View Source mix xref (Mix v1.10.4)

Prints cross reference information between modules.

This task is automatically reenabled, so you can print information multiple times in the same Mix invocation.

Xref modes

The xref task expects a mode as first argument:

mix xref MODE

All available modes are discussed below.

callers CALLEE

Prints all callers of the given MODULE. Example:

mix xref callers MyMod

graph

Prints a file dependency graph where an edge from A to B indicates that A (source) depends on B (sink).

mix xref graph --format stats

The following options are accepted:

  • --exclude - paths to exclude

  • --label - only shows relationships with the given label The labels are "compile", "struct" and "runtime"

  • --only-nodes - only shows the node names (no edges)

  • --source - displays all files that the given source file references (directly or indirectly)

  • --sink - displays all files that reference the given file (directly or indirectly)

  • --format - can be set to one of:

    • pretty - prints the graph to the terminal using Unicode characters. Each prints each file followed by the files it depends on. This is the default except on Windows;

    • plain - the same as pretty except ASCII characters are used instead of Unicode characters. This is the default on Windows;

    • stats - prints general statistics about the graph;

    • dot - produces a DOT graph description in xref_graph.dot in the current directory. Warning: this will override any previously generated file

The --source and --sink options are particularly useful when trying to understand how the modules in a particular file interact with the whole system. You can combine those options with --label and --only-nodes to get all files that exhibit a certain property, for example:

# To get all files that depend on lib/foo.ex
mix xref graph --sink lib/foo.ex --only-nodes

# To get all files that depend on lib/foo.ex at compile time
mix xref graph --label compile --sink lib/foo.ex --only-nodes

# To show general statistics about the graph
mix xref graph --format stats

# To limit statistics only to certain labels
mix xref graph --format stats --label compile

Shared options

Those options are shared across all modes:

  • --include-siblings - includes dependencies that have :in_umbrella set to true in the current project in the reports. This can be used to find callers or to analyze graphs between projects

  • --no-compile - does not compile even if files require compilation

  • --no-deps-check - does not check dependencies

  • --no-archives-check - does not check archives

  • --no-elixir-version-check - does not check the Elixir version from mix.exs

Link to this section Summary

Functions

calls(opts \\ []) deprecated

Returns a list of information of all the runtime function calls in the project.

Link to this section Functions

This function is deprecated. Use compilation tracers described in the Code module.
@spec calls(keyword()) :: [
  %{callee: {module(), atom(), arity()}, line: integer(), file: String.t()}
]

Returns a list of information of all the runtime function calls in the project.

Each item in the list is a map with the following keys:

  • :callee - a tuple containing the module, function, and arity of the call
  • :line - an integer representing the line where the function is called
  • :file - a binary representing the file where the function is called
  • :caller_module - the module where the function is called

This function returns an empty list when used at the root of an umbrella project because there is no compile manifest to extract the function call information from. To get the function calls of each child in an umbrella, execute the function at the root of each individual application.