Stacktracer

Suspicion:

• Call paths in object oriented code should be acyclic

Problem:

• Bawling at people to make things acyclic post-facto doesn't scale

Hope:

• Automating the nagging by encoding anti-cycle thinking into an assertion might work better

Thus: Stacktracer - a library for analysing Java stack traces for circular call paths.

Example usage

Capture a stack:

final List<StackTraceElement> stackTrace = StackTrace.getStackTrace();

Transform it to include just the elements you like:

final StackTransformer transformer = 
    after(klass(TestFramework.class)).and(before(PublisherProxy.class))
final List<StackTraceElement> transformed = transformer.apply(stackTrace);

Scan a stack trace for cycles:

final CycleReport report = CycleDetectors.scanForCycles(transformed);
for (final String klassName: report.classNamesThatCycled()) {
    System.out.println("Found a cycle that visits " + klassName + " at least twice!");
}