references to internal state.
Without testing the method, you won't be able to tell if it has any side effects. It would be handy if the documentation mentioned any side effects of a method or function but unfortunately it doesn't.
Keep in mind that you will have to do some extensive testing to be certain that no side effects can occur. If you want to you can always disassemble the assembly and read the code for side effects.
I've recently inherited C# console application that is in need of some pruning and clean up. Long story short, the app consists of a single class containing over 110,000 lines of code. Yup, over 110,000 lines in a single class. And, of course, the app is core to our business, running 'round the clock updating data used on a dynamic website. Although I'm told my predecessor was "a really good programmer", it obvious he was not at all into OOP (or version control).
Anyway... while familiarizing myself with the code I've found plenty of methods that are declared, but never referenced. It looks as if copy/paste was used to version the code, for example say I have a method called getSomethingImportant(), chances are there is another method called getSomethingImortant_July2007() (the pattern is functionName_[datestamp] in most cases). It looks like when the programmer was asked to make a change to getSomethingImportant() he would copy/paste then rename to getSomethingImortant_Date, make changes to getSomethingImortant_Date, then change any method calls in the code to the new method name, leaving the old method in the code but never referenced.
I'd like to write a simple console app that crawls through the one huge class and returns a list of all methods with the number of times each method was referenced. By my estimates there are well over 1000 methods, so doing this by hand would take a while.
Are there classes within the .NET framework that I can use to examine this code? Or any other usefull tools that may help identify methods that are declared but never referenced?
(Side question: Has anyone else ever seen a C# app like this, one reeeealy big class? It's more or less one huge procedural process, I know this is the first I've seen, at least of this size.)
You could try to use NDepend if you just need to extract some stats about your class. Note that this tool relies on Mono.Cecil internally to inspect assemblies.
To complete the Romain Verdier answer, lets dig a bit into what NDepend can bring to you here. (Disclaimer: I am a developer of the NDepend team)
NDepend lets query your .NET code with some LINQ queries. Knowing which methods call and is called by which others, is as simple as writing the following LINQ query:
from m in Application.Methods
select new { m, m.MethodsCalled, m.MethodsCallingMe }
The result of this query is presented in a way that makes easy to browse callers and callees (and its 100% integrated into Visual Studio).
There are many other NDepend capabilities that can help you. For example you can right click a method in Visual Studio > NDepend > Select methods... > that are using me (directly or indirectly) ...
The following code query is generated...
from m in Methods
let depth0 = m.DepthOfIsUsing("NUnit.Framework.Constraints.ConstraintExpression.Property(String)")
where depth0 >= 0 orderby depth0
select new { m, depth0 }
... which matches direct and indirect callers, with the depth of calls (1 means direct caller, 2 means caller of direct callers and so on).
And then by clicking the button Export to Graph, you get a call graph of your pivot method (of course it could be the other way around, i.e method called directly or indirectly by a particular pivot method).
Download the free trial of Resharper. Use the Resharper->Search->Find Usages in File (Ctrl-Shift-F7) to have all usages highlighted. Also, a count will appear in the status bar. If you want to search across multiple files, you can do that too using Ctrl-Alt-F7.
If you don't like that, do text search for the function name in Visual Studio (Ctrl-Shift-F), this should tell you how many occurrences were found in the solution, and where they are.
I don't think you want to write this yourself - just buy NDepend and use its Code Query Language
There is no easy tool to do that in .NET framework itself. However I don't think you really need a list of unused methods at once. As I see it, you'll just go through the code and for each method you'll check if it's unused and then delete it if so. I'd use Visual Studio "Find References" command to do that. Alternatively you can use Resharper with its "Analize" window. Or you can just use Visual Studio code analysis tool to find all unused private methods.
FXCop has a rule that will identify unused private methods. So you could mark all the methods private and have it generate a list.
FXCop also has a language if you wanted to get fancier
http://www.binarycoder.net/fxcop/
If you don't want to shell out for NDepend, since it sounds like there is just a single class in a single assembly - comment out the methods and compile. If it compiles, delete them - you aren't going to have any inheritance issues, virtual methods or anything like that. I know it sounds primitive, but sometimes refactoring is just grunt work like this. This is kind of assuming you have unit tests you run after each build until you've got the code cleaned up (Red/Green/Refactor).
The Analyzer window in Reflector can show you where a method is called (Used By).
Sounds like it would take a very long time to get the information that way though.
You might look at the API that Reflector provides for writing add-ins and see if you can get the grunt work of the analysis that way. I would expect that the source code for the code metrics add-in could tell you a bit about how to get information about methods from the reflector API.
Edit: Also the code model viewer add-in for Reflector could help too. It's a good way to explore the Reflector API.
I don't know of anything that's built to handle this specific case, but you could use Mono.Cecil. Reflect the assemblies and then count references in the IL. Shouldn't be too tough.
