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A brief history of code search at GitHub

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Re: A brief history of code search at GitHub

#3

Post by kreetx »

Given that this is a "history" I can't believe they don't mention grep.app. It's pretty much the way to search entire github.

There probably aren't as many drill-down features as the new official way, but speed and simplicity of UI more than make up for it.

Re: A brief history of code search at GitHub

#4

Post by Oddskar »

I still think the changes made to only index repos that had activity during the last year [1] was the wrong call, and potentially makes code search dangerous for those that do not understand this.

At least for me a common use case for org-wide code searches is to answer questions like "is the library x still used somewhere?"

To not have this include old potentially low-traffic repos is a very bad thing. I don't understand why they would do this for enterprise customers. Like we would pay extra to not have it be this way.

[1] https://github.blog/changelog/2020-12-17-changes-to-code-sea...

Re: A brief history of code search at GitHub

#5

Post by charcircuit »

I personally don't care about wait time that much for search. I would have for years loved a simple grep that you could do from a browser. Even if it took a minute, that would still be faster than what I've had to do: manually clone the repo locally and run a grep on it on my machine.

Re: A brief history of code search at GitHub

#7

Post by lathiat »

Oddskar wrote: post #4

I still think the changes made to only index repos that had activity during the last year [1] was the wrong call, and potentially makes code search dangerous for those that do not understand this. At least for me a common use case for org-wide code searches is to answer questions like "is the library x still used somewhere?" To not have this include old potentially low-traffic repos is a very bad thing. I don't under…

Yes this seems like a bad move to me too. Plenty of repos still useful may not change in a year. But still be relevant.

Re: A brief history of code search at GitHub

#8

Post by yellow_lead »

Oddskar wrote: post #4

I still think the changes made to only index repos that had activity during the last year [1] was the wrong call, and potentially makes code search dangerous for those that do not understand this. At least for me a common use case for org-wide code searches is to answer questions like "is the library x still used somewhere?" To not have this include old potentially low-traffic repos is a very bad thing. I don't under…

Unfortunately I lost trust in GitHub search a while ago. Can't find files, can't find an exact string reference. This can be dangerous in certain situations like you said. Hopefully I can start to gain trust in the new version when released but I don't really see myself using it again.

Re: A brief history of code search at GitHub

#9

Post by bombcar »

Oddskar wrote: post #4

I still think the changes made to only index repos that had activity during the last year [1] was the wrong call, and potentially makes code search dangerous for those that do not understand this. At least for me a common use case for org-wide code searches is to answer questions like "is the library x still used somewhere?" To not have this include old potentially low-traffic repos is a very bad thing. I don't under…

It won't search forked repositories either, which is a pain when trying to find something - you're better off pulling and grepping.

(If you have forked a long-dead project and are working on it Github support can "decouple" it from the original and then you can search it.)

Re: A brief history of code search at GitHub

#10

Post by perk »

kreetx wrote: post #3

Given that this is a "history" I can't believe they don't mention grep.app. It's pretty much the way to search entire github. There probably aren't as many drill-down features as the new official way, but speed and simplicity of UI more than make up for it.

grep.app is excellent, but I don't think you can search the entire github, on the front page it says "Search across a half million git repos".
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