Force-directed layout?

[merlinz01]

Just saw this project on the Go forum and tried it on my project.

Because of the large number of dependencies, the graph doesn't fit on one screen width:

I have seen force-directed layout used in various places for showing complex dependency trees. E.g. https://vega.github.io/vega/examples/force-directed-layout/ This might make large trees more manageable. It looks like modview uses SVG for the visualization, and I don't know what all is possible with that.

Another thing that could make it more manageable is the ability to "delete" unused dependency links, so that dependencies that aren't actually used in the final product don't clutter the view.

[bayraktugrul]

hi @merlinz01 , thanks for feedbacks. Hide unused dependency is a good idea, I will add it to backlog. I will also check to improve graph for bigger projects. It is hard to manage big graphs right now. I'll inform you, when I find a solution. Thanks.

[MichaelMure]

Definitely agree on hiding the unused dependencies. For my project about 200 nodes show up in the graph, while I'm actually using 32 of those (according to my go.mod). It would definitely make this tool more useful.

[bayraktugrul]

Definitely agree on hiding the unused dependencies. For my project about 200 nodes show up in the graph, while I'm actually using 32 of those (according to my go.mod). It would definitely make this tool more useful.

thanks for suggestion, I will work on it!

[bayraktugrul]

hi @MichaelMure. the feature has been released with v1.2.4. At the moment, it doesn't rearrange dependency graph but focuses on hiding and showing unused ones. I'd love to hear your thoughts or any feedback you might have.

[merlinz01]

Nice improvement.

I adjusted the width and height parameters to these:

    const dynamicWidth = Math.max(width, nodeCount * 8);
    const dynamicHeight = Math.max(height, nodeCount * 80);

and I was able to see the whole view at once, although not in detail:

(Yes, I know it's bad to have so many dependencies 😃 )

The force-directed layout idea might not be needed if there are ways to hide parts of the graph. I'll be interested to try it once it rearranges the graph.

[MichaelMure]

Well, I'm not sure we are talking about the same thing.

If you try this repo for example: https://github.com/ucan-wg/go-ucan. Running modview generates a graph that include for example github.com/ipfs/go-ds-badger. That package is not listed in the go.mod file, because it's actually not used. That can be confirmed with the following:

go mod why -m github.com/ipfs/go-ds-badger
# github.com/ipfs/go-ds-badger
(main module does not need module github.com/ipfs/go-ds-badger)

Could you filter those packages? There are not actual dependencies.

[MichaelMure]

Another kind of filtering that'd be nice is to filter out dev dependencies, for example the typical github.com/stretchr/testify.

[merlinz01]

to filter out dev dependencies

As far as I know Go doesn't have special treatment of dev dependencies, but maybe there is a way to tell if a package is used only by test code?

[merlinz01]

Maybe you could use go list -m all to see what dependencies are actually used.

[merlinz01]

Actually, I think that gives the same results as parsing go.mod.