Find unused XML files in a project

Hello docbook-apps.

I have a large set of projects that I am looking to scrub for unused graphics and XML files prior to sending off to localization.

Some of my colleagues have created some very basic bash and batch scripts to scan through the folders and find files that aren’t referenced in any of the source files so we can delete them, but I worry that these
 scripts don’t catch everything (unused XML files in the base directory that reference images will ‘bless’ this images) and we could still have extraneous files left over or accidentally delete important ones unknowingly.

Each project has a book.xml file that is the gold master for the outputs. If the book.xml file or any of its includes doesn’t reference a file in the project, it’s safe to delete. I was hoping that I could use
 xmllint to tell me which files are loaded when I try to validate the book.xml, but I haven’t found the magic formula yet.

I’ve tried the following command to reference all of the loaded files during a pass, but it doesn’t seem to list the image files referenced, which is mostly the point of this exercise, and I get a lot of noise
 from the module files for the DTD on every include.

$ xmllint --load-trace book.xml --xinclude --noout &> test1

Has anyone had a similar problem to solve? Am I going about this the right way?

Thanks, and I’m open to any suggestion. If bash and xmllint don’t work here, I am partial to Python as an alternative. Just saying.

Eric Nordlund

Senior Technical Writer

Amazon Web Services

Ph: 206-266-8048 |