bubdm / ndifference

Tools for public API difference reporting on .Net assemblies

NDifference

Tools for public API difference reporting on .Net assemblies

What is it?

NDifference is a difference and reporting tool to allow developers to discover breaking changes in the public API of a .Net project between releases at the assembly level. It works with published assemblies via reflection and does not require the original source code.

It performs static analysis on .Net assemblies, providing built-in inspectors for the most common checks and supports loading of custom inspectors. Analysis is performed at the library, assembly and type level.

Product Inspection

The following is a list of built-in product level inspections:

• Removed assemblies
• Changed assemblies
• Added assemblies

Assembly Inspection

The following is a list of built-in assembly level inspections:

• Changed target architecture
• Changed assembly references
• Removed types
• Added types
• Obsolete types
• Changed types

Type Inspection

The following is a list of built-in type level inspections:

• Constant values
• Enum values
• Abstraction
• Constructors
• Derivation
• Events
• Fields
• Finalizers
• Interface implementation
• Methods
• Properties
• Sealing
• Obsolete members
• Taxonomy

Reporting

There is a built-in reporting capability for common file formats but custom reporting is supported too.

Extensibility

Both the inspection rules and the report output are customisable.

Prior Art

The original inspiration for this project came from Microsoft's unsupported libcheck tool.

Build It

Get the source (fork or just use the download button at the top right) and run the build.cmd batch file.

CI Status

The project builds on AppVeyor: .

Get Involved!

Have an idea about improving the project? Please get involved. NDifference is an open source project (of course) and we accept contributions! Contribute a patch or let us know how to improve.

Thank You's !

• The Mono.Cecil Project for the reflection engine
• The fine folks at xunit for their unit testing framework.
• AppVeyor for the CI support.