conan-utils

Small, single-file utilities for Conan 1.x (targeting 1.66) that answer questions the stock conan info / conan search commands make hard to answer. Development and testing happen inside a pinned Podman container so nothing from the host environment leaks in.

Licensed under the MIT License.

Tools

Tool	What it does
conandeps	Lists direct/indirect dependencies, checks which build types have binaries on a remote for your exact profile, and shows requirement overrides.

conandeps

Given a conanfile.py, conandeps tells you three things in one report:

1. What you depend on – direct and indirect requirements, host and build context, as a table and as a tree.
2. Which binaries are missing – for every dependency, whether a package exists on the remote for Release, Debug and RelWithDebInfo (or any list you choose), evaluated for your exact profile (compiler, version, libcxx, arch, options, …), not "some binary with that build type".
3. Which requirements were overridden – both explicit self.requires("x/2.0", override=True) and implicit ones, where a downstream consumer simply asks for a newer version than a transitive dependency declared. Each override is listed with who wanted what and who forced the change, and annotated on the exact edge of the dependency tree where it happened.

Installation

Requires Python 3.8–3.11 (Conan 1.x does not run on 3.12+). With uv:

# As a command on your PATH, in its own venv with Conan 1.66:
uv tool install git+ssh://git@kode.naiv.no:2222/olemd/conan-1.6-utilities.git
# or, from a checkout: uv tool install .
conandeps path/to/conanfile.py -r knor

# Or run the single file directly, no checkout needed (PEP 723 inline metadata):
uv run conandeps.py path/to/conanfile.py -r knor

The tool's venv carries its own Conan 1.66 and does not touch the Conan you build with, but it reads the same ~/.conan configuration: profiles, remotes.json and stored remote credentials. Log in to your remote once with conan user -r <remote> -p (or set CONAN_LOGIN_USERNAME / CONAN_PASSWORD) if it requires authentication.

Usage

conandeps CONANFILE [-r REMOTE] [-pr PROFILE] [-s KEY=VALUE] [-o PKG:KEY=VALUE]
          [--build-types Release,Debug,RelWithDebInfo] [-u] [--html FILE] [-v]

Option	Meaning
CONANFILE	Path to conanfile.py (or a directory containing one).
-r, --remote	Remote to look for binaries in, e.g. -r knor. Default: all configured remotes.
-pr, --profile	Profile to evaluate with (repeatable, like conan -pr). Default: your default profile.
-s, -o	Extra settings / options, repeatable, same syntax as conan install.
--build-types	Comma-separated build types to check. Default: Release,Debug,RelWithDebInfo.
-u, --update	Ask the remote for newer recipes/binaries (conan -u).
--html FILE	Also write a self-contained HTML report (no scripts, no external assets).
-v	Echo Conan's own output to stderr.

Exit status: 0 all binaries present, 1 at least one is missing, 2 Conan failed to build the graph (for example a version conflict). This makes it usable as a CI gate.

Example

$ conandeps MyProject/conanfile.py -r knor
conandeps report for MyProject/conanfile.py
remote : knor
profile: arch=x86_64, compiler=gcc, compiler.libcxx=libstdc++11, compiler.version=14, os=Linux

Dependencies (4) and binary availability

package      kind    ctx   Release         Debug           RelWithDebInfo
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
MyDepA/1.0   direct  host  ok              ok              ok
boost/1.8    indir.  host  ok              ok              ok
MyDepB/1.0   direct  host  ok              ok              ok
Zigma/1.0    indir.  host  ok              ok              MISSING

MISSING BINARIES (1 packages)
  Zigma/1.0: missing RelWithDebInfo
      RelWithDebInfo package_id 3f9c...e21a

Overrides (1)
  Zigma/1.0 wanted boost/1.7
      -> forced to boost/1.8 by your conanfile  [implicit (newer direct requirement)]

Dependency hierarchy
MyProject/conanfile.py
|-- MyDepA/1.0
|   `-- boost/1.8
`-- MyDepB/1.0
    `-- Zigma/1.0  [MISSING: RelWithDebInfo]
        `-- boost/1.8  [overrides boost/1.7 (implicit by your conanfile)]

Reading the table:

• ok – a binary for your profile exists (in the remote, or already in your cache).
• MISSING – no binary for the package_id your profile produces. Hover the cell in the HTML report to see the package_id.
• - – not applicable (Conan marked the node Skip or Editable).
• Header-only packages show ok everywhere: their package_id ignores build_type.

Things worth knowing:

• Two sibling dependencies requiring different versions of the same package with no decision from your conanfile is a conflict in Conan 1.x, not an override. Conan refuses to build the graph, and conandeps prints Conan's conflict message and exits with 2.
• An override can change the package_id of the package whose requirement was rewritten (with the default semver_direct_mode, a direct requirement's version is part of the id). If that makes all build types of a package go MISSING, the report is telling the truth: no binary on the remote was built against the overridden version.

How it works

Rather than hand-matching conan search output against your profile, the dependency graph is built once per build type through Conan's own info API – the same code path conan install uses – and each node's binary status (Cache, Download, Update, Missing, …) is read back. That is why package_id() customisations, options and default_package_id_mode are honoured exactly as a real install would.

Conan 1.x does not keep override information on the graph object; the only trace is a WARN: <pkg>: requirement A overridden by B to C line written while the graph is resolved. The tool captures Conan's output stream during graph construction and parses those lines. A test pins the message format.

Development

Everything runs inside the conan-utils-dev container (Conan 1.66, Python 3.11, ruff, pytest, uv) via the dev.sh wrapper, which mounts the checkout at /work:

./dev.sh build                              # build the image
./dev.sh python -m pytest                   # run the tests
./dev.sh ruff check . && ./dev.sh ruff format .
./dev.sh                                    # interactive shell

The tests start a throw-away conan_server inside the container, upload a small dependency graph with deliberately missing binaries and both kinds of override, wipe the local cache, and run the tool against the server using an isolated CONAN_USER_HOME. Your own ~/.conan is never touched.

See CLAUDE.md for the conventions that apply when working on this repository.