Selective Loading of Code Elements for Code Analysis

Systems and methods are described herein for selectively loading code elements included in a plurality of software entities comprising a target software entity and one or more reference software entities to facilitate analysis of the target software entity by a code analysis tool, such as a static code analysis tool. In one embodiment, all of the code elements in the target software entity are loaded while only those code elements included in the reference software entities that are determined to be most important from a dependency standpoint are loaded. The loaded code elements may be used to obtain suitable definitions of the code elements included in the target software entity for the purpose of code analysis.