Task: Dead Views and Partials Cleanup

Created: April 25, 2026 Priority: Low Estimated Savings: ~13 view files (Tier 1, zero risk) up to ~700 view files (full sweep) Risk: Low for Tier 1, Medium for Tier 2, Higher for Tier 3 (dynamic-render directories)

Overview

Static analysis of app/views/ against controller / route / render call sites surfaced ~678 partial files and several full view directories with no obvious references. Sample-verifying 15 random partials from the candidate list found 15/15 truly unreferenced, so the signal is good — but the long tail (shared/, pages/, root-level partials) carries false-positive risk because of dynamic render "#{prefix}_partial" patterns and gem-rendered views.

This task is a follow-up to the Rails 7.2 upgrade work. It is not a prerequisite for Rails 8.x — it just removes dead code so the eventual 8.x bump has less surface to worry about.

How the candidate list was built

Tight regex over every .rb, .erb, .haml in app/, lib/, config/:

render(?:\s+|\s*\(\s*)(?:(?:partial|template|layout)\s*:\s*)?["']<name>["']
| partial\s*:\s*["']<name>["']

A partial at app/views/foo/_bar.html.erb was searched by both:

• the qualified name foo/bar across the entire repo, and
• the short name bar within the app/views/foo/** subtree.

Auto-collection rendering (render @foos) was filtered by skipping partials whose short name matches a model name and whose containing directory is the plural form of that name.

The output list lives in /tmp/unused_partials_tight.txt from the analysis session — regenerate it before deleting anything (production adds and removes views constantly).

Tier 1 — Definitely dead (zero risk, ~13 files)

Verified three ways: no controller on disk, no route entry, no render call referencing the file.

app/views/articles/ (7 files — delete the entire directory)

• _article.html.erb
• _form.html.erb
• _product_linking_form.html.erb
• edit.html.erb
• index.html.erb
• new.html.erb
• show.html.erb

Notes: there is no ArticlesController. The only /articles/:id route in config/routes/www.rb points at www/support_articles#show — a different controller that has its own views under app/views/www/support_articles/.

app/views/blocks/ (5 files — delete the entire directory)

• _form.html.erb
• edit.html.erb
• index.html.erb
• new.html.erb
• show.html.erb

Notes: no BlocksController, no Block model in app/models/ (the only Block class on disk is lib/dxf/floor_plan.rb:343 — a DXF geometry primitive, unrelated). No routes target blocks#….

Cascade-dead from the blocks/ removal

app/views/employee_work_schedules/_full_calendar.html.erb (1 file) calls render partial: 'blocks/calendar' (line 2). That target partial does not exist either — the call would 500 if the partial were ever rendered. The _full_calendar.html.erb partial itself is not rendered from anywhere. Delete it.

Other confirmed-dead one-offs

• app/views/employee_events/_new_event_modal.html.erb — no caller.

Tier 2 — Low risk, per-file review (~250 files)

These are partials inside directories where a live controller exists and live siblings are still rendered — meaning the feature is alive but specific partials inside it have no callers. Bucket counts from the candidate list:

26  app/views/room_configurations
26  app/views/www/products
23  app/views/menus
19  app/views/uploads
13  app/views/preset_jobs
11  app/views/employee_events
10  app/views/line_items
 9  app/views/crm/payments/gateways
 9  app/views/opportunities
 9  app/views/orders
 8  app/views/praises
 8  app/views/crm/amazon_products
 8  app/views/coupons
 8  app/views/communications
 8  app/views/images
 8  app/views/www/leads
 7  app/views/quotes
 7  app/views/my_accounts
 6  app/views/customers
 6  app/views/deliveries
 6  app/views/my_carts
 6  app/views/crm/reports/opportunities_report
 6  app/views/crm/reports/reports
 6  app/views/searches/item_search
 6  app/views/searches/customer_search   (subset of the searches/ tree)
 5  app/views/posts
 5  app/views/my_orders
 5  app/views/my_addresses
 5  app/views/items
 5  app/views/www/payments/gateways
 4  app/views/invoices
…

Recommended approach: drop directory-by-directory, run the full test suite per drop, smoke the corresponding feature in QA. Since CRM and www are different deployment targets, group commits by area.

