CODEWITHSUNDEEP
javadead-code
pythonHelpRequired
pythonHelpRequired

Reputation: 649

How to check for dead java methods at runtime

I am trying to create an index of unused Java methods in the form of a json file.

There are a couple different ways in which the methods can be referenced. I have already checked for all the other ways and have a relatively small list of possibly unused java methods.

The final way in which a method can be used is in other java files. They would be called with a basic class.method(args,args2,etc...) syntax somewhere in the java source code.

My question is, is there an easy way to just check my list of possible unused methods to see if any of them are not used in the java code. It would be ideal if this could be done at runtime, but it would also work if I could create a file that I could then read in at runtime.

I have tried using pre-built software like UCDetector, but the source code is huge, and running UCDetector takes hours and often doesn't even finish. It also checks all methods to see if they are used which is a waste of time since I have narrowed it down to a small number of possible methods to check.

Upvotes: 3

Views: 708

Answers (2)

Tim
Tim

Reputation: 13068

One option might be to use "coverage analysis" tools to see what is not used (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Java_Code_Coverage_Tools). If you have good branch coverage with your unit tests, simply running the tests with coverage will yield the result you're looking for. If you don't have good tests coverage, you might run the application itself with code instrumented for coverage calculation, but as with unit tests - the quality of the result will depend on the amount of code executed with your unit tetst or manual test.

Some examples of the coverage tools you might use are : JaCoCo (http://www.eclemma.org/jacoco/) and Cobertura (http://cobertura.github.io/cobertura).

Alternatively you might instrument your code yourself in order to log methods usage, as it might be more lightweight than calculating full line coverage. This is however indeed reinventing the wheel.

This SO question has similar solutions: How to find unused/dead code in java projects

Upvotes: 0

Marcin Szymczak
Marcin Szymczak

Reputation: 11443

You should use your IDE (eclipse, intelliJ), or some static code analysis tool such as findbugs, pmd, checkstyle.

It seems like you are trying to reinvent the wheel.

Upvotes: 2

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