build status pre-commit.ci status

dead simple python dead code detection

pip install dead

Consult the help for the latest usage:

$ dead --help
usage: dead [-h] [--files FILES] [--exclude EXCLUDE] [--tests TESTS]
optional arguments:
 -h, --help show this help message and exit
 --files FILES regex for file inclusion, default: ''
 --exclude EXCLUDE regex for file exclusion, default '^$'
 --tests TESTS regex to mark files as tests, default
 '(^|/)(tests?|testing)/'

run the dead utility from the root of a git repository.

See pre-commit for instructions

Sample .pre-commit-config.yaml:

- repo: https://github.com/asottile/dead
 rev: v2.1.0
 hooks:
 - id: dead

1. find all files in a repository using git ls-files and filtering:
   • only include files matched by the --files regex
   • exclude files matched by the --exclude regex
   • only include files identified as python by identify
   • classify test files by the --tests regex
2. ast parse each file
   • search for definitions and references
3. report things which do not have references

I wrote this in ~15 minutes on an airplane, it's far from perfect but often finds things. Here's a few things it's not good at:

• functions which implement an interface are often marked as unused
• metaclass magic is often marked as unused (enums, model classes, etc.)

The # dead: disable comment will tell dead to ignore any line which has reportedly dead code.

maybe.