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Usage & Configuration

Basic Usage

deptry can be run with:

deptry .

where . is the path to the root directory of the project to be scanned.

If your project has multiple source directories, multiple root directories can be provided:

deptry a_directory another_directory

If you want to configure deptry using pyproject.toml, or if your dependencies are stored in pyproject.toml, but it is located in another location than the one deptry is run from, you can specify the location to it by using --config <path_to_pyproject.toml> argument.

Dependencies extraction

To determine the project's dependencies, deptry will scan the directory it is run from for files in the following order:

  1. If a pyproject.toml file with a [tool.poetry.dependencies] section is found, deptry will assume it uses Poetry and extract:
    • dependencies from [tool.poetry.dependencies] section
    • development dependencies from [tool.poetry.group.dev.dependencies] or [tool.poetry.dev-dependencies] section
  2. If a pyproject.toml file with a [tool.pdm.dev-dependencies] section is found, deptry will assume it uses PDM and extract:
    • dependencies from [project.dependencies] and [project.optional-dependencies] sections
    • development dependencies from [tool.pdm.dev-dependencies] section and from the groups under [project.optional-dependencies] passed via the --pep621-dev-dependency-groups argument.
  3. If a pyproject.toml file with a [project] section is found, deptry will assume it uses PEP 621 for dependency specification and extract:
    • dependencies from [project.dependencies] and [project.optional-dependencies].
    • development dependencies from the groups under [project.optional-dependencies] passed via the --pep621-dev-dependency-groups argument.
  4. If a requirements.in or requirements.txt file is found, deptry will:
    • extract dependencies from that file.
    • extract development dependencies from dev-dependencies.txt and dependencies-dev.txt, if any exist

deptry can be configured to look for pip requirements files with other names or in other directories. See Requirements files and Requirements files dev.

Imports extraction

deptry will search for imports in Python files (*.py, and *.ipynb unless --ignore-notebooks is set) that are not part of excluded files.

Imports will be extracted regardless of where they are made in a file (top-level, functions, class methods, guarded by conditions, ...).

The only exception is imports that are guarded by TYPE_CHECKING. In this specific case, deptry will not extract those imports, as they are not considered problematic. For instance:

from __future__ import annotations

from typing import TYPE_CHECKING

if TYPE_CHECKING:
    # This import will not be extracted as it is guarded by `TYPE_CHECKING` and `from __future__ import annotations`
    # is used. This means the import should only be evaluated by type checkers, and should not be evaluated during runtime.
    import mypy_boto3_s3

Excluding files and directories

To determine issues with imported modules and dependencies, deptry will scan the working directory and its subdirectories recursively for .py and .ipynb files, so it can extract the imported modules from those files. Any file solely used for development purposes, such as a file used for unit testing, should not be scanned. By default, the directories venv, .venv, .direnv, tests, .git and the file setup.py are excluded.

deptry also reads entries in .gitignore file, to ignore any pattern present in the file, similarly to what git does.

To ignore other directories and files than the defaults, use the --exclude (short -e) flag. The argument can either be one long regular expression, or it can be reused multiple times to pass multiple smaller regular expressions. The paths should be specified as paths relative to the directory deptry is running in, without the trailing ./. An example:

deptry . --exclude bar --exclude ".*/foo/"
deptry . --exclude "bar|.*/foo/"

The two statements above are equivalent, and will both ignore all files in the directory bar, and all files within any directory named foo.

Note that using the --exclude argument overwrites the defaults, and will prevent deptry from considering entries in .gitignore. To add additional patterns to ignore on top of the defaults instead of overwriting them, or to make sure that deptry still considers .gitignore, use the --extend-exclude (short -ee) flag.

deptry . --extend-exclude bar --extend-exclude ".*/foo/"
deptry . --extend-exclude "bar|.*/foo/"

This will exclude venv, .venv, .direnv, .git, tests, setup.py, bar, and any directory named foo, as well as entries in .gitignore, if there are some.

Usage in pre-commit

deptry can be added to your pre-commit rules. Here is an example config for your .pre-commit-config.yaml file:

- repo: https://github.com/fpgmaas/deptry.git
  rev: "<tag>"
  hooks:
    - id: deptry
      args: ["--ignore", "DEP001"]

Replace <tag> with one of the tags from the project or a specific commit hash.

Important

This will only pull in the pre commit-hooks config file from the version passed to the rev agument. The actual version of deptry that will be run will be the first one found in your path, so you will need to add deptry to your local virtual environment.

