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Basic Usage Guide

DAPper (Dependency Analysis Project) is a tool that discovers compile or build time dependencies based on header files. This guide covers the basic usage patterns and common workflows.

Overview

DAPper helps you:

  • Discover header dependencies: Find all #include statements in your C/C++ code and map header files to the packages that provide them.
  • Identify system packages: Can help determine the package that most likely provided a given filename.
  • Analyze large codebases: Process entire directories recursively (e.g., analyze complex software projects spanning multiple subdirectories and components)
  • Understand implicit dependencies: Reveal dependencies that aren't immediately obvious, such as spawning a subprocess.

Command Line Interface

Basic Syntax

# Download all datasets
dapper db install all

# List available datasets
dapper db list-available

# Update all datasets
dapper db update all

# Analyze a single file
dapper <source_file>

# Analyze a directory
dapper <source_directory>

# Using cargo (if installed from source clone)
cargo run -- <source file or directory>

Understanding the Output

Basic Output Format

DAPper outputs the #include files found in each C/C++ source file. Here's what to expect:

Example input file (test.cpp):

#include <iostream>
#include <nlohmann/json_fwd.hpp>
#include "test.h"

using namespace std; 

int main(int argc, char* argv[])
{
    cout << "Hello World!" << endl;
    return 0;
}

Example DAPper output:

CPP(UserInclude("test.h")):
        ["libcgal-dev", "asterisk-dev", "libboost1.67-dev", "libcxxtools-dev", "libwolfssl-dev", ...]

CPP(SystemInclude("nlohmann/json_fwd.hpp")):
        ["nlohmann-json3-dev", "paraview-dev", "libqgis-dev"]

Output Interpretation

  • Components:
    • CPP: Indicates this is a C++ source file being analyzed
    • UserInclude("test.h"): Shows DAPper found a local/user include directive #include "test.h". Since it is a user include file it is likely just a local header file in the project but DAPper still checks for matches. Since this is a pretty general file name it seems to appear in many packages.
    • SystemInclude("nlohmann/json_fwd.hpp"): Shows DAPper found a system include directive #include <nlohmann/json_fwd.hpp>. This means the user is including code from third party libraries, which appears in multiple system packages.
    • [package list]: Array of Debian packages that potentially provide files named "test.h" or "nlohmann/json_fwd.hpp".

    Note: output depends on the datasets a user has downloaded