issue_tree v0.12.7

Version 0.12.7 was built on Thursday, May 28, 2026 at GMT-07:00 1779997868547 from hash 58e5792.

issue_tree scans one or more GitHub repositories into a local JSON cache, builds a dependency graph from blocking-issue links, and renders that graph in a variety of formats — including a self-contained interactive HTML page.

 

 

issue_tree CLI

issue_tree exposes four subcommands that implement a scan → graph → render pipeline:

Subcommands

issue_tree scan   [--repo <owner/repo>] ... [--cache <file>] [--token <token>] [--wait] [--force]
issue_tree render [--cache <file>] [--format <fmt>] [--out <file>] [--scope <scope>]
                  [--repo <owner/repo>] ... [--label <label>] ... [--milestone <title>]
                  [--state <state>] [--child-of-gates] [--edge-style <style>] [--rankdir <dir>]
issue_tree all    (accepts all scan and render flags)
issue_tree auto   [<path>] (accepts all scan and render flags)
Copy

scan

Fetches issues from one or more GitHub repositories (and any external repositories they block against) and writes a resumable JSON cache. Key flags:

• --repo <owner/repo> — one or more target repositories (repeatable).
• --cache <file> — cache file path (default issue-tree-cache.json).
• --token <token> — GitHub personal access token; falls back to GITHUB_TOKEN env var, then gh auth token.
• --wait — on hitting the rate limit, sleep until it resets and continue.
• --force — discard any existing cache before scanning.
• --quiet / -q — suppress per-page and per-issue progress output. By default scan writes a progress line to stderr for every phase boundary, every page of issues fetched, every external blocker resolved, and every issue whose comments were fetched. Use --quiet to silence all of that (the final scan complete line on stdout still prints).

render

Reads an existing cache and renders the dependency graph. A missing cache is a hard error — render never scans. Key flags:

• --cache <file> — cache to read (default issue-tree-cache.json).
• --format <fmt> — one of json, dot, svg, png, jpeg, html (default: inferred from --out extension, otherwise svg).
• --out <file> — write output to a file. For text formats (json/dot/svg/html), omitting --out writes to stdout. For binary formats (png/jpeg), omitting --out writes to a generated default file in the current directory named owner_repo_YYYY-MM-DD_HH-MM-SS.ext, with _and_N_more appended after the first repo when multiple repos contribute to the render.
• --scope <scope> — open (default), connected, or all.
• --label <label> — keep only issues with this label (repeatable; OR semantics across multiple uses).
• --milestone <title> — keep only issues in this milestone.
• --state <state> — open, closed, or all (default all).
• --edge-style <style> — color (default) or color+shape.
• --rankdir <dir> — lr (default, left-to-right) or tb (top-to-bottom).
• --engine <name> — Graphviz layout engine: dot (default, hierarchical), neato/fdp/sfdp (force-directed, more compact for sparse graphs), twopi (radial), or circo (circular).
• --splines <kind> — edge routing: curved (default), line (straight), ortho (right-angle), polyline, spline, or none.
• --nodesep <inches> — gap between nodes in the same rank. Graphviz default 0.25.
• --ranksep <inches> — gap between ranks. Graphviz default 0.5. Halving these roughly halves the corresponding axis of the output.
• --concentrate — merge parallel edges with shared endpoints.
• --packmode <mode> — how disconnected components (multiple small trees) are arranged in 2D. node (default, shelf packing — fills space tightly without a grid), array (row-major grid), clust (cluster-by-cluster), graph (whole-graph cell), or off (Graphviz default — stack along the rank-orthogonal axis). For repos with many independent issue chains, node produces a far more readable view than the vertically-stacked default.
• --graph-pad <inches> — outer pad around the whole graph (~0.055 default).
• --graph-margin <inches> — outer page margin (0.5 default).
• --node-margin <x[,y]> — per-node text padding inside boxes (Graphviz default 0.11,0.055).
• --edge-minlen <N> — minimum rank distance per edge (default 1).
• --issue-shape <shape> and --pr-shape <shape> — Graphviz shape names for issue and PR nodes (defaults box and ellipse). Accepts box, polygon, ellipse, oval, circle, egg, triangle, diamond, trapezium, parallelogram, house, pentagon, hexagon, septagon, octagon, doublecircle, doubleoctagon, tripleoctagon, Mdiamond, Msquare, Mcircle, square, star, note, tab, folder, box3d, component, cylinder, and rectangle.
• --raster-max <px> — for png/jpeg output only, the maximum pixel dimension on the longer axis. When the laid-out SVG would exceed this on either axis, the output is downscaled by a single zoom factor that brings the longer axis down to this value, preserving aspect ratio. Defaults to 8192. A one-line notice is written to stderr when capping fires. This guard exists because long dependency chains can produce SVGs with extreme aspect ratios — a 1597-node graph routinely lays out at ~3800 × 81600 px, whose 1:1 RGBA buffer alone is 1.2 GB before any JPEG encoding overhead.

all

Runs scan then render in a single invocation, accepting every flag from both.

auto

Walks a project tree, extracts the GitHub repository URL from every project manifest it finds, forwards the deduped list to scan, and then renders the resulting cache — auto is a scan + render combo, exactly like all, except the repo list comes from filesystem discovery instead of --repo flags. Useful when you are sitting inside a polyglot monorepo or a directory containing several checked-out projects and want a one-shot graph across all of them.

issue_tree auto                              # discovers + scans + writes auto-named PNG to cwd
issue_tree auto ./projects --cache big.json  # rooted at ./projects, custom cache
issue_tree auto --format svg --out g.svg     # render to SVG instead of PNG
Copy

The positional argument is the directory to scan (defaults to .). Every scan flag (--cache, --token, --wait, --force, --quiet) and every render flag (--format, --out, --scope, --label, --milestone, --state, --child-of-gates, --edge-style, --rankdir, --engine, --splines, --nodesep, --ranksep, --concentrate, --packmode, --graph-pad, --graph-margin, --node-margin, --edge-minlen, --issue-shape, --pr-shape, --raster-max) is accepted and forwarded.

