Glean – System for collecting, deriving and querying facts about source code
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Re: Glean – System for collecting, deriving and querying facts about source code
#2I didn't understand what it does
Re: Glean – System for collecting, deriving and querying facts about source code
#3I didn't understand what it does
It allows you to use a query language (think SQL) to analyze source code.
Re: Glean – System for collecting, deriving and querying facts about source code
#4I had a look at the site and it seems to be parsing source code in multiple languages and storing the parsed "syntax trees" into a database for querying.
I would love to know what the usecase for this tool is aside from maybe being a source for presentations? (We have 5 million if statements).
How can this be used to improve code quality or any other aspect of the code lifecycle?
Or is it solving problems in a completely different problem area?
Re: Glean – System for collecting, deriving and querying facts about source code
#5We use this to power things like find-references or jump-to-def, "symbol search" and autocomplete, or more complicated code queries and analysis (even across languages). Imagine rich LSPs without a local checkout, web-based code queries, or seeding fuzzers and static analyzers with entry points in code.
Our focus has been on very large scale, multi-language code indexing, and then low latency (e.g. hundreds of micros) query times, to drive highly interactive developer workflows.
Re: Glean – System for collecting, deriving and querying facts about source code
#6The very first page of the site should have examples of what you can do with it.
Re: Glean – System for collecting, deriving and querying facts about source code
#7I had a look at the site and it seems to be parsing source code in multiple languages and storing the parsed "syntax trees" into a database for querying. I would love to know what the usecase for this tool is aside from maybe being a source for presentations? (We have 5 million if statements). How can this be used to improve code quality or any other aspect of the code lifecycle? Or is it solving problems in a comple…
Glean is focused on storing and querying data about the code. The idea is that you have your own program to collect that data, then you use Glean to store that compactly and to have snappy queries.
You would create entries like "this is a declaration of X", "this is a use of X". Then you can query things like "give me all uses of X" in sub-millisecond time. You hook that up to an LSP server then you get almost zero-cost find-references, jump-to-definition, etc. The snappy queries also mean it becomes possible to perform whole codebase (and cross-language) analysis. That is, answering questions like "what code is not referenced from this root?", "does this Haskell function use anything that calls malloc?" (analysis through the ffi barrier).
One can also attach all kinds of information from different sources to code entities, not only things derived from the source itself. You add things like run-time costs, frequency of use, common errors, etc, and an LSP server could make all of it available right in your editor.
For very large or complex codebases, where it is just too expensive or too complicated to calculate this information locally a system like this becomes very useful.
Re: Glean – System for collecting, deriving and querying facts about source code
#8We use this to power things like find-references or jump-to-def, "symbol search" and autocomplete, or more complicated code queries and analysis (even across languages). Imagine rich LSPs without a local checkout, web-based code queries, or seeding fuzzers and static analyzers with entry points in code. Our focus has been on very large scale, multi-language code indexing, and then low latency (e.g. hundreds of micros…
This is really cool.
Seems like there are only indexers for Flow and Hack though.
Will there be more indexers built by Facebook, or will it rely on community contributions?
Re: Glean – System for collecting, deriving and querying facts about source code
#9Ew, Facebook.
Re: Glean – System for collecting, deriving and querying facts about source code
#10We use this to power things like find-references or jump-to-def, "symbol search" and autocomplete, or more complicated code queries and analysis (even across languages). Imagine rich LSPs without a local checkout, web-based code queries, or seeding fuzzers and static analyzers with entry points in code. Our focus has been on very large scale, multi-language code indexing, and then low latency (e.g. hundreds of micros…
This is really cool. Seems like there are only indexers for Flow and Hack though. Will there be more indexers built by Facebook, or will it rely on community contributions?
A bit of both I think.