This document introduces Archeometer, a toolkit for analyzing Elixir codebases. It provides motivations for why such a toolkit is needed as legacy codebases grow large and complex over time. Archeometer uses a Code Query Language and various analyzers to collect data and generate reports on codebase architecture, design, and quality. Analyzers include XRef to diagram relationships between modules and a treemap visualizer. Future plans include adding repository history analysis and interactive report features.

1. Exploring Elixir Codebases
with Archeometer
Augustín Ramos
@MachinesAreUs

2. Agenda
• What is Archeometer?
• Motivation
• Architecture
• Analyzers
• Usage
• Report Overview
• Future

3. What is Archeometer?
A toolkit for the analysis of Elixir codebases, from the point of view of
Architecture, Design and Quality.
An equipped laboratory to conduct your own code explorations.

4. Motivation

5. In 20+ years as a software developer…
• I have worked with
• C, C++, Java, Python, Ruby, Groovy, .Net, PHP, Javascript, Elixir…
• Have met with huge amounts of legacy code
• With the mission of
• Making sense of it 🫠
• Fixing it !!! 🫠 🫠 🫠 🫠 🫠

6. 10 Years of Elixir !!!
• 10 years of Elixir for me!!! (
fi
rst commit on May 24th, 2013)
• It’s enough time for people to write systems that…
• Are huge
• Are very complex
• Have insu
ffi
cient tests / documentation
• Are abandoned by the original authors
• Are LEGACY

7. Who you gonna call?

8. Tooling
• For some platforms (notably Java and .Net) there are very good tools for
managing complexity since long time ago.
• Not so for languages like Python, Ruby or Elixir.
• Solution?
• Lots of custom scripting to retrieve architectural information.
• Lots of “read de code”.
• It’s very time consuming. Not e
ffi
cient at all.

9. Architecture

10. Analysis
Components
Data
Collection
Reports
Code Query
Language
Mix Tasks
Analyzers

11. Data Model

12. Code Query Language

13. Code Query Language (CQL)
• Pretty much inspired on Ecto:
• Schemas, Query DSL, Repo
• Nested properties traversal.
• No explicit joins needed!

14. CQL Examples 1/2
What are the modules most
used within certain app?

15. CQL Examples 2/2
What behaviors are being
using in your application
and how much?

16. Analyzers

17. • XRef is all about
fi
nding and diagraming relationships between modules or
applications.
• Supports both enumeration and component name patterns.
• Supported output formats: dot, svg, png, mermaid.
• It’s not a replacement for “mix xref”, more like a complement.
XRef

18. XRef
$ mix arch.xref --format svg
--out kamaji_xref.svg
Kamaji Kamaji.Node
Kamaji.Peer Kamaji.Room

19. Treemap
A treemap is a visual representation of hierarchical data, with the area of each
subcomponent representing proportionally some de
fi
ned metric.

20. Design Structure Matrix
X X
X
X X X X
X
X X
X X
A B C D E F G
A
B
C
D
E
F
G

21. DSM Triangularization
X X
X
X X X X
X
X X
X X
A B C D E F G
A
B
C
D
E
F
G
F B D G C A E
F
B
D
G
C
A
E
X
X
X X
X X X X
X X
X X

22. Usage

24. Basic Usage
• Data collection
$ mix arch.explore
• Report generation
$ mix arch.report.html

25. Report Overview

26. Future

27. Near Future
• Repository history analysis 🚀 🚀
• Livebook report (maybe) 🚀
• More algorithms for DSM analysis 🚀 🚀 🚀

28. Sometime in the future…
• Interactive diagram analysis 🚀 🚀 🚀 🚀 🚀
• On DSM
• Dynamically create DSMs for selected modules
• Collapse / expand hierarchies
• On Graphs
• Focus on certain parts of the graph
• Identify patterns or interesting features

29. Contributors
Caleb
Jocabed
Oswaldo
Edgar
Andrew Lizzie

30. Q & A

31. Thank You!
Augustín Ramos
@MachinesAreUs