Sourcegraph Inc. is a company developing code search and code intelligence tool that semantically indexes and analyzes large codebases so that they can be searched across commercial, open-source, local, and cloud-based repositories.[1]

Sourcegraph
Company typePrivate
IndustryInformation technology
Founded2013
FounderQuinn Slack and Beyang Liu
ProductsCody, Code Search
Websiteabout.sourcegraph.com

The company has two products available: Cody and Code Search. Code Search was initially released in 2013 under the name Sourcegraph, but was rebranded to Code Search when the company unveiled Cody in 2023. Both products support all major programming languages.[2]

History

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Sourcegraph Inc. was founded in by Stanford graduates Quinn Slack and Beyang Liu to drive the development of a code search and code intelligence tool, formerly called Sourcegraph. It was first released in 2013[3][4] but was rebranded to Code Search in 2023. It was partly inspired by Liu's experience using Google Code Search while he was a Google intern,[5] It was designed to "tackle the big code problem" by enabling developers to manage large codebases that span multiple repositories, programming languages, file formats, and projects.[6]

Code Search was initially self-hosted by each customer on their own infrastructure.[7] Early customers included Uber, Dropbox, and Lyft.[7][8] In 2016, Code Search was criticized[9] for being provided with a Fair Source License with the developers explaining[10][11][5] that "all of Sourcegraph’s [sic] source code is publicly available and hackable"[12] and was intended to "help open sourcers strike a balance between getting paid and preserving their values".[13] In 2018, Code Search was licensed under the Apache License 2.0,[14][15] and Sourcegraph OSS has since been released under the Apache License 2.0. The commercial version, Code Search Enterprise, has been released under its own license.[16] In 2023, Code Search was criticized[17] for dropping the Apache license for most of its code, leaving it public but only available under its Enterprise license.[18]

In 2019, Code Search was integrated into the GitLab codebase, giving GitLab users access to a browser-based developer platform.[19] In 2021, a browser-based portal became available, allowing users to browse open-source projects and personal private code for free.[7] In 2022, Sourcegraph Cloud, a commercial single-tenant cloud solution for organizations with more than 100 developers, was launched.[20][7]

Sourcegraph has raised a total of almost $225 million in financing to date. Its most recent $125 million Series D investment in 2021 valued the company at $2.625 billion, a 300% growth from its previous valuation in 2020.[21]

Date Funding Type Money Raised (USD) No. of Investors Lead Investor
July 2021 Series D round 125,000,000[21] 4 Andreessen Horowitz
December 2020 Series C round 50,000,000[22] 1 Sequoia Capital
July 2020 Series B round 5,000,000[23] 1 Felicis Ventures
March 2020 Series B round 23,000,000[24] 3 Craft Ventures
October 2017 Series A round 20,000,000[25] 3 Goldcrest Capital, Redpoint

In 2023 Sourcegraph Inc. unveiled their new product Cody, and rebranded Sourcegraph to Code Search.

Products

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The company has two major products: Cody and Code Search.

Sourcegraph Cody

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Cody is a free and open-source AI coding assistant that can help users write, fix, and maintain your code. It works by understanding an entire codebase and using that knowledge to provide context-aware assistance. including code generation, debugging, commenting, documentation, explaining, and answering questions regarding the code. Cody is available for Microsoft Visual Studio Code and most JetBrains IDEs.

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Code Search
Developer(s)Sourcegraph, Inc.
Initial release2013
Stable release
5.2.0 / 3 October 2023
Repositoryhttps://github.com/sourcegraph/sourcegraph
Written inGo, TypeScript
Operating systemMicrosoft Windows, Linux, MacOS
TypeSoftware intelligence
LicenseProprietary
Websiteabout.sourcegraph.com

