I'm trying to understand a C# system built around roughly 50 generic pipelines implementing Pipeline. Events are handled by many generic publishers and subscribers that implement interfaces such as Handler and Plug. Autofac wires most of the publishers, listeners, and pipelines together automatically through dependency injection.
The design is difficult to trace with ordinary static analysis. I can usually use "find all references," but here I often reach dead ends because concrete classes are never directly referenced. Instead, an abstract or generic parent type is registered with the DI container, and the container resolves implementations through an interface or a base interface at runtime.
It took me several hours just to work out how the pipelines were connected, and I'm still not completely sure I understand the flow. Are there practical techniques for investigating this kind of code without relying on paid AI tools? Do people mainly map it out manually with diagrams and notes, or are there better approaches?
4 Answers
There are legitimate reasons to use this design, especially when components are loaded as plugins or independent modules. The loader and executor can remain stable while new algorithms are added separately. That said, the flexibility comes with a real discoverability cost.
Once you understand the registration mechanism, the system becomes easier to navigate, but the first pass is usually a combination of reading the container setup, drawing the runtime flow, and stepping through a real execution with the debugger.
A sequence or flow diagram helps a lot. Pick one real event and document where it originates, which publisher emits it, which handlers or pipelines receive it, and what each stage produces. Don’t try to map all 50 pipelines at once—trace one representative path first, then expand the diagram as you discover shared interfaces and registration rules.
Start with the Autofac registration code rather than the concrete classes. Look for assembly scanning, module registration, and calls that register all implementations of Pipeline, Handler, or similar interfaces. Once you know which assemblies are scanned, you can build a list of the actual implementations without depending on IDE reference searches.
For the runtime path, put a conditional breakpoint inside the relevant generic interface method and trigger a real event. The debugger’s call stack will show which concrete types were resolved and how the event moved through the system.
I usually approach these systems in layers: first learn the small set of Autofac registration patterns being used, then find the project’s normal registration conventions. Some codebases keep registrations in modules by feature, while others centralize them in one startup file.
After that, debug the application and inspect the concrete objects produced by the container. A temporary diagnostic dump of registrations can also be useful. The main tradeoff of this pattern is that it reduces coupling but makes the wiring invisible to static analysis, so runtime inspection is often necessary.
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