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Sourcetrail

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Sourcetrail
DeveloperThe Sourcetrail Development Team
Stable release
2021.4.19
Operating systemMultiplatform
TypeSoftware quality
LicenseGNU General Public License v3.0
Repositorygithub.com/CoatiSoftware/Sourcetrail

Sourcetrail was a FOSS source code explorer that provided interactive dependency graphs and support for multiple programming languages including C, C++, Java and Python.[1]

History

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The project was started by Eberhard Gräther after an internship at Google where he worked on Google Chrome, and noticed that he consumed a lot of time (1 month) to implement a simple feature that he expected to be done in 1–2 hours. This was his motivation to develop a tool that helps in understanding the consequences of source code modifications.[2] The project started as a commercial project in 2016 under the name Coati.[3] In November 2019, Sourcetrail was released as open-source software under version three of the GNU General Public License.[4]

The project was discontinued in 2021.[5]

Concept

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Most of a programmer's time is invested in reading the source code.[6][7] Therefore, Sourcetrail was intended to help the developers to understand the source code and the relationship between different components. Sourcetrail builds a dependency graph after indexing the source code files and provides a graphical overview of the source code.

See also

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References

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  1. Krill, Paul (November 21, 2019). "Sourcetrail code navigator now free open source". InfoWorld.
  2. "Why working on Chrome made me develop a tool for reading source code". 10 January 2017.
  3. "Coati Release 0.6". Sourcetrail Developer Blog.
  4. "Sourcetrail is now free and open-source software". Sourcetrail Developer Blog.
  5. https://web.archive.org/web/20211115131149/https://www.sourcetrail.com/blog/discontinue_sourcetrail/ Blog post on discontinuing Sourcetrail.
  6. Goodreads. "Quote by Robert C. Martin". Retrieved 2026-04-06."Indeed, the ratio of time spent reading versus writing is well over 10 to 1. We are constantly reading old code as part of the effort to write new code. ...[Therefore,] making it easy to read makes it easier to write."
  7. Roberto Minelli; Andrea Mocci; Michele Lanza (2015). "I Know What You Did Last Summer -- An Investigation of How Developers Spend Their Time". Retrieved 2026-04-06. "Moreover, research shows that developers spend about 57-70% of their time understanding existing code, i.e., program comprehension"
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