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ArchiCheck

CII Best Practices Alire

Contents: - Overview - Get it! - Run it! - Helpful hints - Further reading

Overview

Simple structural aspect of the software architecture, metaphor like My software is a layered system, can not be fully translated at programming languages level. Even in languages like Ada, powerful regarding description of the software structure, there is a semantic loss.

The code doesn't tell the whole story!

Sooner or later, in large or complex development, someone will propose a patch adding an import that compile fine, but is a complete violation of the architecture.

Architecture degradation over time

Archicheck is a simple free software tool that :

  1. ease simple architecture description.

    It's really as simple as: Gtk is a layer over Gdk.

  2. enforce code compliance with that description.

    Put acc in your test suite, and let it be a vigilant teacher of your architecture over time.

Get it!

Source or exe download

Run it!

Archicheck needs :

  • a bunch of sources : give the directories with one or more -I options;
  • an architecture description, called a rules file : a simple text file describing your architecture.

Let's consider the following My_Architecture.ac file, that describes a simple layered architecture :

Presentation_Layer contains pkg_1, pkg_2
Application_Layer  contains pkg_3, pkg_4

Presentation_Layer is a layer over Application_Layer

Run ArchiCheck that way:
acc -I src My_Architecture.txt

It will check that the code comply with your architecture.

For example, here, it will check that pkg_3 or pkg_4 (in the lower layer) are not using pkg_1 or pkg_2 (in the upper layer).

Helpful hints

  • acc --create_template will create an example rules file named template.ac, with embedded explanations.
    Rename it and edit it, this is a good start point.

  • acc -h for a complete list of options

Further reading