Depchart

Makes a dependency chart showing the import relationships between the source code files in a directory.

Requires graphviz to be installed on your system.

Caveats

This is not very smart; it will find imports inside comments.

It uses regular expressions to find ESM style imports in every file you throw at it. You should limit it to source code files using a glob pattern like src/**.ts*

It's only been tested on Typescript files but it should also work on javascript files as long as they use ESM style imports.

Supported:

• All kinds of ESM imports
• Typescript
  • import x = require('foo');
  • let promise = require('foo');
• Javascript
  • let x = require('foo');

Not supported yet:

• Typescript
  • export * from './foo';

If an import starts with a period it's considered a local file import; otherwise it's treated as a 3rd party package import and it will only be shown if you use the --node_modules option.

Horrible caveat: glob patterns

This is only useful if you can do ** in your shell to get recursive matches, because depchart doesn't recurse into directories for you -- you have to provide a list of actual filenames.

** is called "globstar".

This is possible in:

• bash 4+, and it has to be enabled with shopt -s globstar
• zsh
• fish shell

It's not possible in bash 3, which is the default on many Macs, so it's annoying to pass all your filenames to depchart.

Here's a guide to upgrade to bash 4 on a Mac.

As a workaround in bash, you can use "subshell command substitution" like this:

# test that this prints the files you want
find src | grep .ts

# insert them into the depchart command
depchart `find src | grep .ts`

# another way to do it, works the same way
depchart $(find src | grep .ts)

Tweaks

If the regexes need fine tuning, or you want to add more file types, find them in lib.ts.

To change the colors, search for Style in lib.ts and refer to the graphviz color chart.

Install

First, install graphviz.

Test if graphviz is installed:

dot --version

Install depchart:

npm install --global depchart

Use

cd into the root directory of your source code and run depchart there.

The default output name is depchart. This will write depchart.dot, depchart.png, and depchart.svg into your current directory.

Usage:
  depchart <sourceFiles> <flags>

Positional arguments:
  sourceFiles

Optional arguments:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit

  -x [EXCLUDE ...], --exclude [EXCLUDE ...]
      Exclude these files.  You can use glob patterns here.

  -o OUTPUT, --output OUTPUT
      Output file basename (default: "depchart")

  -n, --node_modules NODE_MODULES_STYLE
      How to show 3rd party packages:
      Choose one of "omit" (default), "integrated",
      "separated", or "boxed".
  
  -r RANKDIR, --rankdir RANKDIR
      Layout direction: TB | BT | LR | RL (default: TB)

  -l, --loose
      Loose mode: do not create boxes for folders

  --open
      Show the resulting image (MacOS only)

Example output on its own codebase

All of these examples assume you have "globstar" ** support in your shell; see above.

Default output

depchart src/**.ts

---

Loose mode

Don't cluster the files into folders. This makes a much bigger difference on large projects - it lets you see the true groupings of files, unaffected by which folder they're in.

depchart src/**.ts --loose

---

Excluding subfolder

Note we have to exclude all the individual files in subfolder, we can't just say "subfolder".

You have to provide the full path to each file you want to exclude. You can't exclude directories themselves.

depchart src/**.ts --exclude subfolder/**

---

Changing the flow direction with rankdir

Left-to-right, instead of top-to-bottom

depchart src/**.ts --rankdir LR

---

3rd party modules

This shows the 3rd party packages that are directly included by your own code. It does not show deeper transitive dependencies.

There are 4 options:

• omit (the default, seen above)
• integrated
• separated
• boxed

depchart src/**.ts --node_modules integrated

Integrated:

Separated:

Boxed: