[swift-build-dev] [SwiftPM] Add option to dump a package’s dependency tree

[bhargav gurlanka]

Raised PR-302 <https://github.com/apple/swift-package-manager/pull/302> to
dump dependencies in plain text format. Also attached sample output in PR,
please comment if this is what is expected.

On 29 April 2016 at 00:47, Max Howell via swift-build-dev <
swift-build-dev at swift.org> wrote:

> I agree that this feature would be great.
>
> On Apr 25, 2016, at 11:58 AM, Honza Dvorsky via swift-build-dev <
> swift-build-dev at swift.org> wrote:
>
> I actually really like --show-dependencies (and we could give it a
> shortcut -D, to borrow from --generate-xcodeproj and -X).
>
> On Mon, Apr 25, 2016 at 8:53 PM Daniel Dunbar <daniel at zuster.org> wrote:
>
>> I think this is a great idea. I don't think it needs a proposal since it
>> is just a feature of the swift-build tool, and doesn't have a significant
>> workflow impact.
>>
>> I would also vote for a text-based output by default, and options for
>> getting data in JSON or .gv if desired.
>>
>> If the idea is that users might frequently use this to visualize there
>> dep graph (versus a more debugging focused feature), then I suggest a name
>> like: `--show-dependencies` or `--show-deps`.
>>
>>  - Daniel
>>
>>
>> On Mon, Apr 25, 2016 at 11:13 AM, Honza Dvorsky via swift-build-dev <
>> swift-build-dev at swift.org> wrote:
>>
>>> Hi All,
>>>
>>> In the last couple of weeks I’ve been building small Swift servers and
>>> interacting with the young ecosystem of public SwiftPM packages. One thing
>>> that quickly came up is the need to track down which of my dependencies (or
>>> any of its parents) is pulling in this one broken dependency, so that I can
>>> fix or work around it.
>>>
>>> This quickly becomes a very tedious task, because the SwiftPM packages
>>> I’ve encountered are usually small (npm style), which leads to relatively
>>> large dependency trees even for moderate-size frameworks.
>>>
>>> To assist developers in easily looking up a misbehaving package or
>>> quickly understanding how SwiftPM arrived at a resolved version, I propose
>>> we add a new mode to swift-build. This mode would simply dump the
>>> dependency tree of the root package into the console.
>>>
>>> Usage could look like this:
>>> ```
>>> swift build --dump-dependency-tree
>>> ```
>>> which would print the dependency tree, having the root package as the
>>> root of the tree, growing down from there.
>>>
>>> The metadata I suggest we include in each node:
>>> - Package name
>>> - Package version range
>>> - Package remote URL (to easily detect conflicting forks)
>>> - Package dependencies as the children of this node
>>>
>>> This could be used for:
>>> - detecting conflicting forks in the dependency tree
>>> - understanding conflicting version ranges of dependencies
>>> - graphing the dependency tree in a graphing app, into an image (think
>>> centralized SwiftPM index which can show you a clickable dependency tree)
>>> - debugging/testing of SwiftPM
>>>
>>> There are a couple of formats we could output the tree in
>>> - .gv (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DOT_(graph_description_language))
>>> - Pretty text-based tree for quick CLI viewing
>>> - JSON
>>>
>>> Personally, I think we should print in the text-based form by default
>>> and add an option to output the tree in the .gv format, which can be
>>> consumed by many apps e.g. OmniGraffle for further processing.
>>>
>>> Overall I think it’d be a nice feature to have for all the reasons
>>> outlined above, but primarily it’s a good way to make the
>>> version-resolution magic more transparent.
>>>
>>> I appreciate all feedback. If you think this should be turned into a
>>> formal proposal, I can also do that.
>>>
>>> Honza Dvorsky
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> swift-build-dev mailing list
>>> swift-build-dev at swift.org
>>> https://lists.swift.org/mailman/listinfo/swift-build-dev
>>>
>>>
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-- 
Bhargav Gurlanka
iOS Developer,
Housing.com

   mobile : +91 9920272428
    email : bhargav.grlnk at gmail.com
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