Dead Code

Tools for identifying, analyzing, and removing unreachable declarations, forgotten APIs, and dead code across Dart and Flutter codebases.

ciach

A command-line tool acting as a wrapper around the Dart Analysis Server. It queries the analysis server for explicit references to declarations in the project.

ciach excels at deep codebase cleanup, inspecting internal class members, methods, constructors, extensions, and fields.

• Links: pub.dev · GitHub

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undead

Deterministic reachability and dead/unused declaration analysis library and CLI for Dart and Flutter packages.

It performs whole-package AST analysis using package:analyzer to build a reachability graph from known entrypoints to all internal declarations, identifying unused top-level declarations, classes, functions, and variables.

• Links: pub.dev · GitHub

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Comparison: ciach vs undead

	ciach	undead
Detection Engine	Queries the Dart Analysis Server for explicit references to declarations.	Parses AST and builds a reachability graph from known entrypoints.
Analysis Depth	Deep: Scans inside classes, including methods, constructors, extensions, and fields.	Top-level: Only identifies unused top-level declarations, classes, functions, and global variables.
Test Handling	Scans the included workspace files, including test/ unless excluded. May flag reflection-invoked tests as dead code.	Recognizes package test suites and test-runner entrypoints; library mode uses public lib/** exports as reachability roots.
Suppressions / Ignores	❌ No inline comments. (Requires CLI exclusions like -e 'file' or @pragma)	✅ Granular inline comments. (Via // undead:ignore & _for_file)
Auto-Removal	✅ Supported (via --remove flag)	❌ Analysis only

Summary & Recommendations

• Use ciach when you want to aggressively find and clean up unused internal methods, fields, and members deep inside your application codebase, and you want an automated way to delete them.
• Use undead when you are building a reusable package or library and want to audit public API reachability, ensuring you don't expose forgotten top-level declarations.