Capturingdepends

Capturingdepends is a concept in software engineering that describes the systematic recording of dependencies among software components, data sources, services, and runtime processes. It seeks to reflect both static relationships and dynamic dependencies that emerge during execution, producing a usable map of system reliance.

Approaches include static analysis of code and configuration to identify declared and inferred dependencies; instrumentation of build and execution environments to log actual usage; and provenance techniques to capture dependency origins and versions.

The resulting artifact is typically a directed graph in which nodes are components and edges indicate a 'depends on' relation, often with version, environment, and timestamp metadata.

Applications include build optimization, reproducible deployments, change impact analysis, software procurement, and security auditing of supply chains.

Variants and integration: some ecosystems embed capturingdepends in package managers or CI/CD tools to record dependencies automatically; graphs may be exported in JSON or GraphML for analysis and visualization.

Limitations include overhead and incomplete coverage in dynamic environments; handling optional or conditional dependencies can be ambiguous; and privacy or security considerations may arise when capturing execution data.

See also: dependency graph, provenance, software supply chain security, and build systems.