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Migrating from Sheriff

Sheriff enforces module boundaries and dependency rules in TypeScript projects using tags and depRules. rev-dep enforces the same boundaries with path-pattern module boundaries, and adds the rest of a dependency-hygiene suite.

Why migrate​

What carries over, what changes​

  • Covered well: which modules may depend on which (Sheriff's depRules).
  • Different model. Sheriff tags modules (via the modules map) and writes rules between tags; rev-dep uses path patterns directly. You translate tag → allowed tags into pattern → allow/deny.
  • Not replaced - barrel encapsulation. Sheriff can require that a module is only imported through its index.ts public API. rev-dep has no barrel-file rule; you can approximate "no deep imports" with restrictedImportsDetection denyFiles, but it is not a one-to-one match. Keep Sheriff if strict barrel encapsulation is essential.

Feature mapping​

Sheriff (sheriff.config.ts)rev-dep
modules (path globs → tags)moduleBoundaries pattern
depRules (allowed deps between tags)moduleBoundaries allow / deny
barrel / public-API encapsulationpartial - restrictedImportsDetection denyFiles for deep imports
-circular, unused exports, orphan files, unused/missing dependencies, conventions

Translating your config​

A sheriff.config.ts where feature modules may depend on shared but not on each other:

export const config = {
  modules: {
    'src/app/<feature>': ['feature:<feature>'],
    'src/shared': ['shared'],
  },
  depRules: {
    'feature:*': ['shared', sameTag],
    shared: [],
  },
};

becomes path-pattern boundaries in rev-dep.config.jsonc:

{
  "rules": [
    {
      "path": ".",
      "moduleBoundaries": [
        {
          "name": "shared-is-leaf",
          "pattern": "src/shared/**",
          "allow": ["src/shared/**"]
        },
        {
          "name": "features-use-shared-only",
          "pattern": "src/app/orders/**",
          "allow": ["src/app/orders/**", "src/shared/**"]
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}

rev-dep has no wildcard "same tag" concept, so cross-feature isolation is expressed as one boundary per feature (or a shared deny of sibling feature paths).

Running it​

# Sheriff (ESLint plugin or CLI)
npx eslint .   # with @softarc/eslint-plugin-sheriff

# rev-dep
rev-dep config run

Next steps​