dead

dead simple python dead code detection

installation

pip install dead

cli

Consult the help for the latest usage:

$ dead --help
usage: dead [-h] [--files FILES] [--exclude EXCLUDE] [--tests TESTS]

optional arguments:
  -h, --help         show this help message and exit
  --files FILES      regex for file inclusion, default: ''
  --exclude EXCLUDE  regex for file exclusion, default '^$'
  --tests TESTS      regex to mark files as tests, default
                     '(^|/)(tests?|testing)/'

run the dead utility from the root of a git repository.

as a pre-commit hook

See pre-commit for instructions

Sample .pre-commit-config.yaml:

-   repo: https://github.com/asottile/dead
    rev: v2.1.0
    hooks:
    -   id: dead

how it works

find all files in a repository using git ls-files and filtering:
- only include files matched by the --files regex
- exclude files matched by the --exclude regex
- only include files identified as python by identify
- classify test files by the --tests regex
ast parse each file
- search for definitions and references
report things which do not have references

false positives

I wrote this in ~15 minutes on an airplane, it's far from perfect but often finds things. Here's a few things it's not good at:

functions which implement an interface are often marked as unused
metaclass magic is often marked as unused (enums, model classes, etc.)

suppressing `dead`

The # dead: disable comment will tell dead to ignore any line which has reportedly dead code.

is this project dead?

maybe.

Metadata

Release files for dead 2.1.0

For a detailed explanation of source distributions (sdists) and built distributions (wheels), please see the package formats documentation.

Source distribution (sdist)

Source distribution for dead 2.1.0
File	Size	Uploaded
dead-2.1.0.tar.gz	6.5 kB	Feb 8, 2025	Details

Built distribution (wheel)

Table of built distributions (wheels) for dead 2.1.0
File	Interpreter	ABI	Platform	Reset
dead-2.1.0-py2.py3-none-any.whl 6.8 kB Feb 8, 2025	Python 2, Python 3	none	any	Details

Total release size: 13.3 kB

Release files / dead-2.1.0.tar.gz

Download URL	dead-2.1.0.tar.gz
Size	6.5 kB
Tags	Source
SHA-256 checksum How to use checksums	`e2b53c1ade71fc4aadafa74237b034b622d0bd3d81811d336d64e67083439d76`
BLAKE2b-256 checksum How to use checksums	`76694f7962497d9a6e63337803feba4c7da24cdd80fc361ba2ae0436a150ea9f`
Upload date	Feb 8, 2025
Uploaded using Trusted Publishing? What is trusted publishing?	No
Uploaded via	`twine/5.0.0 CPython/3.12.3`

Release files / dead-2.1.0-py2.py3-none-any.whl

Download URL	dead-2.1.0-py2.py3-none-any.whl
Size	6.8 kB
Tags	Python 2 Python 3
SHA-256 checksum How to use checksums	`cde897c473a384673b4541f8d5bab4947d6240e1c195737467fe6c646585cd44`
BLAKE2b-256 checksum How to use checksums	`71a2a7b4945efa8df89f0a580b7a9dd2f06dd2ac45e6b55abbaf696577f432f9`
Upload date	Feb 8, 2025
Uploaded using Trusted Publishing? What is trusted publishing?	No
Uploaded via	`twine/5.0.0 CPython/3.12.3`