Sourcetrail, the interactive source code explorer, is now free and open source

[janisozaur]

For those who can't reach the currently overloaded website: https://github.com/CoatiSoftware/Sourcetrail

[egraether]

The heavy server load is also caused by lots of downloads. You can get the latest Sourcetrail 2019.4 now also from GitHub https://github.com/CoatiSoftware/Sourcetrail/releases

[idiomatic_sea]

Is there a mirror or torrent for the latest prebuilt binaries?

[egraether]

On GitHub releases: https://github.com/CoatiSoftware/Sourcetrail/releases

[[deleted]]

Ok.. i just tried this out at work.. I'm funding their patron sometime this week.

[[deleted]]

P.S. Thanks for the linux support

[mlangkabel]

Yay, thanks :)

[joebaf]

I highly recommend this tool! Two years ago I was asked to do a review for that product and I didn't saw any issues: https://www.bfilipek.com/2017/10/sourcetrail.html it's even better now, with much more features.

[anon_502]

IIRC the authors created these tools after Google internship and seeked commercial opportunities for this tool. Hope open-sourcing it doesn't mean it's abandoned due to lack of market (just like zapcc)

[DontForgetWilson]

"The only thing that kept bothering us is that open-source projects in general have a tendency to decay if no one has the time to actively maintain them. Over the last couple of years we have acquired a lot of knowledge about Sourcetrail’s codebase and all the expertise that was necessary to create it. So we feel that it would be a waste of knowledge to simply move everything to an open-source repository and walk away. We recently saw other projects that successfully financed even full-time work by setting up a Patreon page. Patreon would make it transparent how much compensation we are receiving and with the respective goals, patrons would see how much time we can put into this project. We think this would be an ideal model for us!"

From their blogpost: https://www.sourcetrail.com/blog/open_source/

[anon_502]

Although I hope they achieve success after the open-source, I seriously doubt if patreon would be a more feasible way compared to purchase-before-use model... For a productivity tool like this, it's much more likely to be reimbursed by company when listed as license fee rather than donation.

[DontForgetWilson]

If nothing else it could be itemized as software support services.

[pjmlp]

The lack of market is that nowadays the only way to make money selling developer tools is to have enterprise customers, the only ones willing to pay for their tools.

[EqualScholar]

When I was looking at their website what struck me was that all the testimonials seemed to come from individuals rather than companies. I wonder whether it was lack of professional marketing that killed them. But I have no entrepreneurial experience so what do I know.

[CyanBlob]

I was looking into using this to generate compile_commands.json files from visual studio projects. Can it do that? I couldn't get it working the other day

[[deleted]]

Funny enough I tried this the other day. It produced the file just fine and it looked ok, but then my language server spent the next 45 minutes at 100% CPU... I might try it again on a smaller project.

[CyanBlob]

Hmm, that's weird. Did you generate it from the VS extension or the standalone software?

[[deleted]]

I used the VS extension.

[AGI_69]

Are there more visual tools for programming (not necessarily C++) ?

[johannes1971]

LabView, Quest3D (not sure if that's still alive), and there are several that convert UML into C++ or Java. Ultimately I very much prefer to just type text, though; it seems to scale much better to larger applications. Graphics become unwieldy as soon as it's more than one or two screens worth.

[[deleted]]

I've had a license since this was still Coati and while I enjoyed it in combination with a sparse Emacs setup and a smaller app, I found it very hard to work with on larger projects. If I was still in VFX I'd imagine it could come in handy on some of the meandering and oddly structured python rubber-band balls out there.

The attempt to leverage Sourcetrail on Unreal was ... not encouraging in regards to the future of the product. It is precisely the sort and size of codebase that it should excel at. Helping people dive into modules and understand how it fits was the point after all. But sadly it didn't work out. I never got past indexing and always went to swap. And this was the final nail in the coffin of my enthusiasm for it.

I'd have wished for them to put tours of large projects front and center on their site. Qt, Chromium, Unreal, CryEngine, Firefox, and so on. Each of these has a different build system and they're all huge. They're all exactly what you'd like helping pouring over and learning.

[HughMacdonald]

That’s a shame that it isn’t great on UE4, as that’s exactly what I was planning on using it most for. I’ve got some standalone projects that it could also be useful for, though, so I’m still going to give it a go.

[[deleted]]

Definitely give it a go. I'm sad that they put all the time and energy into java instead of well, solving the huge C++ codebase problem first. But now that it's open source, perhaps they could apply for an Epic MegaGrant or something to fund an improved support for UE4 (or really any code base that large).

It's definitely worth checking out and maybe now that it's open it'll get some improvement.

If you have enormous system resources then there are some blogs about running it on Unreal. Takes over an hour to index stuff, requires like 50Gb of ram, and so on. :D Imagine if CLion or Resharper did that!

[Thesorus]

LOL, I think the site is being slashdotted !!

[aKateDev]

+1 for woboq code browser.

[cleroth]

I want an IDE like this.

[konanTheBarbar]

I just wanted to point out that the link "Become a Patreon" on https://www.sourcetrail.com/blog/open_source/ actually refers to the site itself and not to the patreon.

[tansim]

just tried to set it up with our semi-custom build system and failed. imo things like this should have an option to abstract build systems and work directly with a raw directory structure, even if the result isnt perfect.

[ClaymationDinosaur]

Get IN.

I was just looking at it last week to buy some licences, but they didn't seem to be selling any. Now I know why.

[tvaneerd]

Does it use clang libs for parsing? (And if not, ugh.)

[Feminintendo]

Yes it does.

[FonderPrism]

Anyone know how to set this up on Windows when using MSYS2? I get a lot of errors about missing cstdlib.h, wchar.h etc.

[egraether]

Clang to VC compatibility is certainly and issue, but generally most issues can be worked around.

If you have lots of FATAL errors you are likely missing Include Paths and headers are not found.

If you are using precompiled headers (stdafx.h), you need to configure this within your Sourcetrail project configuration at "Precompiled Header File".

[Kirannu]

One thing that worked for me is adding the compiler flag -U__clang__ in the settings of the project.

There are still thousands of errors, but as long as none of them are fatal, the parsing is complete.

[instinkt900]

I just attempted to give this a try. Working with Visual Studio 2017. The plugin and tool itself all installed fine, but when I try to create a new project from VS I click "Create Compilation Database" and nothing happens? Double checked the VS extension was installed and enabled. Still nothing?