The Google code-browsing tool CodeSearch supports
simple edits using CitC workspaces.
While browsing the repository, devel-
opers can click on a button to enter
edit mode and make a simple change
(such as fixing a typo or improving
a comment). Then, without leaving
the code browser, they can send their
changes out to the appropriate review-
ers with auto-commit enabled.
Do they still maintain CodeSearch for themselves? Was it so much burden to maintain reduced version of it for the public?
I don't know if it's the same, as I just heard of it from a YAPC talk a few days ago and haven't tried it, but it's called "Code Search" so it seems likely.
"It looks like local index and search tool like ack and ag. While above I'm talking about the whole service.
"
The tool that was open sourced by russ uses the same technology/scheme that the original codesearch was built on.
Given Russ wrote code search (the service) as an intern in a few months, one would think you should be able to take the pieces and put the rest together.
:)
As for cost to maintain it for the rest of the world --
Look, if you have, say a team of 3-4 people, and your mandate is mainly one to support internal developers, and there is plenty to do there, you just aren't going to end up keeping external folks happy.
This is likely true of almost anything in the software world.
Even if it works, people want to see it evolve and continue to get better, no matter what "it" is.
If the next question is "why is internal so different from external that this matters", i could start by pointing out that, for example, internally it doesn't need to crawl svn, etc repositories to be useful. There are tons and tons and tons of things you don't need internally but need externally. What it takes for a feature to be "good enough" to be useful is also very different when you are talking about the world vs 20000 people.
So it's not really even a question of "cost to maintain" in some sense.
Steve Yegge has spoken about the search tool his team built to solve the "has someone else written this?" and "refactor this" for all the languages and systems across Google.
It is really sad that Google has internal development tools that run circles around Visual Studio, but decide not to share them with the outside world. I don't mean as open-source software, I personally would pay money for a Google Studio and I know my company would also pay for licenses if these were offered. It's especially painful on Linux where the best dev tools are 30 or so years old.
