💡 Tracking circular dependencies

[kachkaev]

Suggest an idea for Knip

👋 webpro and folks!

At the moment, knip docs mention circular dependency tracking as something that's out of scope of knip.

https://knip.dev/reference/related-tooling#circular-dependencies

knip/packages/docs/src/content/docs/reference/related-tooling.md

Lines 28 to 32 in b255195

	## Circular dependencies
	Knip has no issues with circular dependencies, and does not report them. Tools
	that do support this include [DPDM][5], [Madge][6] and [skott][7].

I wonder if that's a strategic decision or a feature that can be eventually added at some point.

I use knip in a couple of projects and it's a really useful source of feedback. Since exports are already tracked, knip must have already built an import graph that could be used for searching cycles in it. The existing config system is a perfect fit for exceptions, if necessary.

I am currently using dpdm to fill in the gap and it works, but feels to occupy in the same linting niche as knip. Unfortunately, dpdm cannot be configured via dpdm.config.ts (acrazing/dpdm#65) and there is no way to define a list of known exceptions.

WDYT of including circular dependency scanning into knip?

[webpro]

This is part of the VS Code / OpenVSX extension: https://knip.dev/reference/integrations. Haven't thought of integrating this into the CLI yet. Knip already covers a lot of ground, and I'm selective about what I take on. The strategic decision was to create up a good module graph for features like this (see e.g. https://github.com/webpro-nl/knip/tree/main/packages/knip/src/graph-explorer + ops), the reality is still limited bandwidth. Not on my roadmap at this point, but not off the table either.

[ArnaudBarre]

Hey just wanted to let you know that from time to time we have bug report in Vite HMR that are related to circular (runtime) imports. The best fix is to avoid them, and I wanted to point them towards a modern tool that allows to catch them and I though of knip as the first candidate

[github-actions]

Preview release available:

npm i -D https://pkg.pr.new/knip@a861071

[webpro]

Please see #1812

[webpro]

🚀 This issue has been resolved in v6.25.0. See Release 6.25.0 for release notes.

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