Try having the compiler emit assembler files, as in x86 instructions, not .NET assemblies.
Why? Because it's much easier to parse assembler code than it is C# code or .NET assemblies.
For instance, a function/method declaration looks something like this:
.string "w+"
.text
.type create_secure_tmpfile, #function
create_secure_tmpfile:
pushl %ebp
movl %esp, %ebp
subl $24, %esp
movl $-1, -8(%ebp)
subl $4, %esp
and function/method references will look something like this:
subl $12, %esp
pushl 24(%ebp)
call create_secure_tmpfile
addl $16, %esp
movl 20(%ebp), %edx
movl %eax, (%edx)
When you see "create_secure_tmpfile:" you know you have a function/method declaration, and when you see "call create_secure_tmpfile" you know you have a function/method reference. This may be good enough for your purposes, but if not it's just a few more steps before you can generate a very cute call-tree for your entire application.
I have a small to medium project that is in C++/CLI. I really hate the syntax extensions of C++/CLI and I would prefer to work in C#. Is there a tool that does a decent job of translating one to the other?
EDIT: When I said Managed c++ before I apparently meant c++/CLI
You can only translate Managed C++ code (and C++/CLI code) to C# if the C++ code is pure managed. If it is not -- i.e. if there is native code included in the sources -- tools like .NET Reflector won't be able to translate the code for you.
If you do have native C++ code mixed in, then I'd recommend trying to move the native code into a separate DLL, replace your calls to DLL functions by easily identifiable stub functions, compile your project as a pure .NET library, then use .NET reflector to de-compile into C# code. Then you can replace the calls to the stub functions by p-invoke calls to your native DLL.
Good luck! I feel for you!
.NET Managed C++ is like a train wreck. But have you looked into C++ CLI? I think Microsoft did a great job in this field to make C++ a first class .NET citizen.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/cc163852.aspx
I'm not sure if this will work, but try using .Net Reflector along with ReflectionEmitLanguage plug-in. The RelelectionEmitLanguage plug-in claims to convert your assembly to c# code.
It has to be done manually unfortunately, but if the code is mostly C++/CLI (not native C++) then it can actually be done pretty quickly. I managed to port around 250,000 lines of C++/CLI code into C# in less than a couple of months, and I don't even know C++ very well at all.
If preserving Git history is important, you might want to git mv your cpp file into a cs file, commit, then start porting. The reason for this is that Git will think your file is new if you modify it too much after renaming it.
This was my approach when porting large amounts of code (so that it wouldn't take forever):
Create another worktree / clone of the branch and keep it open at all times
This is extremely important as you will want to compare your C# to the old C++/CLI code
Rename cpp to cs, delete header file, commit
I chose to rename the cpp file since its git history is probably more important than the header file
Create namespace + class in cs file, add any base classes/interfaces (if abstract sealed, make static in C#)
Copy fields first, then constructors, then properties, and finally functions
Start replacing with Ctrl+H:
^ to empty
:: to .
-> to .
nullptr to null
for each to foreach
gcnew to new
L" to "
Turn on case sensitivity to avoid accidental renames (for example L"cool" should become "cool", not "coo"
Prefixes like ClassName:: to empty, so that MyClass::MyMethod becomes MyMethod
Go through the red code and port manually code that cannot be just replaced (e.g. some special C++ casts), unless you have some cool regex to do it fast
Once code compiles, go through it again, compare to C++/CLI line by line, check for errors, clean it up, move on.
If you encounter a dependency that needs to be ported, you could pause, port that, then come back. I did that, but it might not be so easy.
Properties were the most annoying to port, because I had to remove everything before and after the getters and setters. I could have maybe written a regex for it but didn't bother doing so.
Once the porting is done, it's very important that you go through the changes line by line, read the code, and compare with C++/CLI code and fix possible errors.
One problem with this approach is that you can introduce bugs in variable declarations, because in C++/CLI you can declare variables in 2 ways:
MyType^ variable; <- null
MyType variable; <- calls default constructor
In the latter case, you want to actually do MyType variable = new MyType(); but since you already removed all the ^ you have to just manually check and test which one is correct. You could of course just replace all ^'s manually, but for me it would have taken too long (plus laziness) so I just did it this way.
Other recommendations:
Have a dummy C++/CLI project and a tool like LinqPad or another C# project to test differences between C++/CLI and C# if you're unsure of a piece of ported code
Install Match Margin to help highlight similar code (helped me when porting WinForms code)
ReSharper! It helped with finding bugs and cleaning up the code a LOT. Truly worth the money.
Some gotchas that I encountered while porting:
Base classes can be called in C++/CLI like so: BaseClass->DoStuff, but in C# you would have to do base.DoStuff instead.
