Glossary

Project

The software project that you want to analyse with Arcan. It can be a folder containing source code or a Git repository (local or remote, e.g., hosted on Github).

Version

Every time you change something in your project's source code, Arcan tracks a new version. You can run Arcan multiple times on different versions of the same project. Versions can be mapped to commits if you run Arcan on a Git repository.

Analysis

A single execution of Arcan. An analysis is associated to a specific project’s version.

Page

A page of Arcan which contains dashboards or results.

Architectural smell

A software architecture problem affecting one or more parts of a codebase. See here for more information.

Plot

A graphic showing an insight or result.

Dependency Graph

The high-level representation of the project’s architecture. The graph nodes represent architectural components and the graph edges represent the dependencies among them.

Container

In Arcan, the architectural components at the highest level of abstraction. Language reference:

Java: package=container;
C/C++: folder=container;
C#: namespace=container;
Python: python package=container, directory=container.

Unit

In Arcan, the architectural components at the lowest level of abstraction. Language reference:

Java: class=unit;
C/C++: file=unit;
C#: class=unit;
Python: python module=unit, file=unit.