For the pre-commit hook to run successfully, it should be run within the virtual environment of the project to be scanned, since it needs access to the metadata of the installed packages.

Increasing verbosity

To show more details about the scanned Python files, the imported modules found, and how deptry determines issues in dependencies, add the --verbose (short -v) flag:

deptry . --verbose

Configuration

deptry can be configured with command line arguments or by adding a [tool.deptry] section to pyproject.toml.

Lookup hierarchy

The lookup hierarchy for each configuration option is as follows:

  1. Default value is used
  2. If set, value in [tool.deptry] section of pyproject.toml is used, overriding the default
  3. If set, value passed through the CLI is used, overriding both the default and pyproject.toml values

Options

Config

Path to the pyproject.toml file that holds deptry's configuration and dependencies definition (if any).

  • Type: Path
  • Default: pyproject.toml
  • CLI option name: --config
  • CLI example:
    deptry . --config sub_directory/pyproject.toml
    

No ANSI

Disable ANSI characters in terminal output.

  • Type: bool
  • Default: False
  • CLI option name: --no-ansi
  • CLI example:
    deptry . --no-ansi
    

Exclude

List of patterns to exclude when searching for source files.

  • Type: list[str]
  • Default: ["venv", "\.venv", "\.direnv", "tests", "\.git", "setup\.py"]
  • pyproject.toml option name: exclude
  • CLI option name: --exclude (short: -e)
  • pyproject.toml example:
    [tool.deptry]
    exclude = ["a_directory", "a_python_file\\.py", "a_pattern/.*"]
    
  • CLI example:
    deptry . --exclude "a_directory|a_python_file\.py|a_pattern/.*"
    

Extend exclude

Additional list of patterns to exclude when searching for source files. This extends the patterns set in Exclude, to allow defining patterns while keeping the default list.

  • Type: list[str]
  • Default: []
  • pyproject.toml option name: extend_exclude
  • CLI option name: --extend-exclude (short: -ee)
  • pyproject.toml example:
    [tool.deptry]
    extend_exclude = ["a_directory", "a_python_file\\.py", "a_pattern/.*"]
    
  • CLI example:
    deptry . --extend-exclude "a_directory|a_python_file\.py|a_pattern/.*"
    

Ignore

A comma-separated list of rules to ignore.

  • Type: list[str]
  • Default: []
  • pyproject.toml option name: ignore
  • CLI option name: --ignore (short: -i)
  • pyproject.toml example:
    [tool.deptry]
    ignore = ["DEP003", "DEP004"]
    
  • CLI example:
    deptry . --ignore DEP003,DEP004
    

Per rule ignores

A comma-separated mapping of packages or modules to be ignored per rule .

  • Type: dict[str, list[str] | str]
  • Default: {}
  • pyproject.toml option name: per_rule_ignores
  • CLI option name: --per-rule-ignores (short: -pri)
  • pyproject.toml example:
    [tool.deptry.per_rule_ignores]
    DEP001 = ["matplotlib"]
    DEP002 = ["pandas", "numpy"]
    
  • CLI example:
    deptry . --per-rule-ignores DEP001=matplotlib,DEP002=pandas|numpy
    

Ignore notebooks

Disable searching for notebooks (*.ipynb) files when looking for imports.

  • Type: bool
  • Default: False
  • pyproject.toml option name: ignore_notebooks
  • CLI option name: --ignore-notebooks (short: -nb)
  • pyproject.toml example:
    [tool.deptry]
    ignore_notebooks = true
    
  • CLI example:
    deptry . --ignore-notebooks
    

Requirements files

List of pip requirements files that contain the source dependencies.

  • Type: list[str]
  • Default: ["requirements.txt"]
  • pyproject.toml option name: requirements_files
  • CLI option name: --requirements-files (short: -rt)
  • pyproject.toml example:
    [tool.deptry]
    requirements_files = ["requirements.txt", "requirements-private.txt"]
    
  • CLI example:
    deptry . --requirements-files requirements.txt,requirements-private.txt
    

Requirements files dev

List of pip requirements files that contain the source development dependencies.

  • Type: list[str]
  • Default: ["dev-requirements.txt", "requirements-dev.txt"]
  • pyproject.toml option name: requirements_files_dev
  • CLI option name: --requirements-files-dev (short: -rtd)
  • pyproject.toml example:
    [tool.deptry]
    requirements_files_dev = ["requirements-dev.txt", "requirements-tests.txt"]
    
  • CLI example:
    deptry . --requirements-files-dev requirements-dev.txt,requirements-tests.txt
    

Known first party

List of Python modules that should be considered as first party ones. This is useful in case deptry is not able to automatically detect modules that should be considered as local ones.

