Introduction

Explore project structure with the Dependency Matrix.

In this tutorial, we'll look at exploring project structure with the Dependency Matrix.

When working with large, complex software projects, we need to understand the dependencies between components in your projects. IntelliJ IDEA has a feature called Dependency Structure Matrix (DSM), or Dependency Matrix, that can help us with this.

When you are new to a project, the Dependency Matrix can help you get an overview of the dependencies in the project. The Dependency Matrix can also help us get an idea of how hard it will be to split a project, based on the dependencies between components. Finally, it can help us find and untangle cyclic dependencies.

It offers a matrix of the components in our project to help you and highlights the usage flow between them. Let’s take a look!