CSProj Dependency Graph Generator

Description

This Python script generates Mermaid markdown to visualize the dependencies between .csproj files within a directory and its subdirectories. The generated graph represents the relationships in a clear, visual format, either in top-down (TD) or left-right (LR) orientation.

Much of the code, comments, and readme file, were generated with help from ChatGPT4 and github co-pilot 😀

Features

• Generates Mermaid markdown representing the dependency graph of .csproj files.
• Supports recursive search in directories to find all .csproj files.
• Allows specifying the orientation of the generated graph.

Requirements

• Python 3.6 or later

Installation

Clone the repository or download the source code to your local machine. No additional Python packages are required, as the script uses the standard library modules os, xml.etree.ElementTree, and enum.

git clone https://github.com/nooogle/CSProjDependenciesToMermaid.git
cd csproj-dependency-graph-generator

Usage

To generate a Mermaid markdown file for your project dependencies, run the script from the command line, specifying the directory to analyze and the desired orientation of the graph.

Command Line Arguments

• directory: The path to the directory containing .csproj files. This path can be relative or absolute.
• orientation (optional): Specifies the orientation of the graph. Use TD for top-down or LR for left-right. Defaults to TD if not specified.

Example use

python csproj_dependencies_to_mermaid.py "/path/to/your/directory" TD

This command analyzes all .csproj files within the specified directory and its subdirectories, then generates the Mermaid markdown in top-down orientation.

Output

The script prints the generated Mermaid markdown to the standard output. You can redirect this output to a file:

python csproj_dependencies_to_mermaid.py "/path/to/your/directory" TD > dependency-graph.md

Then, you can use any Mermaid-compatible viewer or tool to visualize the graph. For example, https://mermaid.live/ has a great interface and allows saving generated diagrams to PNG and other types of image file.

Contributing

Contributions to this project are welcome. Please follow the standard fork and pull request workflow.

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License - see the LICENSE file for details.

Examples

Top-down

graph TD;
    CommonLib;
    DeepLearningLib;
    DeepLearningLib --> CommonLib;
    DeepLearningLib --> ImgProcLib;
    DeepLearningWinFormsTest;
    DeepLearningWinFormsTest --> CommonLib;
    DeepLearningWinFormsTest --> DeepLearningLib;
    DeepLearningWinFormsTest --> DrawingLib;
    DeepLearningWinFormsTest --> ImgProcLib;
    DrawingLib;
    DrawingLib --> CommonLib;
    ImgProcLib;
    ImgProcLib --> CommonLib;

Left-right

graph LR;
    CommonLib;
    DeepLearningLib;
    DeepLearningLib --> CommonLib;
    DeepLearningLib --> ImgProcLib;
    DeepLearningWinFormsTest;
    DeepLearningWinFormsTest --> CommonLib;
    DeepLearningWinFormsTest --> DeepLearningLib;
    DeepLearningWinFormsTest --> DrawingLib;
    DeepLearningWinFormsTest --> ImgProcLib;
    DrawingLib;
    DrawingLib --> CommonLib;
    ImgProcLib;
    ImgProcLib --> CommonLib;