C++/CLI allows such statements: if (foo), but in C# this has to be explicit. In the case of integers, it would be if (foo != 0) or for objects if (foo != null).
Events in base classes can be invoked in C++/CLI, but in C# it's not possible. The solution is to create a method, like OnSomeEvent, in the base class, and inside that to invoke the event.
C++/CLI automatically generates null checks for event invocations, so in C# make sure to add an explicit null check: MyEvent?.Invoke(this, EventArgs.Empty);. Notice the question mark.
dynamic_cast is equivalent to as cast in C#, the rest can be direct casts ((int) something).
gcnew can be done without parentheses. In C# you must have them with new.
Pay attention to virtual override keywords in the header files, you can easily forget to mark the C# methods with override keyword.
Intefaces can have implementations! In this case, you might have to rethink the architecture a bit. One option is to pull the implementation into an abstract class and derive from it
Careful when replacing casts with Convert calls in C#
Convert.ToInt32 rounds to the narest int, but casting always rounds down, so in this case we should not use the converter.
Always try casting first, and if that doesn't work, use the Convert class.
Variables in C++/CLI can be re-declared in a local scope, but in C# you get naming conflicts. Code like this easily lead to hard to find bugs if not ported carefully.
Example: An event handler can take a parameter e, but also has a try-catch like catch (Exception e) which means there are 2 e variables.
Another example:
// number is 2
int number = 2;
for (int number = 0; number < 5; number++)
{
// number is now 0, and goes up to 4
}
// number is again 2!
The above code is illegal in C#, because there is a naming conflict. Find out exactly how the code works in C++ and port it with the exact same logic, and obviously use different variable names.
In C++/CLI, it's possible to just write throw; which would create a generic C++ exception SEHException. Just replace it with a proper exception.
Be careful when porting code that uses the reference % sign, that usually means that you will have to use ref or out keywords in C#.
Similarly, pay attention to pointers * and & references. You might have to write additional code to write changes back whereas in C++ you can just modify the data pointed to by the pointer.
It's possible to call methods on null object instances in C++/CLI. Yes seriously. So inside the function you could do If (this == null) { return; }.
Port this type of code carefully. You might have to create an extension method that wraps over this type of method in order to avoid breaking the code.
Check and make sure everything in the old project file vcxproj was ported correctly. Did you miss any embedded resources?
Careful when porting directives like #ifdef, the "if not" (#ifndef) looks awfully similar but can have disastrous consequences.
C++/CLI classes automatically implement IDisposable when adding a destructor, so in C# you'll need to either implement that interface or override the Dispose method if it's available in the base class.
Other tips:
If you need to call Win32 functions, just use P/Invoke instead of creating a C++/CLI wrapper
For complex native C++ code, better create a C++/CLI project with managed wrappers
Again, pay attention to pointers. I had forgotten to do Marshal.StructureToPtr in my P/Invoke code which wasn't necessary in the C++ version since we had the actual pointer and not a copy of its data.
I have surely missed some things, but hopefully these tips will be of some help to people who are demoralized by the amount of code that needs to be ported, especially in a short period of time :)
After porting is done, use VS/ReSharper to refactor and clean up the code. Not only is it nice for readability, which is my top priority when writing code, but it also forces you to interact with the code and possibly find bugs that you otherwise would have missed.
Oh and one final FYI that could save you headaches: If you create a C++/CLI wrapper that exposes the native C++ pointer, and need to use that pointer in an external C++/CLI assembly, you MUST make the native type public by using #pragma make_public or else you'll get linker errors:
// put this at the top of the wrapper class, after includes
#pragma make_public(SomeNamespace::NativeCppClass)
If you find a bug in the C++/CLI code, keep it. You want to port the code, not fix the code, so keep things in scope!
For those wondering, we got maybe around 10 regressions after the port. Half were mistakes because I was already on autopilot mode and didn't pay attention to what I was doing.
Happy porting!
Back ~2004 Microsoft did have a tool that would convert managed C++ to C++/CLI ... sort of. We ran it on a couple of projects, but to be honest the amount of work left cleaning up the project was no less than the amount of work it would have been to do the conversion by hand in the first place. I don't think the tool ever made it out into a public release though (maybe for this reason).
I don't know which version of Visual Studio you are using, but we have managed C++ code that will not compile with Visual Studio 2005/2008 using the /clr:oldSyntax switch and we still have a relic VS 2003 around for it.
I don't know of any way of going from C++ to C# in a useful way ... you could try round tripping it through reflector :)
Such projects are often done in c++/cli because C# isn't really an elegant option for the task. e.g. if you have to interface with some native C++ libraries, or do very high performance stuff in low level C. So just make sure whoever chose c++/cli didn't have a good reason to do it before doing the switch.
Having said that, I'm highly skeptical there's something that does what you ask, for the simple reason that not all C++/cli code is translatable to C# (and probably vice versa too).