Feature request: graph showing only the dependent modules

[El-Chiang]

This tool is a great idea! Inspired by it, I added a job to the ci pipeline to analyze the impact (dependants) of each PR. However, our team works on a giant web application, if I show all the dependencies, this graph will be very large and not conducive to checking. So, is there a way only to show the dependants?

Context

Let me give you an example to describe the problem I am facing:

• There is an A->B->E and C->D->E dependency
• In this PR, I have modified the E
• Now, I want to find all the modules that depend on D, i.e. A ~ D.

Currently, I configure reachable rule and output to err-report to solve my need, but I also want to show their dpendency path through the graph, not only html report.

Possible Solution

Is it possible to provide a reaches CLI option to filter out all dependants (like reachable rule)

[sverweij]

Hi @El-Chiang there's currently no reaches or reachable filter option in the CLI or the API. Besides being a good idea for pull request context I think it'll fulfil a more general need as well - in #469 there was a request for something similar.

What CI do you use?

related work

For PR's I currently use the --focus option to highlight changed files and all modules they depend on and that depend on them.

[El-Chiang]

In the CI, it gets all the diff files at every PR and executes the depcruise command to analyze all the modules that depend on these diff files, and finally generates a report.

I thought about using the --focus option before, but in my case, I actually only focus on all the modules that depend on them. And if I have multiple files that need to be focused on, I have to execute this command in a loop.

[sverweij]

Hi @El-Chiang - I've made a stab at a --reaches filter (works both in the depcruise and depcruise-fmt command line and in the API) - see the linked PR above.

The beta [email protected] on npm (just published) contains this feature. The feature will probably land in the next regular release (expected this Monday).

In any case I'm curious whether it helps in your use-case. If you have any feedback it'll be very welcome!

[sverweij]

@El-Chiang FYI - the regular release ([email protected]) with the reaches filter has just landed on npm. As said earlier: feedback is very welcome.

[El-Chiang]

Thanks @sverweij! This works great for me 🎉