Migrating from skott

skott builds a dependency graph and detects circular dependencies, unused files, and unused third-party dependencies. rev-dep covers the same checks in one config, and adds architecture rules.

Why migrate

• Speed. rev-dep is written in Go and runs every check in a single parallel pass - up to 74x faster on large codebases.
• One config for the whole suite. On top of skott's checks, rev-dep adds unused exports, missing dependencies, module boundaries, restricted imports, and import conventions.

What carries over, what changes

• Covered well: circular dependencies, unused source files, unused npm dependencies.
• Not replaced - visualization. skott can render a web app and static graph images (--displayMode=webapp/svg/png). rev-dep has no graph rendering; it answers graph questions as text via the exploratory toolkit. Keep skott if the visual explorer is important to you.

Feature mapping

skott	rev-dep
--showCircularDependencies	circular / circularImportsDetection
--showUnusedFiles	orphanFilesDetection
--showUnusedDependencies	unusedNodeModulesDetection
--trackThirdPartyDependencies	dependency analysis is built into the node-modules checks
--displayMode=webapp/svg/png (visual)	- (no image output)
-	missingNodeModulesDetection, moduleBoundaries, restrictedImportsDetection, importConventions, devDepsUsageOnProdDetection

Translating your usage

skott --showCircularDependencies --showUnusedFiles --showUnusedDependencies

becomes a rev-dep.config.jsonc:

{
  "rules": [
    {
      "path": ".",
      "prodEntryPoints": ["src/index.ts"],
      "circularImportsDetection": {
        "enabled": true,
        "ignoreTypeImports": true,
        "algorithm": "SCC"
      },
      "orphanFilesDetection": {
        "enabled": true
      },
      "unusedNodeModulesDetection": {
        "enabled": true
      }
    }
  ]
}

skott option	rev-dep equivalent
--fileExtensions	built-in source extensions (supported file types)
--ignorePattern	graphExclude / ignoreFiles (globs)
--tsConfig (tsConfigPath)	read automatically; --tsconfig-json to override

Running it

# skott
npx skott --showCircularDependencies

# rev-dep
rev-dep config run

Next steps

• For unused files and dependencies in monorepos, see orphan files and unused exports in shared packages and missing or unused dependency false positives.
• Monorepo integration guide.