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Xref Runner

Erlang Xref Runner (inspired by rebar's rebar_xref)

Contact Us

If you find any bugs or have a problem while using this library, please open an issue in this repo (or a pull request :)).

And you can check all of our open-source projects at inaka.github.io.

Why Xref Runner?

So, Erlang/OTP comes with an excellent tool to check your code and detect bugs: Xref. The problem lies in its not-extremely-simple interface. Using xref out of the box requires you to start a process, set up parameters, add directories, etc. before you can actually just run the checks you want to run. To mitigate that, rebar comes with a handy command line tool (rebar xref) that prints xref generated warnings on your console. But, sometimes, you don't want to use rebar or you want to get the warnings as erlang terms and not just printed out in the console. That's when xref_runner comes along.

Script

xref_runner can be turned into a script by executing rebar3 escriptize. This will generate a self-contained executable script in _build/default/bin/xrefr, from which you can get help by typing xrefr -h.

Use xrefr command to run from the terminal (i.e. xrefr). There's no need to specify a configuration file path if you have an xref.config file in the same location where you are executing the script, otherwise a configuration file can be specified through the use of the --config (or just -c) option.

xrefr --config xref.config

How to Use it?

Just make sure it's in your code path and call xref_runner:check/2 with the proper parameters.

The first parameter is one of the available checks provided by xref:

-type check() :: undefined_function_calls
               | undefined_functions
               | locals_not_used
               | exports_not_used
               | deprecated_function_calls
               | deprecated_functions.

The second paramter is a configuration map. All of its fields are optional. The allowed fields are:

• extra_paths: Directories to be added to the xref code path. default value: []
• xref_defaults: Default values to configure xref (check xref:set_default). default value: []
• dirs: Directories to be scanned with xref. default value: ["ebin"]

Also you can use xref_runner:check/0 without parameters to run the whole check list. In this case, the configuration will be taken from xref.config from the root dir, that should look like this:

[
   {xref, [
            {config, #{dirs => ["test"]}},
            {checks, [ undefined_function_calls
                     , undefined_functions
                     , locals_not_used
                     , exports_not_used
                     , deprecated_function_calls
                     , deprecated_functions
                     ]}
          ]
   }
].

Using that function will give you a list of warnings as its result. Warnings are also maps with the following fields:

• filename: The name of the file for which the warning is reported
• line: The line number where the warning is reported. 0 means it's a module-level warning (like an undefined function). Note: In case of warnings with source and target, line numbers refer to the line in which the source function is defined, not the line where the target function is used.
• source: Module, function and argument number where the warning is found
• target (optional): For undefined_function_calls and deprecated_function_calls, function call that generates the warning.

Examples

Using the modules in the examples folder, these are some of the results generated by the tests:

> xref_runner:check(undefined_function_calls, #{dirs => ["test"]}).
[#{check => undefined_function_calls,
   filename => "test/examples/undefined_function_calls.erl",
   line => 5,
   source => {undefined_function_calls,bad,0},
   target => {undefined_function_calls,undefined_here,0}},
 #{check => undefined_function_calls,
   filename => "test/examples/undefined_function_calls.erl",
   line => 9,
   source => {undefined_function_calls,bad,1},
   target => {other_module,undefined_somewhere_else,1}},
 #{check => undefined_function_calls,
   filename => "test/examples/undefined_function_calls.erl",
   line => 9,
   source => {undefined_function_calls,bad,1},
   target => {undefined_functions,undefined_there,0}},
 …
]

> xref_runner:check(undefined_functions, #{dirs => ["test"],
                                           xref_defaults => []}).
[#{check => undefined_functions,
   filename => [],
   line => 0,
   source => {other_module,undefined_somewhere_else,0}},
 #{check => undefined_functions,
   filename => [],
   line => 0,
   source => {other_module,undefined_somewhere_else,1}},
 #{check => undefined_functions,
   filename => "test/examples/undefined_function_calls.erl",
   line => 0,
   source => {undefined_function_calls,undefined_here,0}},
 …
]