Sourcegraph's "universal code search" tool is used to search, explore, and understand code.[3][26] supports over 30 programming languages and integrates with GitHub and GitLab for code hosting, Codecov for code coverage, and Jira Software for project management.[27] Code Search can be implemented across multiple repositories and code hosting platforms. Searches can be literal, regular expression, or structural. The structural search syntax is language-aware and handles nested expressions and multi-line statements better than regular expressions.[1] Sourcegraph's Code Search uses a variant of Google's PageRank algorithm to rank results by relevance.[28] Code Search can be used to search and analyze all of an organization's code.[4] During search indexing, the platform builds a global reference graph, that maps an entire codebase and enables functionality such as "go to definition".[29] Features include:

  • Search: Code can be searched and navigated through the Sourcegraph web interface or through browser and IDE extensions and text editor plugins.[1]
  • Navigation: jumps to the definition of a variable or function, or find all references to it in a codebase.[1]
  • Batch Changes: Enables developers and companies to automate and track large-scale code refactoring, security fixes, and migrations across repositories and code hosts.[30]
  • Code Insights: Extracts data from a codebase to provide detailed analytics and visualizations to track the health and progress of a code project.[31]

Code search has received adoption by such various sectors as

  • Research: Code search has been used to develop data mining methods for downstream dependencies[32] and to assist in refactoring and translating a program into its equivalent in another programming language.[33]
  • Physics: Code search is used in the CERN Accelerator Control software community to index, quickly search, and generate statistics on code.[34]
  • Cybersecurity: Code search has been used to gain better insight into source code during penetration testing.[35]

As of July 2021, Code search customers include Adidas, Lyft, Uber, Yelp,[27] Plaid, GE, Atlassian,[36] Amazon, PayPal, Qualtrics, and Cloudflare.[6]