The auto default --format is png (unlike render/all, which default to svg). The reasoning: the natural endpoint of issue_tree auto is a finished image, so binary is the best implicit choice. Override with --format <fmt> or by passing --out with a recognized extension (e.g. --out g.svg picks svg).

Detection logs go to stdout (one detected: <file> → <owner/name> line per repo) and are suppressed by --quiet. If no repos are found, auto exits with code 2 and a no GitHub repos detected message and skips render. If the scan rate-limits, auto still proceeds to render against the partial cache (matching all's semantics).

Recognized manifest formats (one repo extracted per match; non-GitHub URLs are skipped):

Ecosystem	File pattern	Field
Node/JS/TS	package.json	.repository or .repository.url
Rust	Cargo.toml	[package].repository
Python	pyproject.toml	[project.urls].{Repository,Source,Homepage} or [tool.poetry].repository
Go	go.mod	module github.com/... line
PHP	composer.json	.support.source or .homepage
Dart	pubspec.yaml	repository: or homepage:
Java/Maven	pom.xml	<scm><url> or <scm><connection>
.NET	*.csproj / *.fsproj / *.vbproj	<RepositoryUrl>
Crystal	shard.yml	repository: or url:
Haskell	*.cabal	source-repository.location: or homepage:
OCaml	dune-project	(source (github ...)) or (source (uri ...))
Ruby	*.gemspec	spec.metadata['source_code_uri'] or spec.homepage
ObjC/Swift	*.podspec	s.source = { :git => ... } or s.homepage
R	DESCRIPTION	URL: (first GitHub entry wins)
Lua	*.rockspec	source = { url = ... } or homepage
Elixir	mix.exs	links: %{"GitHub" => "..."}
Perl	META.json / META.yml	.resources.repository.{url,web}
Julia	Project.toml	repo = "..."
PowerShell	*.psd1	ProjectUri = '...'
Zig	build.zig.zon	.repository = "..."
D	dub.json / dub.sdl	.sourceRepository
Clojure	project.clj	:url "..." inside defproject
Common Lisp	*.asd	:source-control or :homepage
Fortran	fpm.toml	[package].repository

Excluded directories. The traversal never descends into directories that hold vendored dependencies or build artifacts: node_modules, vendor, target, dist, build, out, bin, obj, __pycache__, .venv, venv, env, .tox, .pytest_cache, Pods, .gradle, .idea, .vs, .vscode, .next, .nuxt, coverage, coverage-* (e.g. coverage-typedoc), htmlcov, .git, .svn, .hg, bower_components, elm-stuff, deps, _build, .stack-work, .cargo, .pub-cache. This prevents thousands of unrelated package.json files (or similar) from a dependency tree from polluting the scan list.

Output formats

Format	Description
json	The filtered graph as JSON (nodes + edges + metadata).
dot	Graphviz DOT source.
svg	SVG rendered via viz.js.
png	PNG rasterized from the SVG via resvg.
jpeg	JPEG rasterized from the SVG via resvg.
html	Self-contained interactive HTML — includes the viz.js layout engine and the browser client bundle, so the file works offline with no server.

The html format is particularly useful for sharing: the output file opens in any browser and renders the graph interactively without a server or network access.

Important: render never scans

render reads a pre-built cache. If the cache file does not exist, the command exits with an error. Run scan (or all) first to produce the cache.

 

 

Test status

	Count	Statement	Branch	Func	Line
Unit	422	96.5%	{{unitbranch}}%	{{unitfunc}}%	{{unitline}}%
Stochastic	18	96.5%	{{stochbranch}}%	{{stochfunc}}%	{{stochline}}%

	Docblock count	100%
Docblock coverage	262	100%

• Site
• Documentation
• Builds
• Source

 

 

How to use this template

 

Before invoking it

1. [ ] Decide whether to
   1. Update the deps in the template recommended
   2. Update the deps post-install
   3. Let the deps be out of date

 

After invoking it

1. [ ] Reset package version
2. [ ] Turn Github Pages on, and point it at master//docs
3. [ ] Set up the auth token TODO_TOKEN_FOR_GH_CI_CD after renaming it in ci.yml
4. [ ] Change all the issue_trees in this file's top block links
5. [ ] Change all the issue_trees in package.json
6. [ ] Change the issue_tree in verify_version_bump.js
7. [ ] Write or copy-paste the description in package.json
8. [ ] Search for all remaining TODOs
9. [ ] Update meta tags and TODOs in src/html/index.html
10. [ ] Write a base-README.md
11. [ ] Change all the issue_trees in rollup.config.js
12. [ ] Decide whether to
    1. re-add a bin block to package.json, or
    2. remove the bin config from rollup.config.js
13. [ ] npm install && npm run build
    1. Maybe update the deps?
14. Handle the MAYBE-REMOVEs in the HTML HEAD
    1. [ ] Change src/html/index.html 's