README

Rerum curam depone. — Lay down your worries.

A static analysis tool for PHP that helps you eliminate require_once-related issues.

Legacy PHP projects accumulate require_once statements over the years. After Composer autoload is introduced, many of them become redundant — but judging which ones by hand is impractical. depone tokenizes every PHP file in the repository, statically resolves each require_once target, and reports the ones whose targets Composer already autoloads.

depone is a CLI tool. Its supported public interface is the command name, options, exit codes, and command output. PHP classes under src/ are internal implementation details and may change without backward compatibility guarantees.

Requirements

• PHP 8.4 or newer
• Composer

Installation

composer require --dev lll-lll-lll-lll/depone

Usage

Run the analyzer from the root of a Composer project:

vendor/bin/depone

redundant_require_once=2
public/index.php:5 => src/Foo.php
src/Legacy/Bootstrap.php:12 => src/Util/Path.php

unresolved_include_require=1
  public/plugin.php:8 [variable] $pluginDir . '/init.php'

Each redundant line means: the file at file:line has a require_once whose target is already autoloadable, so the statement can likely be removed.

Include/require statements whose path expression cannot be resolved statically are never silently skipped — they are listed under unresolved_include_require with a reason:

Before deleting a require_once, check who requires the file and from which entrypoints:

vendor/bin/depone --trace src/Foo.php

trace_target=src/Foo.php
direct_callers=1
  - public/index.php
entrypoint_candidates=1
  - public/index.php
trace_paths=1
  1. public/index.php -[r]-> src/Foo.php

The exit code is 0 on success and 1 on failure (for example, when composer.json cannot be read).

Example

A typical legacy front controller, after Composer autoload has been introduced:

<?php

require_once __DIR__ . '/../vendor/autoload.php';
require_once __DIR__ . '/../src/Greeting.php';
require_once __DIR__ . '/../src/Legacy/Mailer.php';
require_once __DIR__ . '/../src/helpers.php';
require_once $config['plugins_dir'] . '/bootstrap.php';

$greeting = new App\Greeting();
echo $greeting->say();

Running depone from the project root:

redundant_require_once=3
public/index.php:4 => src/Greeting.php
public/index.php:5 => src/Legacy/Mailer.php
public/index.php:6 => src/helpers.php

unresolved_include_require=1
  public/index.php:7 [variable] $config['plugins_dir'] . '/bootstrap.php'

Lines 4–6 are already covered by Composer's autoloader, so they can be deleted. Line 7 builds its path from a variable, so depone cannot resolve it statically — it is reported as unresolved rather than silently ignored, and is excluded from the redundant list. The require_once for vendor/autoload.php on line 3 is never reported: it isn't part of the autoloadable set itself, and its target is resolvable but not redundant.

Before deleting the require_once for Mailer.php, confirm who else depends on it:

depone --trace src/Legacy/Mailer.php

trace_target=src/Legacy/Mailer.php
direct_callers=1
  - public/index.php
entrypoint_candidates=1
  - public/index.php
trace_paths=1
  1. public/index.php -[r]-> src/Legacy/Mailer.php

With a single caller and a clear trace path, the three lines can be removed safely and left to Composer's autoloader.

How it works

1. Collects the set of autoloadable files from composer.json (psr-4, psr-0, classmap, and files, including autoload-dev). For PSR rules, a file only counts when a class it declares actually resolves back to that file.
2. Tokenizes every PHP file (excluding vendor/ and .git/) with token_get_all() and evaluates each require/include path expression with a small static evaluator: string literals, concatenation, __DIR__/__FILE__, define()'d constants, and dirname() calls.
3. Reports a require_once as redundant when its resolved target is in the autoloadable set.

Development

git clone git@github.com:lll-lll-lll-lll/require-once-lint.git
cd require-once-lint
composer install
composer check   # php-cs-fixer + phpstan + phpunit

Use composer cs-fix to apply PHP-CS-Fixer changes.

License

MIT