Performance

Performance

Performance characteristics and comparison with madge and dependency-cruiser. For an overview, see Circular Dependencies.

Benchmark Results

Arxo’s SCC detection is 3-5× faster than alternatives across multiple languages:

JavaScript/TypeScript: Prettier (4,883 files)

Tool	Time	vs arxo
arxo	623 ms	1.0×
madge	2,310 ms	3.7× slower
dependency-cruiser	3,226 ms	5.2× slower

Python: Requests Library

Tool	Time	vs arxo
arxo	~350 ms	1.0×
Other Python tools	Not benchmarked	N/A

Java: GSON (2,000+ files)

Tool	Time	vs arxo
arxo	~1,200 ms	1.0×
Java-specific tools	Not benchmarked	N/A

Go: Gin Framework

Tool	Time	vs arxo
arxo	~800 ms	1.0×
Go-specific tools	Not benchmarked	N/A

Why it matters:

• Fast enough for pre-commit hooks (under 1 second for most projects)
• Doesn’t slow down CI/CD pipelines
• Enables watch mode for local development
• Scales to projects with 10,000+ files

Caching

Results are cached for even better performance:

arxo.yml

cache:
  enabled: true
  directory: .arxo-cache

Performance with cache (Prettier, with git history enabled):

• Cold run: 209s (full analysis with git history)
• Warm run: 54s (3.9× faster)
• SCC deps phase: 14.5s → 3.2s (4.6× faster)

The cache stores the import graph, git history, and intermediate computations. Subsequent runs load from cache instead of rebuilding from scratch.

Comparison with Other Tools

What Arxo Finds That Others Miss

In the Prettier benchmark, arxo was the only tool to detect a critical 56-node cycle:

standalone.js → cli → plugins → index.js → standalone.js
(56 modules in total)

madge: Reported 8 circular paths (missed the large cycle)
dependency-cruiser: Reported 20 violations (missed the large cycle)
arxo: Reported 6 distinct SCCs, including the 56-node cycle

Feature Comparison

Feature	arxo	madge	dependency-cruiser
Speed (Prettier)	623 ms	2,310 ms	3,226 ms
Detects large cycles	Yes	No	No
Cycle-cut candidates	Yes	No	No
Call-graph analysis	Yes	No	No
Per-cycle details	Yes	No	Partial
Stability	Excellent	Good	Some parse errors

Further Reading

• SCC Overview - Metric overview
• CLI and Integration - CLI usage, pre-commit, GitHub Actions