Entry Files

Introduction

Entry files are the starting point for Knip to determine what files are used in the codebase. More entry files lead to increased coverage of the codebase. This also leads to more dependencies to be discovered. This page explains how Knip and its plugins try to find entry files so you don’t need to configure them yourself.

Default Entry File Patterns

For brevity, the default configuration on the previous page mentions only index.js and index.ts, but the default set of file names and extensions is actually a bit larger:

• index, main and cli
• js, mjs, cjs, jsx, ts, mts, cts and tsx

This means files like main.cjs and src/cli.ts are automatically added as entry files. Here’s the default configuration in full:

{
  "entry": [
    "{index,main,cli}.{js,cjs,mjs,jsx,ts,cts,mts,tsx}",
    "src/{index,main,cli}.{js,cjs,mjs,jsx,ts,cts,mts,tsx}"
  ],
  "project": ["**/*.{js,cjs,mjs,jsx,ts,cts,mts,tsx}"]
}

Next to the default locations, or the entry file patterns configured by you, Knip also looks for entry files in other places. All of this is done for each workspace separately.

The values you set override the default values, they are not merged.

Scripts in package.json

The main, bin, and exports fields may contain entry files. The scripts are also parsed to find entry files and dependencies. See Script Parser for more details.

Ignored Files

Knip respects .gitignore files and the ignore config option to prevent matching files from being added as entry file.