After more than two years working on the project, GitHub has finally finished revamping its code search tool, and has made it available to its users. Among its changes, some are as important as the addition of a new function that takes context much more into account.
The improvements in the search engine have also reached its speed, since in GitHub they ensure that this new code search engine is almost twice as fast as the old one, apart from the fact that it is capable of «understand the code and put the most relevant results in the top positions«. You can also categorize and format the results in a smarter way.
The browser also features a revamped code view and search interface. In it, users can receive suggestions about the code, as well as completion for it. The code view offers references in a side panel, similar to what happens in various development tools when searching and browsing for references. It also offers support for substring queries, regular expressions, and symbol search.
On the other hand, GitHub has published a syntax guide, which does not stay as usual in these cases, that is, in the use of Boolean operations in queries or in carrying out an exact search with expressions in quotes. It also talks about more specific operations and functions. Among them is the limitation of a search to a specific repository, language, route or organization.
This redesign, which is now in its final version, was presented as a test version, with a waiting list to access it, almost a year and a half ago: in December 2021. Those who gained access to it then have spent a long time using it. the new version together with the old one, as independent tools. Since then, it has been refining functions and elements with the aim of developing the definitive version of a tool focused on improving the productivity of software developers, with improvements such as greater efficiency when it comes to locating specific vulnerabilities in a code base of large dimensions.
Despite the fact that the search engine has been available to a specific group of GitHub developers and users for some time now, the company is including it within a broader package of initiatives, which aims to provide more intelligence to the platform in each phase. of the development process, including steps like enriching and expanding Copilot with generative AI.
In the case of the code search engine, what Github was looking for with its reform, which has included the design of a new search enginecompletely from scratch, is to give facilities to developers so they can quickly find information that is critical to them at any given time, and that is scattered throughout your code. Also so that, once the code is located, the search engine puts that information in context and the developer has more data when he receives the search results, and can consequently improve his productivity.