Tier 3 — Dynamic-render risk, manual eyeball needed (~400 files)

46  app/views/shared
25  app/views/shared/heat_loss
21  app/views/pages
17  app/views                     (root-level _foo.html.erb partials)
…

The risk in these directories is render "#{prefix}_partial" and render "shared/#{type}"-style calls. Before deleting any file in shared/, pages/, or the root, run:

git grep -E 'render(?:\s+|\s*\(\s*)["][^"]*#\{' -- '*.erb' '*.rb' | head -40

…to find all dynamic-render call sites and audit them by hand.

The ~17 root-level app/views/_*.erb partials are the cleanest place to start in this tier — they are referenced (if at all) as bare render 'live_chat' style, which the static scan does pick up. Most of them appear to be CMS leftovers from before the pages/ refactor and are likely safe to delete after a quick eyeball.

Tier 4 — Routes / actions / controllers (separate task)

Not addressed by this task. The right tool is the traceroute gem (already in the :development group of the Gemfile). Once the app boots locally:

bundle exec rake traceroute

…produces an authoritative list of Unused routes and Routes without action. Static analysis without booting is unreliable because:

• Many routes use controller: 'admin/foo' syntax.
• Devise / Doorkeeper inject controllers via devise_for :foo, controllers: { … }.
• BasePortalController-style abstract classes have no direct route but are inherited by live controllers.

Plan of attack

1. Land Tier 1 as one commit on the Rails 7.2 PR branch (or a new small PR) — 13 file deletions, no behavior change. Smoke test: none required; nothing else references these files.
2. After Tier 1 ships, regenerate the candidate list (production ships features weekly). Re-run the analysis script on the current master so we don’t ship a stale list.
3. Land Tier 2 in directory-grouped commits. One commit per area is fine (CRM / www / employee / accounting). Smoke-test each feature as it ships.
4. Run bundle exec rake traceroute to drive the Tier 4 routes / actions cleanup as a separate follow-up.
5. Save Tier 3 for last — it’s the smallest reward per hour of review and the highest false-positive risk.

Regenerating the candidate list

scripts/find_unused_partials.rb

require 'pathname'

views_root = Pathname('app/views')
partials = []
Dir.glob('app/views/**/_*.{erb,haml}').sort.each do |path|
  pn = Pathname(path)
  basename = pn.basename.to_s
  next unless basename =~ /^_(.+?)(?:\.([a-z_]+))?\.(erb|haml)$/
  short = $1
  dirpath = pn.dirname.relative_path_from(views_root).to_s
  qualified = dirpath == '.' ? short : "#{dirpath}/#{short}"
  partials << { path: path, short: short, qualified: qualified, dirpath: dirpath }
end

corpus = {}
%w[app lib config].each do |d|
  Dir.glob("#{d}/**/*.{rb,erb,haml}").each do |f|
    corpus[f] = (File.read(f, encoding: 'UTF-8') rescue nil)
  end
end
corpus.compact!

def render_pattern(name)
  esc = Regexp.escape(name)
  Regexp.new(
    "render(?:\\s+|\\s*\\(\\s*)(?:(?:partial|template|layout)\\s*:\\s*)?[\"']#{esc}[\"']" \
    "|partial\\s*:\\s*[\"']#{esc}[\"']"
  )
end

unused = []
partials.each do |p|
  patt_q = render_pattern(p[:qualified])
  patt_s = (p[:dirpath] != '.') ? render_pattern(p[:short]) : nil
  found = false
  corpus.each do |f, src|
    next if f == p[:path]
    if src.match?(patt_q)
      found = true
      break
    end
    if patt_s && f.start_with?("app/views/#{p[:dirpath]}/") && src.match?(patt_s)
      found = true
      break
    end
  end
  unused << p[:path] unless found
end
puts unused

Run as ruby scripts/find_unused_partials.rb > /tmp/unused.txt.

Out of scope (related cleanups noticed in passing)

• Gemfile.lock still has a GIT remote: https://github.com/warmlyyours/dragonfly-s3_data_store entry for the dragonfly-s3_data_store gem. Worth confirming dragonfly itself is still in use; if not, this and its transitive deps can be dropped.
• Two PR-scope gaps from the earlier static audit are already fixed in the Rails 7.2 PR follow-up commits:
  • app/models/order_transaction.rb serialize :params → coder: YAML
  • app/models/seo_page_keyword.rb enum keyword_target: { … } → positional form
  • lib/online_migrations/.../backfill_google_ads_visit_sources.rb connection → lease_connection