fdep: a pedestrian function dependencies finder

FDEP dissects ML files and iteratively looks for all user defined functions used during runtime

Description

FDEP dissects MATLAB files and iteratively looks for all user defined functions (modules), which are used during runtime

FDEP retrieves for each module its
- subfunctions
- nested functions
- anonymous functions
- eval class calls
- unresolved calls
    and all
- ML stock functions
- ML built-in functions
- ML classes
- ML toolboxes
    that it uses

runtime options and returned macros create user-friendly,
intuitively comprehensible, and interactive GUIs, which
- list the results in various panels and listboxes
- plot a full synopsis for each module with
exhaustive information
- plot a full dependency matrix
- plot a runtime and modules tree

in essence, FDEP is a wrapper for DEPFUN and MLINT; however, due to an efficient pruning engine it is considerably (20-100 times!) faster

FDEP is particularly useful if you want to distribute your functions and need so see what else to include as well as the toolboxes they use

FDEP may be useful to debug an erroneous function with correct syntax

see
> help fdep
and the accompanying published M-file for help and an exhaustive example

Acknowledgements

The author wishes to acknowledge the following in the creation of this submission:
farg: a pedestrian M-file parser showing all used functions' syntax
This submission has inspired the following:
ftoc (v1.2)

• MATLAB release: MATLAB 7 (R14)
• Other requirements: optimized for R2009a
• Published M Files: fdephtml

Other Files

fdep.m,
hfdep/fdephtml.png,
hfdep/fdephtml_01.png,
hfdep/fdephtml_02.png,
hfdep/fdephtml_03.png,
hfdep/fdephtml_04.png,
hfdep/fdephtml_05.png,
hfdep/fdephtml_06.png,
hfdep/fdephtml_07.png,
hfdep/fdephtml_08.png,
hfdep/fdephtml_09.png,
hfdep/fdephtml_10.png,
hfdep/fdephtml_11.png,
license.txt,
tfdep1.m,
tfdep2.m,
tfdep3.m,
tfdep4.m

[The empror of Matlab]

wow!

[Caroline Herbst]

Extremely helpful, indeed! Also, the author did very quickly add a new feature after a pleasant email exchange.

[John D'Errico]

As always, a fully featured, fully able tool from us. Well done.

I do have one comment - my older eyes had a moderately hard time with the tiny font size and color scheme in the resulting gui. Pastel colored text on a pastel background was hard to read. Time for a new prescription in my glasses?

[urs (us) schwarz]

to accommodate FDEP to JD's eyesight, an upgrade was just uploaded with these changes

1) candy colors were moved towards zero (still hoping that they group the various panels quickly for the eye...)

2) a JOHN D' button was added; its help section says:
utility in honor of John D'errico, a senior and most respected
   FEX and CSSM contributor, with very poor eyesight
CLICKING on the button will grow the fontsize by 1 point every time

the version tag is 07-Nov-2007 21:10:00
us

[Andrew Walton]

It falls over when mex files are used.

[Urs (us) Schwarz]

andrew, can you get in touch with me?unfortunately, you didn't provide an email address.

[exfnjbdr exfnjbdr]

 [URL=http://fxbpibjx.com]guupplld[/URL] <a href="http://hjnyyjjr.com"&gt;jmtcnixm&lt;/a&gt; zshmaoig http://spqkqjpu.com jqpjujjw apsdptbx

[Image Analyst]

I just downloaded it and it looks very nice. However I'd like you to fix the bug where it's locating the wrong module. I have a main module and it calls 8 other modules, 7 of which are in the same folder as the main module. However, module #2 you list as being one of the same name that I happen to have in another folder. I'm not sure why you're seeing that one first - MATLAB doesn't, it sees and runs the proper one which is in the same module as the main module. For example, in folder1, I have m-files myFile and mySubFile1, mySubFile2, etc. But in folder2, there is also a mySubFile1 and this is the one that your program is finding instead of the mySubFile1 in folder1.

A few more suggestions on the list GUI:
1. Replace the [John D'] button with a scroll bar or two small buttons to increase and decrease the font size.
2. I'd also like to see tooltips on your 6 buttons (right off the bat, it's not obvious what some of them do).
3. I'd like it to start with a GUI rather than a 2-steps command line process.
4. The Image Processing Toolbox is incorrectly called "images" in the toolboxes listbox.
5. A longer and more descriptive name than the short and cryptic "fdep" would be nice. And what does "pedestrian" have to do with it? Is that word needed?

Here's what MATLAB reports for my toolboxes:
MATLAB Version 7.7 (R2008b)
Image Processing Toolbox Version 6.2 (R2008b)
MATLAB Builder NE Version 3.0 (R2008b)
MATLAB Compiler Version 4.9 (R2008b)
Signal Processing Toolbox Version 6.10 (R2008b)
ToolBox EXAMPLE_SCRIPTS Version 1.0.0

Just my 2 cents on a well done program.

[Yuri Kotliarov]

Great function! Very useful. Is it possible to see also other files required in a package, like mat, txt, ini, etc?

[Jveer]

very nice. thank you for sharing this very useful too

[Alon]

This is a great idea, implemented in a great way!
Full of user-fraindly and usefull features.

Great job.

[us]

with the latest version (08-Jun-2009 22:24:13/R14-R2009a), per isakson's error messages do not show anymore...
the reason was an old parser engine, which did not handle more recent function constructs...
thanks, per, for alerting me to this problem...
us

[Andreas]

I liked the previous version very much! Thanks a lot.

The latest version has a bug. If a sealed class (e.g. with a definition "classdef (Sealed) MyClass") is analyzed, the program crashes in fdep on line 2928. If "(Sealed)" is removed the program works as advertised.

[Jason]

For being as full-featured as it appears, why will this function not accept full path names?

fdep('C:\blah\blah\blah\file.m')

I get an error saying "file not found". It only seems to work with files in current directory or in the MATLAB path.

[us]

jason

yes, this is by design...
while it could easily be changed, it also (potentially) would lead to undesirable results...
thus, to FDEP a file residing in a folder, which is not in ML's path, you must CD into that folder...
however, let me know if this is a real problem for you, as it certainly can be changed...

us

[Dirk]

Thanks for this fantastic tool. The speed-up compared to depfun is amazing.

Though there is one feature I am missing somewhat:
 fdep lets you identify which toolboxes are used from _somewhere_ in you code easiliy. But unfortunately it is not so easy to identify which of my .m files caused this toolbox dependency.
What would be great would be a possibilty to, e.g. select one of the toolboxes in the list-view which in turn could highlights all modules that directly depend on the selected tool box.

[us]

hi dirk
great suggestion for an enhancement!...
i built a helper function, which does what you need and will email it to you if you want...
it will become part of FDEP as soon as i can get to it...
us

[Jonas]

Excellent function!

In Windows, the file separators in output.froot point the wrong way, though. Is that on purpose?