Sourcetrail

{{Infobox software |

logo = |

screenshot = |

caption = Sourcetrail GUI |

name = Sourcetrail |

developer = The Sourcetrail Development Team|

latest_release_version = 2021.4.19 |

repo = {{URL|https://github.com/CoatiSoftware/Sourcetrail}} |

operating_system = Multiplatform |

license = GNU General Public License v3.0 |

genre = Software quality

}}

Sourcetrail was a FOSS source code explorer that provided interactive dependency graphs and support for multiple programming languages including C, C++, Java and Python.{{Cite web|url=https://www.infoworld.com/article/3454896/sourcetrail-code-navigator-now-free-open-source.html|title=Sourcetrail code navigator now free open source|first=Paul|last=Krill|date=November 21, 2019|website=InfoWorld}}

History

The project was started by Eberhard Gräther after an internship at Google where he worked on Google Chrome, and noticed that he consumed a lot of time (1 month) to implement a simple feature that he expected to be done in 1–2 hours. This was his motivation to develop a tool that helps in understanding the consequences of source code modifications.{{cite web | url=https://medium.com/@egraether/why-working-on-chrome-made-me-develop-a-tool-for-reading-source-code-7111ba21a6f0 | title=Why working on Chrome made me develop a tool for reading source code | date=10 January 2017 }} The project started as a commercial project in 2016 under the name Coati.{{Cite web|url=https://sourcetrail.com/blog/release_0_6/|title=Coati Release 0.6|website=Sourcetrail Developer Blog}} In November 2019, Sourcetrail was released as open-source software under version three of the GNU General Public License.{{Cite web|url=https://sourcetrail.com/blog/open_source/|title=Sourcetrail is now free and open-source software|website=Sourcetrail Developer Blog}}

The project was discontinued in 2021.https://web.archive.org/web/20211115131149/https://www.sourcetrail.com/blog/discontinue_sourcetrail/ Blog post on discontinuing Sourcetrail.

Concept

Most of a programmer's time is invested in reading the source code.{{Citation needed|date=February 2021}} Therefore, Sourcetrail is intended to help the developers to understand the source code and the relationship between different components. Sourcetrail builds a dependency graph after indexing the source code files and provides a graphical overview of the source code.

It is built in an extendable way, so it could be extended to support more programming languages.