Program analysis for ReScript and OCaml projects targeting JS (ReScript) as well as native code (dune):
Early release. While the core functionality is reasonably stable, the CLI and annotations are subject to change. However, this is a tiny surface at the moment.
The rest of this document describes the dead code analysis. For the Exception Analysis, build instructions are the same, and the command-line invocation is different.
Build and run on existing projects using the Build and Try instructions below. The analysis uses .cmt[i]
files which are generated during compilation, so should be run after building your project. Remember to rebuild the project before running again.
# dead code analysis
reanalyze.exe -dce
# exception analysis
reanalyze.exe -exception
The requirement is that bsconfig.json
can be found by walking up the current directory.
# dead code analysis
reanalyze.exe -dce-cmt root/containing/cmt/files
# exception analysis
reanalyze.exe -exception-cmt root/containing/cmt/files
Subdirectories are scanned recursively looking for .cmt[i]
files.
The requirement is that the current directory is where file paths start from. So if the file path seen by the compiler is relative src/core/version.ml
then the current directory should contain src
as a subdirectory. The analysis only reports on existing files, so getting this wrong means no reporting.
The dead code analysis reports on globally dead values, redundant optional arguments, dead modules, dead types (records and variants).
A value x
is dead if it is never used, or if it is used by a value which itself is dead (transitivity). At the top level, function calls such as Js.log(x)
, or other expressions that might cause side effects, keep value x
live.
An optional argument ~argName
to a function is redundant if all the calls to the function supply the argument, or if no call does.
A module is considered dead if all the elements defined it in are dead.
The type analysis repots on variant cases, and record labels.
A variant case | A(int)
is dead if a value such as A(3)
is never constructed. But it can be deconstructed via pattern matching | A(n) => ...
or checked for equality x == A(3)
without making the case A
live.
A record label x
in type r = {x:int, y:int}
is dead if it is never read (by direct access r.x
or pattern matching | {x:n, y:m} => ...
). However, creating a value let r = {x:3, y:4}
does not make x
and y
live.
Note that reading a value r
does not make r.x
or r.y
live.
While dead values can be removed automatically (see below), dead types require a bit more work. A dead variant case requires changing the type definition, and the various accesses to it. A dead record label requires changing the type definition, and removing the label from any expressions that create a value of that type.
The dead code analysis supports 2 annotations:
@dead
suppresses reporting on the value/type, but can also be used to force the analysis to consider a value as dead. Typically used to acknowledge cases of dead code you are not planning to address right now, but can be searched easily later.
@live
tells the analysis that the value should be considered live, even though it might appear to be dead. This is typically used in case of FFI where there are indirect ways to access values. In case of bucklescript projects using genType
, export annotations immediately qualify values as live, because they are potentially reachable from JS.
The main difference between @dead
and @live
is the transitive behaviour: @dead
values don't keep alive values they use, while @live
values do.
Several examples can be found in
examples/deadcode/src/DeadTest.res
Takes a comma-separated list of path-prefixes. Don't report on files whose path has a prefix in the list (but still use them for analysis).
reanalyze.exe -suppress one/path,another/path
Takes a comma-separated list of path-prefixes. Report on files whose path has a prefix in the list, overriding -suppress
(no-op if -suppress
is not specified).
reanalyze.exe -unsuppress one/path,another/path/File.res
Print debug information during the analysis
reanalyze.exe -debug ...
This overwrites your source files automatically with dead code annotations:
reanalyze.exe -write ...
There's a dead code ppx (values only, not types) in this repository. It can be used to automatically remove code annotated @dead
, as if it had been commented out.
Can be used after adding annotations automatically. The combination of automatic annotation and automatic elimination is a form of automatic dead code elimination. For projects that use a library, or that in general have code which is dead only temporarily.
There's obviously a level of risk in doing this automatic elimination. The safety net you can rely on is that the code must still compile.
This automatically annotates @live
all the items called foo
or bar
:
-live-names foo,bar
This automatically annotates @live
all the items in file Hello.res
:
-live-paths Hello.res
This automatically annotates @live
all the items in the src/test
and tmp
folders:
-live-paths src/test,tmp
If a native project uses code generation and emit the generated files only in the build directory, reanalyze may not be able to locate them.
This is due to the paths being not relative to the project root directory.
An example of it can be caused by using tools like ocamlyacc
.
For example, you might want to set _build/default
for projects that use the default dune build target:
-native-build-target _build/default
bsconfig.json
The -config
option can be used to read the configuration from bsconfig.json
: to
set what analyses should be run, as well as suppress
and unsuppress
configuration.
Example configuration inside bsconfig.json
:
{
"reanalyze": {
"analysis": ["dce", "exception"],
"suppress": ["src/ToSuppress.res"],
"unsuppress": ["this", "that"]
}
}
This is equivalent to adding -dce -exception -suppress src/ToSuppress.res -unsuppress this,that
to the command line in place of -config
. Note that the options are additive, so it's possible to use e.g. -config -exception
to add exception analysis on top of what the configuration does.
npm add --save-dev reanalyze
opam install dune
npm run build406
# _build/default/src/Reanalyze.exe
opam install dune
dune build
# _build/default/src/Reanalyze.exe
npm run build # or whatever command to build the project
npm add --save-dev reanalyze
npx reanalyze -dce
Make sure that dune
builds both .cmt
and .cmti
files by enabling bytecode compilation. This is normally done by adding (modes byte exe)
to the executable
stanza in your dune file (see https://github.com/ocaml/dune/issues/3182):
This project is itself written in OCaml and can be analyzed as follows.
dune build
./_build/default/src/Reanalyze.exe -suppress src/compiler-libs-406 -dce-cmt _build