big-code-analysis

big-code-analysis is a hard fork of the rust-code-analysis project. This project is an unapologetic vibe-coded fork that seeks to add as many features and functions as fast as possible.

Nonetheless, it is still a Rust library to analyze and extract information from source code written in many different programming languages. It is based on a parser generator tool and an incremental parsing library called Tree Sitter.

A command line tool called bca is provided to interact with the API of the library in an easy way.

This tool can be used to:

Call big-code-analysis API
Print nodes and metrics information
Export metrics in different formats
Generate a Markdown quality-metrics report (-O markdown)

In addition, we provide a bca-web tool to use the library through a REST API.

Live example reports

bca runs against its own source on every push to main and publishes the result alongside the documentation:

HTML hotspot report: https://dekobon.github.io/big-code-analysis/reports/index.html
Markdown PR/MR comment: https://dekobon.github.io/big-code-analysis/reports/report.md

The wiring lives in .github/workflows/pages.yml; see the book's CI integration recipe for adapting it to your own project.

Usage

big-code-analysis supports many types of programming languages and computes a great variety of metrics. You can find up to date documentation at Documentation.

On the Commands page, there is a list of commands that can be run to get information about metrics, nodes, and other general data provided by this software.

Using as a library

big-code-analysis is published on crates.io and can be embedded directly. The crate is currently pre-1.0, so the API surface (both shape and metric values) is still in flux — see STABILITY.md for the versioning contract, MSRV policy, escape hatches, and what we do and do not promise across minor and patch bumps.

For task-oriented walkthroughs — quick start, in-memory analysis, walking FuncSpace results, and error handling — see the Using as a Library section of the book.

Python bindings (PyO3) live in big-code-analysis-py/ and ship the same metric pipeline as a Python package. See the book's Python Bindings section for the install matrix, batch / async / SARIF recipes, and the full error taxonomy.

Per-language Cargo features

Every tree-sitter grammar is gated behind a per-language Cargo feature. The default feature set is all-languages, so a bare

big-code-analysis = "1.1.0"

pulls every grammar in (matching the library's historical behaviour and what the bca / bca-web binaries ship). Library consumers that only need a subset of languages can opt out of the defaults and re-enable just the grammars they want:

big-code-analysis = { version = "1.1.0", default-features = false, features = ["rust", "typescript"] }

Supported language features: bash, cpp, csharp, elixir, go, groovy, java, javascript, kotlin, lua, mozjs, perl, php, python, ruby, rust, tcl, typescript. The cpp feature covers the Cpp, Ccomment, and Preproc LANG variants and pulls in bca-tree-sitter-mozcpp, bca-tree-sitter-ccomment, and bca-tree-sitter-preproc together (published forks of the matching Mozilla grammars — see the publish strategy notes in RELEASING.md).

The LANG enum keeps every variant defined regardless of the active feature set; selecting a [LANG] variant whose feature is off returns Err(MetricsError::LanguageDisabled(LANG)) from every dispatch entry point (analyze, metrics_from_tree, action, get_ops, the deprecated get_function_spaces* shims, and LANG::get_tree_sitter_language). The set of compiled-in variants is queryable via LANG::is_enabled.

Building

The repository ships a Makefile that wraps every common build, test, lint, and docs task. Run make help for the full list, and make check-tools to verify the optional tools are installed.

make build           # debug build of the entire workspace
make build-release   # optimised release build

If you prefer to run cargo directly, or want to build a single crate:

cargo build                              # library only
cargo build -p big-code-analysis-cli     # CLI only
cargo build -p big-code-analysis-web     # web server only
cargo build --workspace                  # everything in one shot

Testing

make test           # cargo test --workspace --all-features --lib --bins --tests
make test-doc      # cargo test --workspace --all-features --doc
make pre-commit    # full local gate: fmt-check, clippy, tests, udeps, lint families

make pre-commit is the recommended gate before committing — it is equivalent to what CI runs. If GNU Make 4 or any of the optional tools are unavailable, the raw cargo invocation still works:

cargo test --workspace --all-features --verbose

Updating insta tests

We use insta, to update the snapshot tests you should install cargo insta

make insta-review   # cargo insta test --review

Will run the tests, generate the new snapshot references and let you review them.

Updating grammars

Have a look at Update grammars guide to learn how to update languages grammars.

Contributing

If you want to contribute to the development of this software, have a look at the guidelines contained in our Developers Guide.

Licenses

Mozilla-defined grammars are released under the MIT license.
big-code-analysis, big-code-analysis-cli and big-code-analysis-web are released under the Mozilla Public License v2.0.

big-code-analysis 1.1.0