Circular Dependency

Kind: anti-pattern

Layer: Enforcement Core

Aliases: Cyclic Dependencies

Record: architecture:circular-dependency

Severity: discouraged

Scope: modularity

Formed by: Allow modules to depend on each other directly or indirectly until no module can change, test, deploy, or initialize independently.

Canonical: Ontology

A defect in which modules depend on each other, directly or through others, so none can change alone.

Listed in Architecture principles, after Vendor Lock-In Leakage and before Cyclic Deployment Dependency.

Refactored by

• Invert Dependency
• Extract Interface
• Split Interface
• Domain Events
• Mediator Pattern

Severity

• discouraged

Category

• Anti-patterns

Force

• Modularity

Detected by

• rules/eslint/closure-no-import-cycles.eslint.rule.ts

Negated by

• Directed Acyclic Graph
• Low Coupling

Violates

• Directed Acyclic Graph
• Low Coupling
• Modularity

Linked from

• Orchestration as declared structure
• Counting copies
• A system is a graph
• The direction axis
• Principles are typed
• What can drift, seen through how it drifts
• Anti-patterns
• Domain Architecture
• Causality / Ordering / Distributed Time
• Core Modular Design
• Core Modular Design
• SOLID / Object-Oriented Design
• Severity levels
• The forces