Find all classes involved in a method call

Question

• I have a .NET 4.0 C# Solution with a single .csproj (Library) having several thousand files.
• I want to extract out a small subset of the functionality from the thousands of files.

e.g. I want to extract the functionality of the MyLibrary.RelevantMethod() method into another library.

The aim is to create a new .csproj with the bare minimum class files needed to achieve this functionality.

• i have a Program.cs which invokes the functionality and i can navigate through the flow to find all classes involved. Just that there are too many. (still a small subset of all classes)

Solutions tried:

• the usual brute force of going through the flow from the method (F12) and copying over every class file and associated files needed for it to compile. this is taking a lot of time, but i know that if i keep at it, it'll be done. so that is what i am doing right now.

• other option was to copy over the whole project and eliminate folders of classes based on instinct/name space references, build to verify and keep at it. this got nasty because a subset of classes in a folder were needed.

• the vs 2013 code-map graphs became unmanageable in 3 drill downs. sequence diagrams became too complex as well.

• Call hierarchy seemed to be the most promising showing all the classes involved visually but there is still the manual task of drilling through and copying the classes.

while i manually continue extracting the class one-by-one using the call hierarchy, is there a faster way or a more automated way (semi works as well) to determine all the classes involved in a method call in C#?

if i can get the list, i can do a search on the physical folders nesting the .cs. files (every class has an equivalent .cs file) and just copy them over.

Answer 1

You can find all classes involved in a method call with the Runtime Flow tool (developed by me). From the Runtime Summary window you can also copy these classes to the Clipboard for the selected module or a namespace.