Effective Code Browsing

This page summarizes the projects mentioned and recommended in the original post on news.ycombinator.com

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  • fzf

    :cherry_blossom: A command-line fuzzy finder

    This just searches filenames though. If you want to search the contents of the files, use something like ripgrep

    https://github.com/junegunn/fzf#3-interactive-ripgrep-integr...

  • ripgrep

    ripgrep recursively searches directories for a regex pattern while respecting your gitignore

  • WorkOS

    The modern identity platform for B2B SaaS. The APIs are flexible and easy-to-use, supporting authentication, user identity, and complex enterprise features like SSO and SCIM provisioning.

  • Sourcetrail

    Discontinued Sourcetrail - free and open-source interactive source explorer

  • weggli

    weggli is a fast and robust semantic search tool for C and C++ codebases. It is designed to help security researchers identify interesting functionality in large codebases.

    There are lots of ripgrep fans in the comments, but another interesting alternative to grep specifically for code browsing might be weggli by my teammate Felix!

    https://github.com/googleprojectzero/weggli

  • locust

    "git diff" over abstract syntax trees (by bugout-dev)

    Nice!

    Have been working on something similar, although my use case is more about learning how code has changed across git commits: https://github.com/bugout-dev/locust

    For Javascript/Typescript/React support, like you, I hooked into the Babel toolchain. Can't recommend it highly enough.

    There's also a newish project called quick-lint-js which seems to have written their own from-scratch AST parser for JS, but I haven't tried it yet: https://github.com/quick-lint/quick-lint-js

    Finally, another project that I know in this space is comby (I believe it is owned/maintained by the folks at Sourcegraph): https://comby.dev/

    Don't know why I dumped all those links there. Just figured there may be something useful in them for you. Am also just super passionate about building knowledge about code bases by analyzing their ASTs. Nice to meet a fellow enthusiast. :)

  • quick-lint-js

    quick-lint-js finds bugs in JavaScript programs

    Nice!

    Have been working on something similar, although my use case is more about learning how code has changed across git commits: https://github.com/bugout-dev/locust

    For Javascript/Typescript/React support, like you, I hooked into the Babel toolchain. Can't recommend it highly enough.

    There's also a newish project called quick-lint-js which seems to have written their own from-scratch AST parser for JS, but I haven't tried it yet: https://github.com/quick-lint/quick-lint-js

    Finally, another project that I know in this space is comby (I believe it is owned/maintained by the folks at Sourcegraph): https://comby.dev/

    Don't know why I dumped all those links there. Just figured there may be something useful in them for you. Am also just super passionate about building knowledge about code bases by analyzing their ASTs. Nice to meet a fellow enthusiast. :)

NOTE: The number of mentions on this list indicates mentions on common posts plus user suggested alternatives. Hence, a higher number means a more popular project.

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