provenance

provenance

A CLI script that takes a position in a JS file inside an npm package, and outputs a directed graph of all of the functions that call the function at that position.

installation, or:

vim + graphviz + quicklook

My provenance setup requires:

• iojs v2.x
• graphviz (via homebrew)

I wrote this so I could mash <Leader>sx and get a quick heads up display of what calls the function I'm looking at. To that end, I wrote a script to store stdin as a tempfile and use qlmanage to quickly display it:

#!/bin/bash
# call this file "ql" and `chmod +x` it
tmpfile=$(mktemp -t ql)
mv "$tmpfile"{,.png}
tmpfile=${tmpfile}.png
cat > "$tmpfile"
qlmanage -p $tmpfile >& /dev/null
rm $tmpfile

With that file on $PATH as ql, I added the following info to my .vimrc:

" ~/.vimrc
nmap <leader>sx :exe "!iojs /path/to/provenance/bin/provenance % " . line(".") . " " . col(".") . "\| dot -Tpng \| ql" <CR>

notes

Provenance trys to note all calling paths into your current function.

• It attempts to note "inversion of control" (or ioc) calls, though it sometimes misses.
• It will definitely miss call that is a result of a dynamic lookup: obj[something]().
• It needs a valid package.json at the root of your project to build a list of files to look at. If your file is not indirectly required by the "main" script of your package.json, it may not produce useful output.
• It will also note "defs" relations — as in, "this function is defined by another function."
• It only notes any given function once at most — there may be many paths through a function to your current function, but it will only appear once.

license

MIT