Sourcetrail
Sourcetrail was a free, open-source source code explorer that provided interactive dependency graphs and support for multiple programming languages including C, C++, Java and Python.[1][2][3][4][5][6][7]
| Developer(s) | The Sourcetrail Development Team |
|---|---|
| Stable release | 2020.2.43
|
| Repository | https://github.com/CoatiSoftware/Sourcetrail |
| Operating system | Multiplatform |
| Type | Software quality |
| License | GNU General Public License v3.0 |
| Website | www |
History
The project was started by Eberhard Gräther after an internship at Google where he worked on Google Chrome and consumed a lot of time (1 month) to implement a simple feature that he expected to be done in 1–2 hours. The complexity of understanding large code-bases by new developers was his motivation to develop a tool that help in understanding the consequences of source code modifications.[8]
The project started as a commercial project in 2016 under the name Coati.[9] In November 2019, Sourcetrail was released as open-source software under version three of the GNU General Public License.[10]
The project was discontinued in 2021. [11]
Concept
Most of a programmer's time is invested in reading the source code. Therefore, the goal of Sourcetrail is 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.
References
- Krill, Paul (November 21, 2019). "Sourcetrail code navigator now free open source". InfoWorld.
- Das, Ankush. "The Cross-Platform Source Explorer Sourcetrail is Now Open Source - It's FOSS".
- "Sourcetrail, an interactive source code explorer, becomes open source". November 20, 2019.
- "Sourcetrail promises to help software engineers explore, navigate & understand unknown source code quickly". November 16, 2018.
- "L'outil d'exploration de code Sourcetrail passe en open source - Le Monde Informatique". LeMondeInformatique.
- "Sourcetrail: Tool zur Code-Visualisierung wird Open Source". November 20, 2019.
- "ソースコード検索エンジン「Sourcetrail」OSS化、GitHub上で公開". CodeZine.
- https://medium.com/@egraether/why-working-on-chrome-made-me-develop-a-tool-for-reading-source-code-7111ba21a6f0
- "Coati Release 0.6". Sourcetrail Developer Blog.
- "Sourcetrail is now free and open-source software". Sourcetrail Developer Blog.
- https://web.archive.org/web/20211115131149/https://www.sourcetrail.com/blog/discontinue_sourcetrail/ Blog post on discontinuing Sourcetrail.