How can you manage dependencies in SDLC?

1 What are the types of dependencies?

Dependencies can be classified into two main categories: internal and external. Internal dependencies are the ones that exist within your own codebase, such as calling a function, importing a library, or inheriting a class. External dependencies are the ones that involve other systems or services that your software interacts with, such as APIs, databases, or third-party libraries. Both types of dependencies can introduce risks and challenges for your software engineering process, such as breaking changes, compatibility issues, or security vulnerabilities.

2 How to identify dependencies?

Identifying dependencies is the first step to manage them. To do this, you can use dependency graphs, code analysis, and dependency management tools. Dependency graphs are visual representations of the dependencies between components or modules of your software, and they can help you see the structure, complexity, and coupling of your code. Code analysis is the process of examining your code for dependencies, either manually or using automated tools. It can detect unused, outdated, or conflicting dependencies, as well as measure metrics such as cohesion, coupling, and cyclomatic complexity. Lastly, dependency management tools help you manage the external dependencies of your software, such as package managers, build tools, or configuration management tools. They can help you specify, install, update, and remove dependencies while tracking their versions and licenses.

3 How to analyze dependencies?

The next step to manage dependencies is to analyze them. You can employ various criteria and methods to do this, such as considering the scope of a dependency, its type, and its quality. Dependency scope can help prioritize those with the most influence on your software's functionality, performance, or security. Dependency type can assist in evaluating those with different characteristics, like runtime, compile-time, or test dependencies. Additionally, dependency quality can be used to assess those with different attributes like stability, maturity, maintainability or documentation.

4 How to resolve dependencies?

The final step to manage dependencies is to resolve them, which can be accomplished using strategies such as dependency injection, inversion, and isolation. Dependency injection is a design pattern that allows for decoupling dependencies from components or modules. Dependency inversion is a principle that states that high-level components should not depend on low-level components, but on abstractions. Lastly, dependency isolation is a technique that isolates dependencies from the rest of the code, such as using containers, virtual environments, or sandboxes. All of these strategies can help make code more testable, reusable, modular, flexible, extensible, maintainable, portable, secure, and reproducible.

5 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?