@public modifier does not work if the whole file is unused
erheron opened this issue · 9 comments
Reproduction url
https://github.com/erheron/knip-v5-public-in-unused-files-repro
Description of the issue
Knip @public modifier, if placed above an exported function, promises to make Knip not count this export as unused (even if it is)
However, if the exported unused function is placed in a file, where all exports are unused, @public modifier seems to have no effect
This is somewhat contradictory and perhaps presents an inconsistency in knip modifiers
For reproduction, see this repo
We have three files there:
src/unused-files.jsis a file where all exports are unused, and one of them is marked with/** @public */JSDoc modifiersrc/partially-unused-fileexports a function which is later used insrc/main.js
Moreover, in knip config knip.jsonc we explicitly include "files" in knip report
If you clone that repo and run yarn knip you get this report:
Unused files (1)
src/unused-file.js
Unused exports (1)
unused_getID function src/partially-used-file.js:5:17So knip reports src/unused-file.js as an unused file (which it actually is), but also it means that @public modifier makes no effect there.
This also looks related to #706 -- if there was a special modifier to ignore an unused file, I guess that would be helpful for us as well.
However, I want to emphasize that this issue presents something else -- an inconsistency (or just something that is not explained well) about how do we report unused exports and unused files when @public modifier is applied. I suspect something similar might occur for other modifiers e.g. @internal and @beta
If you have a knip.json config file, you could add the unused files to the ignore list
ignore: ["src/commons/Routing/RNavStack/debugScreens/debugTab/index-noop.tsx",]
Thank you @eppisapiafsl . I should have mentioned that I'm aware of that 🙌🏻
However, that doesn't seem to be as good an option as having a dedicated "@file-ignore" comment OR "@public" working according to the documentation (which is not the case right now), mostly for the reasons actually mentioned in this comment in #706
@erheron Amms... I think you might want to review the code
The unused export method that is being reported doesn't have a @public decorator .... https://github.com/erheron/knip-v5-public-in-unused-files-repro/blob/main/src/partially-used-file.js#L5
Once you add it, Knip reports only the unused file
The code is perfectly all right, although I may have complicated the example a little bit 😆
The problem is not with partially-used-file at all. The problem is, that in the unused-file, one of the exports has a @public modifier, so it shouldn't count, and still the unused-file is reported as unused
Oh sorry, my bad. I thought you meant Knip was reporting unused export with @public decorator that were inside an unused file 😅
The @public and the tags decorator only work for exports; the file is still reported because it's not reachable from the entry point.
So you are making the same feature request as #706 (comment) 👍
Knip works by creating a dependency tree based on entry files. Unused files are not part of the analysis. If the intention for the "unused file" is to be an entry file, then it should be marked as such.
Note that Knip also adds items in package.json#exports as entry files.
So you are making the same feature request as #706 (comment) 👍
Yeah... it looks like it. As I mentioned, having a mechanism like that could help 👍🏻
Unused files are not part of the analysis. If the intention for the "unused file" is to be an entry file, then it should be marked as such.
Do you think we can have an unused-file modifier so we can avoid adding those to entry files? We can also move this discussion to #706