See also

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References

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  1. ^ a b c d Hoyt, Ben (2020-08-17). "Searching code with Sourcegraph". LWN.net. Retrieved 2022-10-03.
  2. ^ Slack, Quinn (2019-02-08). "Announcing Sourcegraph 3.0". Sourcegraph official website. Retrieved 2022-11-18.
  3. ^ a b Sawers, Paul (2020-03-03). "Sourcegraph raises $23 million to bring universal code search to all developers". VentureBeat. Retrieved 2022-11-18.
  4. ^ a b Salter, Jim (2020-10-01). "Sourcegraph: Devs are managing 100x more code now than they did in 2010". Ars Technica. Retrieved 2022-11-18.
  5. ^ a b Adam Stacoviak (2016-08-16). "Sourcegraph the 'Google for Code'". Changelog (Podcast). Retrieved 2022-11-21.
  6. ^ a b Sawers, Paul (2020-12-03). "Sourcegraph raises $50 million to tackle 'big code' problems with universal search". VentureBeat. Retrieved 2022-11-21.
  7. ^ a b c d Sawers, Paul (2021-08-19). "Sourcegraph plans to index the entire open source web". VentureBeat. Retrieved 2022-10-03.
  8. ^ Slack, Quinn (2022-09-27). "Sourcegraph Cloud: secure, scalable, dedicated instances for enterprises". Sourcegraph Blog. Retrieved 2022-11-21.
  9. ^ Asay, Matt (2016-04-01). "Fair Source licensing is the worst thing to happen to open source-definitely maybe". TechRepublic. Archived from the original on 2021-11-07. Retrieved 2022-11-21.
  10. ^ Eghbal, Nadia (2016). Roads and bridges. The Unseen labor behind our digital infrastructure (PDF) (Report). pp. 94–95. Retrieved 2022-12-14.
  11. ^ "Fair Source License". Fair Source License official website. Retrieved 2022-11-21.
  12. ^ "The Sourcegraph developer release: A better way to discover and understand code". Sourcegraph Blog. 2016-05-30. Retrieved 2022-11-21.
  13. ^ Finley, Klint (2016-03-29). "One Startup's Heretical Plan to Turn Open Source Code Into Cash". Wired. Retrieved 2022-11-21.
  14. ^ Schmidt, Julia (2018-10-02). "Sourcegraph pulls back the curtain, becomes open source project". DevClass. Retrieved 2022-11-21.
  15. ^ Steve Krouse (2019-10-24). "Basic Developer Human Rights: Quinn Slack". Future of Coding (Podcast). Retrieved 2022-11-21.
  16. ^ "Licensing". Sourcegraph Handbook. Retrieved 2022-11-21.
  17. ^ "Seriously, don't sign a CLA". drewdevault.com. Retrieved 2023-07-05.
  18. ^ "relicense all paths other than MIT licensed code, client/cody*, jetbr… · sourcegraph/sourcegraph@3cd931e". GitHub. Retrieved 2023-07-05.
  19. ^ "Native code intelligence is coming to GitLab". GitLab. Retrieved 2022-10-03.
  20. ^ Slack, Quinn (2022-08-27). "Sourcegraph Cloud: secure, scalable, dedicated instances for enterprises". Sourcegraph. Retrieved 2022-12-05.
  21. ^ a b Miller, Ron (2021-07-13). "Sourcegraph raises $125M Series D on $2.6B valuation for universal code search tool". TechCrunch. Retrieved 2022-10-03.
  22. ^ Sawers, Paul (2020-12-03). "Sourcegraph raises $50 million to tackle 'big code' problems with universal search". VentureBeat. Retrieved 2022-11-21.
  23. ^ "Sourcegraph Raises Additional $5M in Series B Funding". FINSMES. 2020-07-15. Retrieved 2022-10-03.
  24. ^ Sawers, Paul (2020-03-03). "Sourcegraph raises $23 million to bring universal code search to all developers". VentureBeat. Retrieved 2022-11-18.
  25. ^ "Sourcegraph Raises $20M in Series A Funding". FINSMES. 2017-10-06. Retrieved 2022-12-05.
  26. ^ Liu, Beyang (2020-01-15). "Sourcegraph: Universal code search and intelligence". InfoWorld. Retrieved 2022-12-05.
  27. ^ a b "Q&A: Sourcegraph's Universal Code Search Tool". IEEE Spectrum. 2020-04-03. Retrieved 2022-10-03.
  28. ^ Yegge, Steve (2022-11-08). "Rethinking search results ranking on Sourcegraph.com". Sourcegraph. Retrieved 2022-12-06.
  29. ^ Ramji, Sam (2022-12-22). "Google That Code: How Sourcegraph Simplifies Development". The New Stack. Retrieved 2023-02-20.
  30. ^ "Sourcegraph Batch Changes Offers Automation for Large-Scale Code Changes". Database Trends and Applications. 2021-03-24. Retrieved 2023-02-08.
  31. ^ Sawers, Paul (2022-03-10). "With Code Insights, Sourcegraph gives developers a better understanding of their codebase". VentureBeat. Retrieved 2022-10-03.
  32. ^ Thiede, Christoph; Limberger, Daniel; Scheibel, Willy; Döllner, Jürgen (2022), "Augmenting Library Development by Mining Usage Data from Downstream Dependencies", 17th International Conference on Evaluation of Novel Approaches to Software Engineering, ENASE
  33. ^ Haavisto, Juuso (2020). Leveraging APL and SPIR-V languages to write network functions to be deployed on Vulkan compatible GPUs (MSc). Université de Lorraine. Retrieved 2022-12-15.
  34. ^ Voirin, R.; Vanden Eynden, M.; Oulevey, T. (2022). "The State of Containerization in CERN Accelerator Controls". JACoW. ICALEPCS (2021): 829–834. doi:10.18429/JACoW-ICALEPCS2021-THBL03. Retrieved 2022-12-15.
  35. ^ Rehberger, Johann (2020). Cybersecurity Attacks – Red Team Strategies: A practical guide to building a penetration testing program having homefield advantage. Packt Publishing Ltd. pp. 216–224. ISBN 9781838825508.
  36. ^ Miller, Ron (2021-07-13). "Sourcegraph raises $125M Series D on $2.6B valuation for universal code search tool". TechCrunch. Retrieved 2022-10-03.