Unreferenced Files

A utility for finding unused and unreferenced files.

Content

• Usage
  • Usage - Additional Arguments
  • Usage - Example
  • Usage - Logging
• Compiling via Local Repository
• Compiling via Cargo
• Issues/Feature Requests

Usage

unreferenced_files is a very simple and fast tool. All files inside any of the directories or files provided via the arguments --search-for <search-for> are recorded. The referencing of these files are searched for inside the directories or files provided by the arguments --search <search>.

By default, the referencing of a file is search for via looking for the relative path of the file, the file name, and the file stem inside each file. If the search for and search files overlap then a file will not search itself to finds self references.

e.g.

> tree parent

parent/
├── child
│   └── file2.txt
└── file1.txt

For the example directory above, if the argument was --search-for parent/ then for the file parent/file1.txt the relative path of parent/file1.txt, the file name file1.txt, and the file stem file1 would be searched for. For the file parent/child/file2.txt the relative path of parent/child/file2.txt, the file name file2.txt and file stem file2 would be searched for.

Usage - Additional Arguments

Additional command line flags can be passed to alter what is searched for to determine if a file is referenced.

Usage - Example

For an example Java project with tests referencing files inside src/test/resources/ where the tests are calling the files by name e.g.

@Test
public void testImportingFile() {
    ...
    import("file.txt");
    ...
    import("/JSON/file.json");
    ...
}

You can find all the unreferenced files inside src/test/resources/ via

cd src/test/resources/
unreferenced_files --search-for ./ --search ../java/

Usage - Logging

The crates pretty_env_logger and log are used to provide logging. The environment variable RUST_LOG can be used to set the logging level. See https://crates.io/crates/pretty_env_logger for more detailed documentation.

Compiling via Local Repository

Checkout the code repository locally, change into the repository's directory and then build via cargo. Using the --release flag produces an optimised binary but takes longer to compile.

git clone git@gitlab.com:DeveloperC/unreferenced_files.git
cd unreferenced_files/
cargo build --release

The compiled binary is present in target/release/unreferenced_files.

Compiling via Cargo

Cargo is the Rust package manager, using the install sub-command it pulls the crate from crates.io and then compiles the binary locally. cargo install places the produced binary at $HOME/.cargo/bin/unreferenced_files.

cargo install unreferenced_files

Issues/Feature Requests

To report an issue or request a new feature use https://gitlab.com/DeveloperC/unreferenced_files/-/issues.