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Removing & Deprecating

Refactoring code often causes components to become obsolete or irrelevant. This is where removing and deprecating components becomes useful and necessary.

Each scope has an internal cache for its dependencies. But this does not mean that removing components is not dangerous. Due to the fact, that package managers don't always use cache. It may break builds that rely on deleted content. Deprecating a component means that Bit marks it as obsolete. Deprecated components are still available to consumers.

Remove a component from a remote scope

To remove a component from a remote scope, specify the full component ID.

$ bit remove username.your-scope/foo/bar --remote
successfully removed components:
username.your-scope/foo/bar

Effects of deleting components

To better understand how Bit handles deleted components, let's follow this example:

  • The left-pad in the utils scope.
  • A component trim-right depends on left-pad and is also in utils scope.
  • A component login also depends on left-pad but is in another scope - onboarding.

This is what happens if we remove left-pad:

  • Bit notifies that trim-right depends on left-pad. If we want to remove it, Bit asks to use the --force flag. This is because scopes don't cache their components.
  • The trim-right component has a missing dependency left-pad. A refactor for trim-right is critical for it to work.
  • login that also depends on left-pad is not affected by the removal of left-pad. This is because scopes keep a cache of external dependencies.
  • It is still possible to source login to another consumer project, as the cache works for Bit.
  • Installing login using npm fails because npm tries to install left-pad from its original scope.

Remove a component from a workspace

Removing a local component has no ripple effects. This is only relevant to the consuming project. To do so specify the component ID to remove.

$ bit remove foo/bar
successfully removed components:
foo/bar

Bit triggers a warning when trying to remove modified components. Use the --force flag to force it.

Effects of deleting components from a workspace

Other components in the workspace may depend on removed components. Meaning that removing these dependencies affects dependent components. Several cases may occur when deleting a local component:

  • A new component that depends on a removed component is not affected. This is because Bit did not isolate the component.
  • A staged component that depends on a removed component causes Bit to stop the remove command. To force it, we use the --force flag.
  • An exported component that depends on a local removed component is not affected. This is because an exported component is isolated and immutable. So deleting a local dependency does not affect.

Deprecate a component in a remote scope

To deprecate a component in a remote scope, specify the full component ID and use the --remote option.

$ bit deprecate username.your-scope/foo/bar --remote
deprecated components: username.your-scope/foo/bar

Deprecating a component in a workspace

To deprecate a component in a workspace, specify the component ID.

$ bit deprecate foo/bar
deprecated components: foo/bar
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