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Visual Studio Ultimate contains a way to visualize project dependencies for a solution. I do not have access to that edition (I have Pro, but am looking for a solution that will also work when using Express editions).

So, what would you recommend for visualizing project dependencies for a VS2013 solution?

Must Haves:

  • Free of charge / Gratis. (Free trial doesn't cut it.)
  • Runs on Windows 8 and 8.1.
  • Able to handle VS2013 solutions and above;
  • Able to handle a mix of VB and C# projects;
  • Able to handle circular dependencies (I know, I know. Legacy, okay!? :D);
  • Can deal with smurf naming. (Legacy modules have rather long names at times, starting with the same 20ish characters. I don't mind seeing the full names, but if project names are truncated with ellipsis after 30 characters, or if boxes become unwieldingly wide, this would be a problem.)
  • Able to handle 100+ projects in one solution.
  • Must be useful. (Okay, I could use some help rewording this requirement to a less subjective summary, but here I mean to convey the fact that the visualization will be used for analyzing a decently sized codebase and creating greater understanding, as oppossed to e.g. a visualization that's purely for showing off / creating a poster for your office wall...)

Nice to haves:

  • Runs on Windows 7.
  • Also works in Visual Studio 2012.
  • Pretty diagrams.
  • Low learning curve, e.g. easy to get started.
  • Ability to rearrange the various projects in the graph.
  • Ability to group various projects.
  • Ability to save the result in some format (that allows further edits/updates after reopening). (Exporting to PNG/PDF/SVG less important)

What have I tried: / considered

Well, what I've tried? To be honest: nothing yet. A search or two gives me some options:

  • Visual Studio Ultimate, which I don't have.
  • Dependency Visualizer, which dates from 2008, and does not seem to run in my scenario. The context menu is missing, and calling it from the console says the solution isn't a VS 2005 or 2008 solution (which is correct in fact, I have a 2012 sln).
  • Resharper 8's "Project Dependency Graph", which is not gratis. (To be honest, I have version 7, and was considering an upgrade anyway. But that's besides this softwarerecs question for me.)
  • NDepend, which is not gratis.
  • VSGraph, which may fit the bill, but the GraphViz dependency scares me (it's a great tool, but I fear a lot of manual labor here; that fear may well be irrational though).

In short, I haven't tried much yet. Instead I used my first bit of time to write the above question and ask the experts: what would you recommend?

1 Answer 1

5

Solution Dependency Viewer by Microsoft for Visual Studio 2013.

Solution Dependency Viewer provides a graph layer to the solution with projects represented as nodes and project references represented as links between nodes.

It seems to fill at least half of your requirements:

  • Free (gratis)
  • It runs on at least Windows 7 - 10 (as does Visual Studio 2013)
  • It handles Visual Studio 2013 solutions (maybe more because it uses the IDE and MSBuild)
  • It parses all C++, C#, and VB projects in the solution

Here is a sample with a small solution:

Solution Dependency Viewer basic sample

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