levelization

Levelization

Levelization is the term used to describe efforts to prevent rippled from having or creating cyclic dependencies.

rippled code is organized into directories under src/rippled (and src/test) representing modules. The modules are intended to be organized into "tiers" or "levels" such that a module from one level can only include code from lower levels. Additionally, a module in one level should never include code in an impl folder of any level other than it's own.

Unfortunately, over time, enforcement of levelization has been inconsistent, so the current state of the code doesn't necessarily reflect these rules. Whenever possible, developers should refactor any levelization violations they find (by moving files or individual classes). At the very least, don't make things worse.

The table below summarizes the desired division of modules, based on the state of the rippled code when it was created. The levels are numbered from the bottom up with the lower level, lower numbered, more independent modules listed first, and the higher level, higher numbered modules with more dependencies listed later.

tl;dr: The modules listed first are more independent than the modules listed later.

Level / Tier	Module(s)
01	ripple/beast ripple/unity
02	ripple/basics
03	ripple/json ripple/crypto
04	ripple/protocol
05	ripple/core ripple/conditions ripple/consensus ripple/resource ripple/server
06	ripple/peerfinder ripple/ledger ripple/nodestore ripple/net
07	ripple/shamap ripple/overlay
08	ripple/app
09	ripple/rpc
10	ripple/perflog
11	test/jtx test/beast test/csf
12	test/unit_test
13	test/crypto test/conditions test/json test/resource test/shamap test/peerfinder test/basics test/overlay
14	test
15	test/net test/protocol test/ledger test/consensus test/core test/server test/nodestore
16	test/rpc test/app

(Note that test levelization is much less important and much less strictly enforced than ripple levelization, other than the requirement that test code should never be included in ripple code.)

Validation

The levelization.sh script takes no parameters, reads no environment variables, and can be run from any directory, as long as it is in the expected location in the rippled repo. It can be run at any time from within a checked out repo, and will do an analysis of all the #includes in the rippled source. The only caveat is that it runs much slower under Windows than in Linux. It hasn't yet been tested under MacOS. It generates many files of results:

• rawincludes.txt: The raw dump of the #includes
• paths.txt: A second dump grouping the source module to the destination module, deduped, and with frequency counts.
• includes/: A directory where each file represents a module and contains a list of modules and counts that the module includes.
• includedby/: Similar to includes/, but the other way around. Each file represents a module and contains a list of modules and counts that include the module.
• loops.txt: A list of direct loops detected between modules as they actually exist, as opposed to how they are desired as described above. In a perfect repo, this file will be empty. This file is committed to the repo, and is used by the levelization Github workflow to validate that nothing changed.
• ordering.txt: A list showing relationships between modules where there are no loops as they actually exist, as opposed to how they are desired as described above. This file is committed to the repo, and is used by the levelization Github workflow to validate that nothing changed.
• levelization.yml Github Actions workflow to test that levelization loops haven't changed. Unfortunately, if changes are detected, it can't tell if they are improvements or not, so if you have resolved any issues or done anything else to improve levelization, run levelization.sh, and commit the updated results.

The loops.txt and ordering.txt files relate the modules using comparison signs, which indicate the number of times each module is included in the other.

• A > B means that A should probably be at a higher level than B, because B is included in A significantly more than A is included in B. These results can be included in both loops.txt and ordering.txt. Because ordering.txtonly includes relationships where B is not included in A at all, it will only include these types of results.
• A ~= B means that A and B are included in each other a different number of times, but the values are so close that the script can't definitively say that one should be above the other. These results will only be included in loops.txt.
• A == B means that A and B include each other the same number of times, so the script has no clue which should be higher. These results will only be included in loops.txt.

The committed files hide the detailed values intentionally, to prevent false alarms and merging issues, and because it's easy to get those details locally.

1. Run levelization.sh
2. Grep the modules in paths.txt.
   • For example, if a cycle is found A ~= B, simply grep -w A Builds/levelization/results/paths.txt | grep -w B