> xref_runner:check(locals_not_used, #{dirs => ["test"]}).
[#{check => locals_not_used,
   filename => "test/examples/locals_not_used.erl",
   line => 9,
   source => {locals_not_used,local_not,1}}]

> xref_runner:check(exports_not_used, #{dirs => ["test"]}).
[#{check => exports_not_used,
   filename => "test/examples/deprecated_function_calls.erl",
   line => 7,
   source => {deprecated_function_calls,bad,0}},
 #{check => exports_not_used,
   filename => "test/examples/deprecated_function_calls.erl",
   line => 10,
   source => {deprecated_function_calls,bad,1}},
 #{check => exports_not_used,
   filename => "test/examples/deprecated_function_calls.erl",
   line => 14,
   source => {deprecated_function_calls,good,0}},
…
]

> xref_runner:check(deprecated_function_calls, #{dirs => ["test"]}).
[#{check => deprecated_function_calls,
   filename => "test/examples/deprecated_function_calls.erl",
   line => 7,
   source => {deprecated_function_calls,bad,0},
   target => {deprecated_functions,deprecated,0}},
 #{check => deprecated_function_calls,
   filename => "test/examples/deprecated_function_calls.erl",
   line => 10,
   source => {deprecated_function_calls,bad,1},
   target => {deprecated_function_calls,internal,0}},
 #{check => deprecated_function_calls,
   filename => "test/examples/deprecated_function_calls.erl",
   line => 10,
   source => {deprecated_function_calls,bad,1},
   target => {deprecated_functions,deprecated,1}},
 …
]

> xref_runner:check(deprecated_functions, #{dirs => ["test"]}).
[#{check => deprecated_functions,
   filename => "test/examples/deprecated_function_calls.erl",
   line => 17,
   source => {deprecated_function_calls,internal,0}},
 #{check => deprecated_functions,
   filename => "test/examples/deprecated_functions.erl",
   line => 8,
   source => {deprecated_functions,deprecated,0}},
 #{check => deprecated_functions,
   filename => "test/examples/deprecated_functions.erl",
   line => 10,
   source => {deprecated_functions,deprecated,1}},
 #{check => deprecated_functions,
   filename => "test/examples/ignore_xref.erl",
   line => 19,
   source => {ignore_xref,internal,0}}]

> xref_runner:check(deprecated_function_calls, #{dirs => ["test"]}).
[#{check => deprecated_function_calls,
   filename => "test/examples/deprecated_function_calls.erl",
   line => 7,
   source => {deprecated_function_calls,bad,0},
   target => {deprecated_functions,deprecated,0}},
 #{check => deprecated_function_calls,
   filename => "test/examples/deprecated_function_calls.erl",
   line => 10,
   source => {deprecated_function_calls,bad,1},
   target => {deprecated_function_calls,internal,0}},
 #{check => deprecated_function_calls,
   filename => "test/examples/deprecated_function_calls.erl",
   line => 10,
   source => {deprecated_function_calls,bad,1},
   target => {deprecated_functions,deprecated,1}},
 …
]

> xref_runner:check().
[#{check => undefined_function_calls,
   filename => "test/examples/undefined_function_calls.erl",
   line => 5,
   source => {undefined_function_calls,bad,0},
   target => {undefined_function_calls,undefined_here,0}},
 #{check => undefined_function_calls,
   filename => "test/examples/undefined_function_calls.erl",
   line => 9,
   source => {undefined_function_calls,bad,1},
   target => {other_module,undefined_somewhere_else,1}},
 #{check => undefined_function_calls,
   filename => "test/examples/undefined_function_calls.erl",
   line => 9,
   source => {undefined_function_calls,bad,1},
   target => {undefined_functions,undefined_there,0}},
…
]