Detect unused and misused dependencies

The Dependency Analysis Gradle Plugin (née Dependency Analysis Android Gradle Plugin) detects the following:

1. Unused dependencies.

2. Used transitive dependencies (which you may want to declare directly).

3. Dependencies declared on the wrong configuration (api vs implementation vs compileOnly, etc.).

4. Unnecessary plugins (currently only kapt).

As a side effect, the plugin can also tell you your project’s ABI, and produces graphviz files representing various views of your dependency graph, among other things. These side effects are currently mostly undocumented internal behaviors, but they may be interesting for some advanced users.

Add to your project and use

For detailed instructions, see the wiki.

The simplest approach is to add the following:

root build.gradle

plugins {
  id("com.autonomousapps.dependency-analysis") version "<<latest_version>>"
}

For a quick start, just run the following:

./gradlew buildHealth

More advanced usage

Project Health

You can also run the analysis against individual modules with the projectHealth task. For example:

./gradlew app:projectHealth

Reason

You may be curious why the plugin is emitting (or not emitting) advice regarding some dependency. You can ask it why:

./gradlew lib:reason --id com.squareup.okio:okio:2.2.2 (1)
> Task :lib:reason

----------------------------------------
You asked about the dependency 'com.squareup.okio:okio:2.2.2'.
There is no advice regarding this dependency.
----------------------------------------

Shortest path from :lib to com.squareup.okio:okio:2.2.2:
:lib
\--- com.squareup.okio:okio:2.2.2

Source: main
------------
* Exposes class okio.BufferedSource (implies api).

1. The version string is optional.

Basic configuration

For detailed information on how to configure the plugin, see the wiki.

To configure the plugin, use the dependencyAnalysis extension.

build.gradle

dependencyAnalysis {
  // configuration goes here
}

Two models

At time of writing, there are two distinct models available for conducting dependency analysis. By default, from version 1.0.0-rc01, the plugin uses the "new model." With that version, you may switch to the "old model" via the system property dependency.analysis.old.model=true. That is also the final version of the plugin that supports use of the old model. From 1.0.0-rc02, the old model is no longer available.

Publications

The following is a list of articles / blog posts that have been published discussing this plugin:

1. The proper care and feeding of your Gradle build

2. Dependency Analysis Gradle Plugin: Using bytecode analysis to find unused dependencies

3. Dependency Analysis Gradle Plugin: What’s an ABI?

4. Reducing my Gradle plugin’s impact on configuration time: A journey

…​with more to come :)

This plugin has also been featured in these newsletters:

1. Gradle, May 2022

2. Gradle, September 2020

3. Gradle, August 2020

4. Android Weekly, Issue #423

5. Gradle, July 2020

6. Gradle, June 2020

Podcast episodes about this plugin could be found here:

1. The Developers' Bakery, Episode #31