Side-Effect Imports

ID: side_effect_import | Severity: Low (default)

Identifies imports that are performed only for their side effects (e.g., import './globals';), which often modify global state or prototypes.

Why this is a smell

Side-effect imports make the dependency graph less explicit and can lead to non-deterministic behavior depending on the import order. They are often "hidden" dependencies that are hard to track.

Excluded Patterns

archlint automatically ignores the following side-effect imports:

• CSS/Assets: import './styles.css', import './image.png', etc.
• Dynamic Imports: import('./module') or require('./module') inside functions (often used for lazy loading or conditional imports).

How to fix

Try to make the initialization explicit. Instead of relying on a side-effect import, export an init() function and call it explicitly.