HackerReposA FIELD GUIDE TO OPEN SOURCE
ProSponsor the shelf♧ 0
← Back to top all-time
gabotechs
dep-tree
Go2023–2026
gabotechs / dep-tree

dep-tree

Tool for helping developers keep their code bases clean and decoupled. It allows visualising a code base complexity using a 3d force-directed graph of files and the dependencies between them.

Developer ToolsCommand LineWeb DevelopmentCreative & Media
Explore on GitHubRead Hacker News discussions
4Distinct people
7Mentions
0Explicit recommenders
1.7KGitHub stars
REPOSITORY AT A GLANCE

What to know before exploring

What it is

Tool for helping developers keep their code bases clean and decoupled. It allows visualising a code base complexity using a 3d force-directed graph of files and the dependencies between them.

GitHub

Where it is used

No documented product use has been verified yet.

What people are saying

No recommendation phrase was found in the indexed comments.

No classified warning is attached to this page. Read the discussions before treating silence as approval.

Also in these discussions

No other repository is repeatedly linked in the same discussions.

This week on Hacker News

Nov 7–Nov 14 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/14/2026, 3:56:07 PM UTC.

No direct repository links were found in the indexed HN discussions over the past seven days. Older discussions are available below.

Mentions over time

HN mentions by year7 dated mentions

Observed mentions: 2023-06-28 15:06:39 UTC to 2026-02-16 20:54:03 UTC.

0123452023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 1 submissions, 0 comments20232024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 5 mentions; 3 submissions, 2 comments20242025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2027-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 1 submissions, 0 comments. Incomplete calendar period.2026*

* An incomplete calendar period is marked with an outlined bar. Its count is not directly comparable with a full period.

Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.

View mention counts and date ranges
UTC ranges include their start and exclude their end. Select a period to filter the source evidence.
PeriodStart (UTC)End (exclusive, UTC)MentionsSubmissionsComments
20232023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC110
20242024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC532
20252025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC000
2026 (partial)2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2027-01-01 00:00:00 UTC110

What Hacker News says

7 sources
gabimtme·Jun 10, 2024Submission

Show HN: Visualize the complexity of a Golang codebase with a 3D force graph

Hi HN! I want to share a project for which Golang support was just added: https://github.com/gabotechs/dep-tree This is a tool that allows users to visualize the complexity of a code base using a 3D force-directed graph: It will take a Golang codebase entrypoint, typically `main.go`, it will parse the file and gather other files in which this file depends on (by resolving function names, types, etc...) It will recursively perform this operation with all the dependant files, until the full graph with all the source files is formed. It will render the graph using a force-directed layout, and all the source files will be placed in a three-dimensional space simulating some attraction/repulsion forces based on the dependencies between them. Clean and loosely coupled codebases will tend to form clusters of nodes in the 3d space separated from e
Read the rest
ach other, while tightly coupled and messy codebases will be rendered with all the nodes grouped together without clear sense of separation. Here are some examples of rendering this graph for some well known projects: - Docker compose: https://dep-tree-explorer.vercel.app/api?repo=https%3A%2F%2F... - Ollama: https://dep-tree-explorer.vercel.app/api?repo=https%3A%2F%2F... - Gin: https://dep-tree-explorer.vercel.app/api?repo=https%3A%2F%2F... - Go's crypto std: https://dep-tree-explorer.vercel.app/api?repo=https%3A%2F%2F... - CockroachDB SQL parser: https://dep-tree-explorer.vercel.app/api?repo=https%3A%2F%2F... - Ethereum: https://dep-tree-explorer.vercel.app/api?repo=https%3A%2F%2F... - Dep Tree: https://dep-tree-explorer.vercel.app/api?repo=https%3A%2F%2F... Hope you find this interesting!
1 points · Open discussion
gabimtme·Feb 3, 2024
The portion of the code in charge of rendering lives inside the `internal/entropy` (https://github.com/gabotechs/dep-tree/tree/main/internal/ent...). Force-directed is an algorithm for displaying graphs in a 2d or 3d space, which simulates attraction/repulsion based on the dependencies between the nodes, the wikipedia page explains it really well https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Force-directed_graph_drawing > Love it, I think dependency trees are super underused data for static analysis. Definitely, specially for evaluating "the big picture" of a codebase
In Show HN: Visualize the entropy of a codebase with a 3D force-directed graph
gabimtme·Jan 31, 2024Submission

Show HN: Visualize the entropy of a codebase with a 3D force-directed graph

Hi HN! I'm Gabriel, the author of dep-tree (https://github.com/gabotechs/dep-tree), and I wanted to show off this tool and explain why it's being really useful at my current org for dealing with code complexity. I work at a startup where business evolves really fast, and requirements change frequently, so it's easy to end up with big piles of code stacked together without a clear structure, specially with tight deadlines. I made dep-tree [1] to help us maintain a clean code architecture and a logical separation of concerns between parts of the application, which is accomplished by: (1) Visualizing the source files and the dependencies between them using a 3D force-directed graph; and (2) Enforcing some dependency rules that allow/forbid dependencies between different parts of the application. The 3D force-directed graph visualization work
Read the rest
s like this: - It takes an entrypoint to the codebase, usually the main executable file or a library's entrypoint (index.js, main.py, etc...) - It recursively crawls import statements gathering other source files that are being depended upon - It creates a directed graph out of that, where nodes are source files and edges are the dependencies between them - It renders this graph in the browser using a 3D force-directed layout, where attraction/repulsion forces will be applied to each node depending on which other nodes it is connected to. With this, properly decoupled codebases will tend to form clusters of nodes, representing logical parts that live together and are clearly separated from other parts, and tightly coupled codebases will be rendered without clear clustering or without a clear structural pattern in the node placement. Some examples of this visualization for well-known codebases are: TypeScript: https://dep-tree-explorer.vercel.app/api?repo=https%3A%2F%2F... React: https://dep-tree-explorer.vercel.app/api?repo=https%3A%2F%2F... Svelte: https://dep-tree-explorer.vercel.app/api?repo=https%3A%2F%2F... Langchain: https://dep-tree-explorer.vercel.app/api?repo=https%3A%2F%2F... Numpy: https://dep-tree-explorer.vercel.app/api?repo=https%3A%2F%2F... Deno: https://dep-tree-explorer.vercel.app/api?repo=https%3A%2F%2F... The visualizations are cool, but it's just the first step. The dependency rules checking capabilities is what makes the tool actually useful in a daily basis and what keeps us using it every day in our CI pipelines for enforcing decoupling. More info about this feature is available in the repo: https://github.com/gabotechs/dep-tree?tab=readme-ov-file#che.... The code is fully open-source.
180 points · Open discussion

MAKE YOURSELF AT HOME

A few shortcuts

/
Search the collection
?
Open this guide
Esc
Close dialogs and navigation

Your saved repositories and interests stay in this browser.