Search Engine For Coders to Launch

karvind writes "According to Wired, 'Krugle' is set to next month. The search engine indexes programming code and documentation from open-source repositories like SourceForge, and includes corporate sites for programmers like the Sun Developer Network. The index will contain between 3 and 5 terabytes of code by the time the engine launches in March. According to article, Krugle also contains intelligence to help it parse code and to differentiate programming languages, so a PHP developer could search for a website-registration system written in PHP simply by typing 'PHP registration system.'" Update: 02/17 21:04 GMT by Z : Summary edited for accuracy.

Works well already.

[grub (11606)]

Results <b>1 - 10</b> of about 893,795,000 for "/* I hate working at EA */"

Where does it say that Google is launching it?

[frangipani (729691)]

This sounds like a new company, not a product of Google.

Re:Where does it say that Google is launching it?

[Otter (3800)]

More accurately -- "the company about to get sued by Google". In fact, Zonk may have just given Google's lawyers Exhibit A on proving "confusingly similar".

koders

[andy314159pi (787550)]

There is already a pretty big repository that is easily searchable:
http://www.koders.com/ [koders.com]

Re:koders

[cosmo99 (157757)]

http://www.codefetch.com/ [codefetch.com] searches a very useful collection of code: the source code from programming books.

Neither koders nor krugle cover that, plus codefetch searches the api of several languages, java, ruby, php, for example.

Re:koders

[NialScorva (213763)]

I was going to make a smart-ass comment about it not having lame [sourceforge.net], but turns out that it does [koders.com]

Already done

[unixmaster (573907)]

http://www.koders.com/ [koders.com]

Good for Sony!

[Vinnie_333 (575483)]

This will make it so much easier for Sony's programmers ....

Uh oh...

[gabecubbage (711618)]

This is a spectacularly bad idea...

I estimate only three days before someone successfully compiles Krugle on a shiny new Mactelnix box and ushers in the Singularity overnight, and twenty years ahead of schedule.

"I'm sorry Sergey... I'm afraid I can't do that..."

Community?

[binaryDigit (557647)]

Some other interesting features above and beyond simple searching could be:

- merge with semantic web work to be able to search on higher level concepts (e.g. if I type "bubble sort" it returns all bubble sorting code even if it doesn't explicitly say "bubble sort" anywhere).

- "community" features that allow developers to leave comments on code (no, not comments _in_ code, but on code, similar to epinions et al).

- if this index is available via api like the main google index, then people could do things like have automated lint type tools.

- code chain. If I search for some code, then it'd be nice to be able to then peruse that codes hierarchy within the search engine (vs having to download it or cvs over to it).

nothing new

[Krunch (704330)]

Koders [koders.com] does that for some times now.

Rock!

[AKAImBatman (238306)]

This could so seriously rock. Every time I need a library to do a specific function, I always have to do some searching to find all of the competing options. Invariably, at least a couple of options get missed as you sort through the excess nonsense and out of date information. (Sometimes it's the best solution that gets missed.) I can't count how many times I've wished there was a simpler way to get all the competing options.

And then there's the issue of missing modules that are referenced by other code. Usually you have to find them by trial and error. In a code search engine, (theoretically) it will simply come back with all instances of the constant I put in. Which means that I can locate the missing module faster than ever before!

If this works, Google will have seriously made the lives of thousands of programmers that much easier. :-)

Kawahee's 2 cents

[Kawahee (901497)]

First off, it's not Google.

Secondly, I believe "PHP registration system", or the example given in the summary is a sufficient enough query for Google to return something relevant anyway.

Beware of SEO

[GrAfFiT (802657)]

Does this mean that in a few years we'll get the equivalent of SEO, search engine spamming in every program we can compile ? I don't want to see that.
Nowadays, websites are made for Google.. Their existence is justified by their PageRank.
I don't want SourceForge et al. to die the same death as Yahoo's old categories (did you notice that they completely disappeared ?).

Costs?

[AuMatar (183847)]

Any idea on what this service will cost? I couldn't find it on the website.

Also, they really need the ability to search based on license. If I'm working on a GPL project, using it and finding Apache licensed code is only of minimum help. (I can base work off of it, but I can't just use it).

Later in the year...

[DrEldarion (114072)]

They're also planning on releasing "kringle", a search engine for presents, but they're currently in litigation with a "Dr. Claus".

What I'd like.. Google with regex

[matt me (850665)]

What I've always wanted is to use Google properly, with full regex functionality, see Perl. Currently Google gives you ten terms (I call them words), allowing you to quote some, and use a single-level of AND and OR. And excludes, but these eat away at the ten word limit speedily.

I want wildcards .* and to be able to escape punctuation! It may look like a cartoon character swearing, but for those that can, it would give us way more power.

Bah.

[BigZaphod (12942)]

What I really want is a code engine that let's me type: "the misguided and hopeless project I'm working on" in the search box and then delivers the finished executable and documentation so I can email it to my boss and go home early.

Filtering out buggy code

[ewg (158266)]

I hope you can add -buggy to your query to filter out all the buggy code.

This is hilarious :)

[Z0mb1eman (629653)]

This story never would've made it if it wasn't submitted as "Google launches"... now we're left with a slashvertisment for a rather ugly site desperately trying to be Web2.0-looking and that "is set to next month", a whole bunch of posts pointing out that it has nothing to do with Google that are unfortunately now getting modded off-topic, another bunch of posts linking to koders.com, and nothing of substance to talk about.

I love Slashdot :) /take notes for when I'll need to generate "buzz" for a product launch

Access confidential code!

[labreuer (950633)]

For example, confidential Novell code [koders.com]. (In case that link doesn't work, search for "StopWatch" in "C#"; there are only two results.)

Will this new site perform such wonders?

What does it have over koders dot com?

[delire (809063)]

Works well for me [koders.com]

A wider breadth of supported languages would be nice however.

That said if Krugle doesn't have the ability to filter on a per license basis, it will not be practical (or safe) for many.

DWIM()

[EatHam (597465)]

Now I'll finally be able to find that Do What I Mean function I've been searching for.

Re:NOT google

[Creosote (33182)]

Krugle (created by Ken Krugler - notice the name?) is in no way, shape or form affiliated with Google.

Which will delay Google's trademark infringement suit for, what, a few milliseconds?

Re:err, i don't think it's from google

[Rob T Firefly (844560)]

When people use brand names to generically identify something, I find it more annoying than Scotch Tape in a Xerox machine. I get an Excedrin headache no Band-Aid can fix, and have to work off my stress by playing Nintendo.