Week 4 Dig: Tool inventory

Dependency analysis — reading package manifests as archaeological tool kits to date the project and reconstruct the technological era it belongs to.

15 March 2027

Before the dig

Open your dig site’s dependency manifest (package.json, requirements.txt, Gemfile, go.mod, or equivalent). For each direct dependency:

Look it up. Is it still maintained? When was its last release?
What era does it place the project in? A project using request instead of node-fetch or undici dates itself to before 2020. jQuery 1.x dates to before 2016.
Are any dependencies pinned to exact versions? What does pinning tell you about the team’s relationship to change?

In the session

Present your tool inventory as a dating report. The class cross-references: students working on projects in the same language can compare dependency choices and what they reveal about different teams’ priorities.

Afterwards

The Dig Report is due next week. Use this session’s findings as the tool-inventory section of your report.

The spec

What you bring to the session. Written so a reader can tell whether it has been met without asking you.

you can list your dig site's direct dependencies and the era each belongs to
you have identified at least one dependency choice that tells you something about the team
you have checked which dependencies are themselves now abandoned

Teaching team

Kai Nakamura — tutor