  • Type: list[str]
  • Default: []
  • pyproject.toml option name: known_first_party
  • CLI option name: --known-first-party (short: -kf)
  • pyproject.toml example:
    [tool.deptry]
    known_first_party = ["bar", "foo"]
    
  • CLI example:
    deptry . --known-first-party bar --known-first-party foo
    

JSON output

Write the detected issues to a JSON file. This will write the following kind of output:

[
     {
         "error": {
             "code": "DEP002",
             "message": "uvicorn defined as a dependency but not used in the codebase"
         },
         "module": "uvicorn",
         "location": {
             "file": "pyproject.toml",
             "line": null,
             "column": null
         }
     },
     {
         "error": {
             "code": "DEP002",
             "message": "uvloop defined as a dependency but not used in the codebase"
         },
         "module": "uvloop",
         "location": {
             "file": "pyproject.toml",
             "line": null,
             "column": null
         }
     },
     {
         "error": {
             "code": "DEP004",
             "message": "black imported but declared as a dev dependency"
         },
         "module": "black",
         "location": {
             "file": "src/main.py",
             "line": 4,
             "column": 0
         }
     },
     {
         "error": {
             "code": "DEP003",
             "message": "httpx imported but it is a transitive dependency"
         },
         "module": "httpx",
         "location": {
             "file": "src/main.py",
             "line": 6,
             "column": 0
         }
     }
]
  • Type: Path
  • Default: None
  • pyproject.toml option name: json_output
  • CLI option name: --json-output (short: -o)
  • pyproject.toml example:
    [tool.deptry]
    json_output = "deptry_report.txt"
    
  • CLI example:
    deptry . --json-output deptry_report.txt
    

Package module name map

Deptry will automatically detect top level modules names that belong to a module in two ways. The first is by inspecting the installed packages. The second, used as fallback for when the package is not installed, is by translating the package name to a module name (Foo-Bar translates to foo_bar).

This however is not always sufficient. A situation may occur where a package is not installed because it is optional and unused in the current installation. Then when the package name doesn't directly translate to the top level module name, or there are more top level modules names, Deptry may report both unused packages, and missing packages. A concrete example is deptry reporting unused (optional) dependency foo-python, and missing package foo, while package foo-python would install top level module foo, if it were installed.

A solution is to pre-define a mapping between the package name and the top level module name(s).

  • Type dict[str, list[str] | str]
  • Default: {}
  • pyproject.toml option name: package_module_name_map
  • CLI option name: --package-module-name-map (short: -pmnm)
  • pyproject.toml examples:
    [tool.deptry.package_module_name_map]
    foo-python = "foo"
    
    Or for multiple top level module names:
    [tool.deptry.package_module_name_map]
    foo-python = [
        "foo",
        "bar",
    ]
    
  • CLI examples:
    deptry . --package-module-name-map 'foo-python=foo'
    
    Multiple module names are joined by a pipe (|):
    deptry . --package-module-name-map 'foo-python=foo|bar'
    
    Multiple package name to module name mappings are joined by a comma (,):
    deptry . --package-module-name-map 'foo-python=foo,bar-python=bar'
    

PEP 621 dev dependency groups

PEP 621 does not define a standard convention for specifying development dependencies. However, deptry offers a mechanism to interpret specific optional dependency groups as development dependencies.

By default, all dependencies under [project.dependencies] and [project.optional-dependencies] are extracted as regular dependencies. By using the --pep621-dev-dependency-groups argument, users can specify which groups defined under [project.optional-dependencies] should be treated as development dependencies instead. This is particularly useful for projects that adhere to PEP 621 but do not employ a separate build tool for declaring development dependencies.

For example, consider a project with the following pyproject.toml:

[project]
...
dependencies = [
    "httpx",
]

[project.optional-dependencies]
test = [
    "pytest < 5.0.0",
]
plot = [
    "matplotlib",
]

By default, httpx, pytest and matplotlib are extracted as regular dependencies. By specifying --pep621-dev-dependency-groups=test, the dependency pytest will be considered a development dependency instead.

  • Type: list[str]
  • Default: []
  • pyproject.toml option name: pep621_dev_dependency_groups
  • CLI option name: --pep621-dev-dependency-groups (short: -ddg)
  • pyproject.toml example:
    [tool.deptry]
    pep621_dev_dependency_groups = ["test", "docs"]
    
  • CLI example:
    deptry . --pep621-dev-dependency-groups "test,docs"