Clang Architecture Generator

clang-architecture is a small utilitary based on Clang/LLVM that aim to extract and visualize the dependencies in a C/C++ program at the symbol level.

Example

This project generate JSON reports that store where symbols are declared and how they are used.

Those reports can be combined with the viewer in order to have a dynamic web visualization of the project analyzed.

Requirements

Project

Your project must match the following conditions:

1. Your project can compile with the clang compiler.
2. Your project should have a compilation database (compile_commands.json)
   • Using CMake, it can be generated by using CMAKE_EXPORT_COMPILE_COMMANDS=ON
   • Using another build system, bear can wrap it to generate the file.

Build

Docker / Podman

You can use the OCI image in the packages tab directly to use this project, or you can build the image yourself using the Dockerfile.

docker build -t clang-architecture .

Manual

Requirements

In order to build this project, your environment must match the following conditions:

1. The required packages should be installed:

# Debian
sudo apt install clang libclang-dev llvm llvm-dev

To build this project, you only need to run cmake on it:

# configure the project
cmake --preset release
# build the project
cmake --build --preset release --parallel

Usage

You can generate an architecture report for your project by adapting this command:

clang-architecture 
  -o=./architecture.json
  -p=./build/ 
  --extra-arg=-resource-dir=$(clang -print-resource-dir) 
  ./source/*

Arguments

Name	Description	Type	Required	Default
-o / --output	The output path for the report file	string		- (stdout)
-p	The build path where the compile database is stored	string	True
-k / --keep-system	Should the symbols system be included in the report	bool		false
--extra-arg	Extra arguments appended to the parser	any	False
--extra-arg-before	Extra arguments prepended to the parser	any	False
[...] sources	The sources files of the project	string	True

Tips

The internal parser used by this tool may require to know the location additional resources such as the system headers of your compiler. It is recommended to pass them using the --extra-arg argument.

For clang, you can use --extra-arg=-resource-dir=$(clang -print-resource-dir) to include them.