NBnbenitezl·Apr 10, 2024
In Code search is hardDebian
dcs
Go2015–2024
Debian / dcs
dcs
Debian Code Search (codesearch.debian.net) is a search engine that searches through all the 130 GB of open source software that is included in Debian. Supports regular expressions!
8Distinct people
9Mentions
0Explicit recommenders
254GitHub stars
What to know before exploring
What it is
Debian Code Search (codesearch.debian.net) is a search engine that searches through all the 130 GB of open source software that is included in Debian. Supports regular expressions!
GitHub
Where it is used
No documented product use has been verified yet.
What people are saying
No recommendation phrase was found in the indexed comments.
No classified warning is attached to this page. Read the discussions before treating silence as approval.
Also in these discussions
No other repository is repeatedly linked in the same discussions.
This week on Hacker News
Nov 7–Nov 14 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/14/2026, 12:54:37 PM UTC.
No direct repository links were found in the indexed HN discussions over the past seven days. Older discussions are available below.
Mentions over time
HN mentions by year9 dated mentions
Observed mentions: 2015-01-28 21:22:01 UTC to 2024-04-10 22:26:01 UTC.
Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.
View mention counts and date ranges
| Period | Start (UTC) | End (exclusive, UTC) | Mentions | Submissions | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2015 | 2015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| 2016 | 2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2 | 0 | 2 |
| 2017 | 2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2018 | 2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| 2019 | 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| 2020 | 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| 2021 | 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2022 | 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| 2023 | 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| 2024 | 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
What Hacker News says
9 sourcesWhat is a good open-source system for code search if I want to plug 100 or so git repos into it and have it available over the web? GH search is not desirable because it would search too broadly and would not cover repos on Gitlab etc.
I looked at the Debian code search [1] in the past, but for some reason thought it required a bit too much effort and didn't complete my investigation of it. Though [2] looks pretty approachable.
Sourcegraph mentioned Zoekt [3], but I am not sure how usable it is. If it was pretty good, why did Sourcegraph OSS exist?
Finally, from all the discussion how Sourcegraph OSS was very behind in the past few years, I guess there is no serious plan to fork it?
Edit: GCS release [4] seems to have been open-sourced without a frontend.
Edit2: Livegrep [5] and Opengrok [6] were recommended higher in the thread. Quite ex
Read the rest
cited to try them out but if someone has working Docker Compose configs, I would be very thankful for the head start.
Edit3: there is also Eureka [7]. Seems less powerful but easier to deploy.
[1]: https://github.com/Debian/dcs
[2]: https://github.com/Debian/dcs/blob/main/howto/building.md
[3]: https://github.com/sourcegraph/zoekt
[4]: https://github.com/google/codesearch
[5]: https://github.com/livegrep/livegrep
[6]: https://oracle.github.io/opengrok/
[7]: https://github.com/Rajeev-K/eureka
See also https://codesearch.debian.net/ - https://github.com/Debian/dcs for a similar project that may fit your needs better. I've not compared them both, but I use dcs frequently
In Building a custom code search index in GoRelated:
https://codesearch.debian.net/
https://github.com/Debian/dcs/
https://codesearch.debian.net/research/bsc-thesis.pdf
In How Google Code Search Worked (2012)1 - [TurboPFor](https://github.com/powturbo/TurboPFor)
2 - [TurboPFor: an analysis](https://michael.stapelberg.ch/posts/2019-02-05-turbopfor-ana...)
3 - [Debian Code Search:Website](https://github.com/Debian/dcs/)
4 - [Debian Code Search: source code](https://github.com/Debian/dcs/)
In Show HN: Debian Code Search: Positional Index, TurboPFor-CompressedPartly this is because DCS is indexing Debian sid, in which multiple versions of packages can be present (due to transitions):
$ curl -s http://ftp.ch.debian.org/debian/dists/sid/main/source/Source... | zgrep '^Package: git$' | wc -l
4
If we didn’t index Debian sid, you’d only get one version per package, but also the results wouldn’t be as fresh.
You can follow one of these two issues:
https://github.com/Debian/dcs/issues/40 (at most 1 result per package)
https://github.com/Debian/dcs/issues/49 (limit by suite, where you could search something else than Debian sid)
If you have any other ideas about how to address the issue, please let me know.
In GitHub Code Search – Programmers' GoldmineIt is! https://github.com/Debian/dcs/commit/e1c04a3c0cfbfc11a0e8eaa...
Check out https://people.debian.org/~stapelberg//2016/08/08/debian-cod... for details on the most recent bigger change.
In GitHub Code Search – Programmers' GoldmineFor another example of a code search service written in Go, see the software powering http://codesearch.debian.net
https://lwn.net/Articles/627609/
https://github.com/Debian/dcs
In Hound: A Fast Code Search Tool