Ferret

Ferret is a conceptually simple software exploration tool that seeks to answer dozens of questions about a source code element to summarize how that element relates to the rest of the software system.  Ferret's questions build-on the standard queries supported by Eclipse, and include queries such as:

• Where is this method called?
• What methods return objects of this type?
• Where are objects of this type instantiated?
• What interfaces define (or specify) this method?
• What implementations are there of this interface method?
• What are the other alternative implementations of this method in the hierarchy?

These questions are categorized by whether they involve declarations, are about inter-class or intra-class relations, or are hierarchical in nature. Answers can be further queried in-place, preserving the context of how you may have arrived to some location.

The results of queries may be clustered by their different attributes, as selected by the programmer. For example: the references to a method, which are generally themselves methods, may be clustered into different groups identified by attributes such as their access protection (public, private, package, or default), their containing type, their package, or boolean attributes such as static vs non-static.