Description of the main configuration file

The file jlayercheck.xml is the name of the configuration file when it is used with the eclipse plugin. Otherwise it can have any name. Its format should be explained by an example:

<jlayercheck>
        <sources>
                <filesystem bin="target/classes" src="src/main/java/" />
                <filesystem bin="target/test-classes" src="src/test/java/" />
        </sources>
        <architecture>
                <module name="util">
                        <package name="net.sf.jlayercheck.util" />
                        <dependency name="util_model" />
                        <dependency name="util_io" />
                        <dependency name="util_exceptions" />
                        <dependency name="util_graph" />
                </module>
                <module name="util_io">
                        <package name="net.sf.jlayercheck.util.io" />
                </module>
                <module name="util_model">
                        <package name="net.sf.jlayercheck.util.model" />
                        <package name="net.sf.jlayercheck.util.modeltree" />
                </module>
        ...
                <exclude>
                        <package name="java.*" />
                        <package name="javax.*" />
                        ...
                </exclude>
                <entry name="net.sf.jlayercheck.HTMLOutputTest" />
        </architecture>
</jlayercheck>

This example shows all currently available features/tags.

• The sources tag describes where to find .class and .java files. The parser only parses .class files but the .java files are used to show the user in the html output in which lines of the code the violating dependencies are.
• The module tag defines the modules of the system and their dependencies. Every package of the system should be assigned to a module. The modules have dependencies to other modules. That means only the defined modules by be used by a specific module. An access to an unallowed module would be marked as violation of the architecture.
• The exclude tag defines packages that should be excluded from the analysis. Accesses from and to these packages are ignored. Normally you would put external libraries and Sun's core classes here.
• The entry tag is used to define classes that are used as entry points when starting the program (e.g. classes with a Main method, Applets, Servlets, ...). This information is used to compute orphaned, unused classes that can be removed from the project.