How to identify circular reference(s) in huge project

Question

I have a huge ecommerce project (WSP) I inherited so it's nearly 800k lines of brownfield code with many components. When I compile I unerringly get a warning about circular references and the compile stops. If I build again it completes and runs.

I have no idea where to start looking for this circular reference. I understand what they are, just not how to find a needle like that in the haystack of my project.

How does one identify the cause of a circular reference without going line by line?

Answer 1

You can try the Architecture Explorer (Visual Studio > Architecture > New Dependency Diagram) or a project like NDepend (not free).

If you don't see the architecture menu in Visual Studio, you may need to modify your installation to add the Architecture tools.

In Visual Studio 2015 Enterprise, you can right click on your solution and select Show Project Dependency Diagram if you have ReShaper.