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Show HN: Tach – Visualize and untangle your Python codebase

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Show HN: Tach – Visualize and untangle your Python codebase

#1

Post by the1024 »

Hey everyone! We're Evan and Caelean, the authors of Tach.

Tach lets you visualize the architecture of your Python codebase, and gives you the tools to incrementally improve it. It uses module boundaries to give teams the benefits of microservices without the deployment complexity.

If your code has been getting tangled up as your team and codebase grows, Tach helps you move back in the right direction, incrementally and quickly. You can use Tach to incrementally adopt a "modular monolith" architecture [1], for better local reasoning and smoother feature development.

Since our last Show HN (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41359181) we've shipped support for layers, third party dependencies, visualizations, and more.

Tach is: * Open source (MIT) * completely free * fast (written in Rust) * in use by teams at NVIDIA, PostHog, and more.

One way Tach differs from existing systems that handle this problem (build systems, import linters, etc) is the ability to be incrementally adopted. Also, runtime speed.

If you struggle with dependencies, onboarding new engineers, or a massive codebase, Tach is for you! We built it with developers in mind - with clean integrations into Git, CI/CD, and IDEs, and the performance for it to be effective in any form factor.

[1] https://www.milanjovanovic.tech/blog/what-is-a-modular-monol...

Show HN: Tach – Visualize and untangle your Python codebase
github.com

Re: Show HN: Tach – Visualize and untangle your Python codebase

#4

Post by hansonkd »

Really excited to see this project gain traction.

> Note that this graph is generated remotely with the contents of your `tach.toml`

Isn't shipping off parts of your codebase to a 3rd party without warning in the CLI a security risk? Or in regulatory environments you get audited that your code was only stored on properly vetted services which is why some sales cycles for AI coding assistant tools are so long. It would be kind of frustrating to have something like that happen and get set back on licensing, etc.

Just from the video it doesn't seem like any sort of warning that you are shipping config files to your servers and the URL that you produced doesn't seem to have any authentication.

Maybe i am misunderstanding that functionality, but it gives me pause to use it.

Re: Show HN: Tach – Visualize and untangle your Python codebase

#5

Post by lijok »

Tools like this rub me the wrong way.

We have well established conventions like prefixing private modules and symbols with an underscore, or declaring your public interfaces in the __init__.py file, but the Python developer decries it as "busywork", "weird" and "hard to read", so we instead use tools like this.

We can manage dependencies with protocols, a type checker and generally following SOLID principles, but the Python developer decries it as "too indirect and convoluted", so we instead use tools like this.

This is more commentary on the Python developer than this tool. Tach looks great.

Re: Show HN: Tach – Visualize and untangle your Python codebase

#6

Post by 0x63_Problems »

hansonkd wrote: post #4

Really excited to see this project gain traction. > Note that this graph is generated remotely with the contents of your `tach.toml` Isn't shipping off parts of your codebase to a 3rd party without warning in the CLI a security risk? Or in regulatory environments you get audited that your code was only stored on properly vetted services which is why some sales cycles for AI coding assistant tools are so long. It woul…

Co-author here, fair question!

In short, we want to make the visualization UX as smooth as possible, and this is best done with a web app. The URLs use UUIDs, and the contents being sent don't include literal source code, only module names and Tach configuration. We will also delete graphs by UUID on request, and have done so in the past.

That said, we do try to be up-front about this, which is why that disclaimer exists, and when running this command on the CLI, you must supply an explicit `--web` argument to `tach show`. Otherwise, the default behavior is to generate a GraphViz DOT file locally.

Re: Show HN: Tach – Visualize and untangle your Python codebase

#7

Post by adamc »

Having the example be a video that changes was confusing at first, and if you are going to show me something that is changing, I would like to be able to rewind to the beginning. But really I just think it's a bad idea to show something like that without making it obvious what it is.

Re: Show HN: Tach – Visualize and untangle your Python codebase

#8

Post by 0x63_Problems »

lijok wrote: post #5

Tools like this rub me the wrong way. We have well established conventions like prefixing private modules and symbols with an underscore, or declaring your public interfaces in the __init__.py file, but the Python developer decries it as "busywork", "weird" and "hard to read", so we instead use tools like this. We can manage dependencies with protocols, a type checker and generally following SOLID principles, but the…

Co-author here, I can understand where you're coming from!

Part of the philosophy here is that the tools and techniques you're describing can (and should) be used diligently to solve this problem, and Tach is often a complement to this approach.

The benefit of centralizing the concern into a single tool, and often a single config file, is that teams get better documentation, earlier feedback (in-editor vs. code review), and more visibility when planning new development. Teams also get to choose _how_ they would like to satisfy Tach's config, and other teams can still rely on the same guarantees due to Tach's static checks.

Re: Show HN: Tach – Visualize and untangle your Python codebase

#9

Post by 0x63_Problems »

jtwaleson wrote: post #2

Cool! Do you have plans to launch a paid offering? The website makes me think it's a company but I didn't see any pricing / sales details.

Co-author here - We do provide a web platform (https://www.gauge.sh/platform) which we have been developing with design partners. The fundamental difference between using Tach alone vs. the platform is that the platform provides incremental enforcement at the pull request level.

We're always happy to chat about adding more design partners! email: founders@gauge.sh

Re: Show HN: Tach – Visualize and untangle your Python codebase

#10

Post by the1024 »

adamc wrote: post #7

Having the example be a video that changes was confusing at first, and if you are going to show me something that is changing, I would like to be able to rewind to the beginning. But really I just think it's a bad idea to show something like that without making it obvious what it is.

Thanks for this feedback! Here's a more structured walkthrough: https://www.loom.com/share/7c03d72ea2b54212a3509d4333f61b99?...

We'll add this to the README.

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