How to find and remove unused class files from a project

Question

My XCode project has grown somewhat, and I know that there are class files in there which are no longer being used. Is there an easy way to find all of these and remove them?

Answer 1

If the class files just sit in your project without being part of a target, just click on the project itself in the tree view, so you see all files in the table. Make sure you see the "Target" column in the table view, iterate through your targets and find the files that don't have a check anywhere -> they are no longer compiled.

But if you still compile the classes and they are no longer used, that case is a bit more difficult. Check out this project

http://www.karppinen.fi/analysistool/#dependency-graphs

You could create a dependency graph and try to find orphaned classes that way.

Edit: Link went dead, but there still seem to be projects of Objective-C dependency graphs around, for example https://github.com/nst/objc_dep

Answer 2

if they are C or C++ symbols, then you can just let the linker do the work for you.

if you're looking to remove objc symbols, then try to refactor the class name (e.g. to rename the class), and preview the dependencies that it turns up. if you reference classes/selectors/etc. by strings then... it may not be so effective. unfortunately, you often have to also test manually, to verify that removing a class does not break anything. remember that resources (like xibs) may reference/load objc classes as well.