Set Up NDepend Reporting in GitLab CI/CD

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Integrating NDepend Reporting in GitLab CI/CD

Follow these steps to integrate NDepend into your GitLab CI/CD pipeline for .NET code analysis and reporting:

Prerequisites

• NDepend Console: You need to have the NDepend redistributable unzipped with access to either NDepend.Console.exe (for Windows) or NDepend.Console.MultiOS.exe (for Linux/macOS/Windows) available in your GitLab pipeline environment. Make sure that the executable is properly referenced in your GitLab pipeline configuration file (.gitlab-ci.yml). See the documentation for NDepend.Console here.
• .NET Solution: Ensure that you have a .NET solution that you want to analyze using NDepend.

1. Create an NDepend Project

You must create an NDepend project that references your .NET solution. This can be done using either:

• The UI VisualNDepend.exe (for Windows), or
• The Visual Studio NDepend exetnsion (for Windows), or
• NDepend.Console.MultiOS.exe (for Linux/macOS/Windows) Follow the guide in the NDepend Documentation for detailed instructions.

2. Configure GitLab CI/CD Pipeline

Edit your GitLab pipeline configuration file (.gitlab-ci.yml) to include a job that runs the NDepend analysis. Specify the path to the NDepend Console executable and your NDepend project file (.ndproj).

stages:
  - build
  - analyze

build:
  script:
    - dotnet build

analyze:
  script:
    - /path/to/NDepend.Console.exe /path/to/your/project.ndproj
    - if [ $? -ne 0 ]; then exit 1; fi
  artifacts:
    paths:
      - NDependOut/NDependReport.html
      - NDependOut/NDependReportFiles/

In this example, replace /path/to/NDepend.Console.exe with the actual path to the NDepend.Console.exe (or NDepend.Console.MultiOS.exe), and /path/to/your/project.ndproj with the correct path to your NDepend project file.

Refer to the NDepend.Console documentation to eventually customize the command line options.

3. Monitor Quality Gates Using Exit Codes

NDepend returns an exit code to indicate whether the quality gates were passed or failed. If the quality gates fail, the job will return a non-zero exit code, causing the pipeline to fail.

You can check the exit code to determine whether the pipeline should fail if quality gates are not met:

analyze:
  script:
    - /path/to/NDepend.Console.exe /path/to/your/project.ndproj
    - if [ $? -ne 0 ]; then exit 1; fi

This ensures that the GitLab pipeline stops if NDepend fails the quality gate checks.

Refer to the Quality Gates documentation for more details abotu this topic.

4. Collect and Share the Reports

After the analysis completes, NDepend will generate an HTML report along with related assets. These files will typically be located in the NDependOut directory of your project.

To make these reports accessible to your team, upload them as GitLab artifacts in your pipeline configuration:

analyze:
  script:
    - /path/to/NDepend.Console.exe /path/to/your/project.ndproj
  artifacts:
    paths:
      - NDependOut/NDependReport.html
      - NDependOut/NDependReportFiles/

The following report files will be generated:

• .\NDependOut\NDependReport.html
• .\NDependOut\NDependReportFiles\ (directory containing additional report files and child directories as well)

These files will be available as downloadable artifacts after the pipeline execution completes.

5. Review Sample Reports

For reference, you can view sample NDepend reports to understand the structure and content of the generated analysis:

• Sample NDepend Reports