Generating the Interface Hierarchy of a Class Library

A tool for generating the interface hierarchy of a set of classes for the Smalltalk-80 library is described. The tool can be useful for analyzing the class library or simply for reuse purposes by providing an alternative view that is closer to the client's perspective than the inheritance hierarchy. The interface of each class to consider is extracted directly from the Smalltalk code. From the extracted interfaces, the interface hierarchy can be generated automatically based on structures from the theory of concept (Galois) lattices. A simple graphical user interface is provided for browsing the resulting hierarchy.