Ns-graph is a Leiningen/Boot plugin for drawing the dependencies between your Clojure namespaces and Java classes as a single graph. Example:

Certified Usecases™ (= things I did with it at least once):

• Explore the architecture of an existing project you just start to work with.
• Understand parts to be refactored when you need to remove a dependency.
• Identify high-degree dependency nodes.
• Track rogue connections between namespaces.
• Marvel at the beauty of your project from a bird’s-eye view.

Beyond simple graphing, ns-graph can also:

• Process both Clojure and Java files.
• Include and exclude certain namespaces and classes by mask.
• Abbreviate the package names by first letters.
• Differently color the project’s own files apart from external dependencies.

• Graphviz must be installed.
• Either Leiningen or Boot must be present.

Navigate to the project and execute:

boot -d ns-graph draw -s src/

This will create a file graph.png in your current directory.

You can view all available options with boot -d ns-graph draw -h. Here are a few that need a description:

• -s, --source-paths PATH — you can specify multiple paths to source files by writing -s PATH for each path.
• -f, --format VAL — can be either png or svg.
• -x, --exclude MASK — don’t draw a certain namespace/class or a group of them (if mask is used). The only type of masks supported is a string with wildcard in the end (e.g. java.*). Multiple exclusions can be specified by providing -x MASK several times.
• -i, --include MASK — opposite to -x, explicitly include certain namespaces/classes. Has higher priority than -x.
• -t, --title VAL — can be one of name, name-and-opts, name-and-pprint-opts. Customizes what the graph title (bottom label) will contain.
• -o, --only-own — draw only namespaces/classes that were found in source paths.
• -p, --only-packages — draw only Java packages instead of classes.
• -a, --abbrev-ns — abbreviate the package part of the names. E.g. clojure.core.async becomes c.c.async.
• -c, --cluster-lang — draw Clojure and Java files in two separate subgraph clusters.
• -v, --view BIN — don’t produce the output file, but show the resulting image with the BIN application.
• --debug — save the .dot file alongside the image.

Put the following into your build.boot:

(set-env! ...
          :dependencies '[...
                          [ns-graph "x.y.z"]])

(require '[ns-graph :refer [draw]])

(task-options!
 draw {:name "My project"
       :abbrev-ns true
       :source-paths (get-env :source-paths)
       :exclude ["java.*" "clojure.*"]})

You can also compose it with another tasks:

(comp (draw :name "My project" ...) ...)

Names of the options are the same as the long names in the shell command.

(defproject myproject "..."
  ...
  :plugins [ns-graph "x.y.z"]
  ...
  :ns-graph {:name "My project"
             :abbrev-ns true
             :source-paths (get-env :source-paths)
             :exclude ["java.*" "clojure.*"]})

Names of the options are the same as the long names in the shell command.

Finally execute lein ns-graph from your project’s directory.

Call ns-graph.core/depgraph* function with the map of options.

Copyright © 2016 Alexander Yakushev. Distributed under the Eclipse Public License, the same as Clojure. See LICENSE.