Google Kythe
{{Short description|Originally known as Project Grok}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=February 2021}}
{{Infobox software
| name = Google Kythe
| logo =
| latest release version = none yet (as of February 2015)
| developer = Google
| programming language = C++, Go, Java, JavaScript, Shell, Clojure
| operating system = Debian
| genre = Indexer and cross-referencer
| license = Apache License 2.0
| website = {{URL|kythe.io}}
}}
Google Kythe is a source code indexer and cross-referencer for code comprehension which describes itself as a "pluggable, (mostly) language-agnostic ecosystem for building tools that work with code".{{cite web|url=http://google-opensource.blogspot.cz/2015/01/kythe-new-approach-to-making-developer.html|title=Google Open Source Blog: Kythe: a new approach to making developer tools|work=Google Open Source Blog}}
The entirety of the Google team working on Kythe was laid off in April 2024, as part of a company push to move certain roles overseas.{{cite web | url=https://techcrunch.com/2024/04/29/google-lays-off-staff-from-flutter-dart-python-weeks-before-its-developer-conference/ | title=Exclusive: Google lays off staff from Flutter, Dart and Python teams weeks before its developer conference | date=May 2024 }}{{Cite web |title=item |url=https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40171371 |website=news.ycombinator.com}}
Overview
The core of Google Kythe is in defining language-agnostic protocols and data formats for representing, accessing and querying source code information as data. Kythe relies on an instrumented build system and compilers that produce indexing information, semantic information and metadata in Kythe specified format. This information obtained from running an instrumented build is stored in a language-agnostic graph structure. Finally, this graph structure can be queried to answer questions about the code base.{{cite web|url=http://www.kythe.io/docs/kythe-overview.html|title=Kythe - An Overview of Kythe|work=kythe.io}}
Google Kythe is an open-source project being developed by Google.{{cite web|url=http://www.kythe.io/ |title=Google Kythe Website|publisher=Google |accessdate=23 February 2015}} It is licensed under an Apache licence 2.0.
Grok
Google Kythe originates from an internal project called Grok.
Grok had been proposed by Steve Yegge in 2008.{{cite web|url=https://plus.google.com/110981030061712822816/posts/KaSKeg4vQtz|title=Notes from the Mystery Machine Bus|author=Steve Yegge|author-link=Steve Yegge|work=plus.google.com}} Yegge observed that software projects routinely use more than 3 programming languages, yet development tools tend to be language specific and don't handle multiple programming languages well. Adding support for a language to an IDE is hard and the ad hoc analysis tools in IDEs tend to be inferior to real parsers and compilers.{{cite web|url=http://bsumm.net/2012/08/11/steve-yegge-and-grok.html|title=Bryan Summersett - Steve Yegge and Grok|author=Bryan Summersett|work=bsumm.net|date=11 August 2012 }}
Some parts of Grok were publicly released even before Google Kythe was announced. In 2010, Google released a Python static analyzer which has been developed as part of Grok.{{cite web|url=http://bugs.jython.org/issue1541|title=Issue 1541: new static analyzer from Google - Jython tracker|work=jython.org}}
In 2012, C++, Java, Python, JS and "2 internal languages" were supported by Grok. There was a browser client with support for querying the database and visually navigating through the source code. There was an Emacs client.
Chromium Code Search Browser{{cite web|url=https://cs.chromium.org|title=Chromium Code Search}} uses Grok index to provide quick links to definition for every symbol in the source code.{{cite web|url=http://www.kythe.io/2015/03/02/exploring-kythe-sample-web-ui/|title=Kythe - Exploring Kythe's Sample Web UI|work=kythe.io|accessdate=30 April 2015|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150509112415/http://www.kythe.io/2015/03/02/exploring-kythe-sample-web-ui/|archive-date=9 May 2015|url-status=dead}}
Reception
{{Empty section|date=February 2015}}
See also
{{Portal|Free and open-source software}}
References
{{reflist|colwidth=30em}}
External links
=Grok=
- [https://plus.google.com/110981030061712822816/posts/KaSKeg4vQtz Notes from the Mystery Machine Bus], blog
- [http://bsumm.net/2012/08/11/steve-yegge-and-grok.html Steve Yegge and Grok], blog
- [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KTJs-0EInW8 Stanford Seminar - Google's Steve Yegge on GROK], lecture
- [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uRO3dNJx5Dw Project Grok - Steve Yegge - Emacs Conference 2013], talk
- [https://vimeo.com/16069687 Steve Yegge on Scalable Programming Language Analysis], talk
=Kythe=
- [https://kythe.io Kythe] (Google Kythe Homepage)
- [http://llvm.org/devmtg/2014-10/#talk21 Indexing Large, Mixed-Language Codebases], talk
=Similar projects=
- [https://github.com/facebook/pfff Facebook pfff]
- [https://github.com/sourcegraph/srclib srclib]
- [https://labs.oracle.com/pls/apex/f?p=labs:49:::::P49_PROJECT_ID:124 Oracle Frappé]{{cite web|last1=Hawes|first1=Nathan|last2=Barham|first2=Ben|title=Using Clang to Visualize Large Codebases|url=http://llvm.org/devmtg/2014-10/Slides/Hawes-Frappe.pdf|accessdate=25 September 2015}}
- [https://github.com/Microsoft/language-server-protocol Microsoft Language Server Protocol] designed as part of Visual Studio Code, with implementations for several languages and integrated by several other development tools.
{{Google LLC}}
Category:Code comprehension tools