News
Krugle Improves Code Search
Krugle Enterprise Appliance enables code-specific search in more than 40 languages.
Krugle Inc. last month debuted the second version of its Krugle Enterprise Appliance, an enterprise search network device that lets developers and managers track down specific code assets across repositories and over the Internet.
The appliance can search enterprise code indexed behind the firewall, and also provides access to Krugle's public index of more than 2.6 billion lines of open source code.
Krugle Enterprise Appliance 2.0 extends native support for source-code management systems, adding ClearCase and Microsoft Foundation Server to support for Subversion, Perforce and CVS, according to Matthew Graney, Krugle's senior director of product management. Krugle search supports more than 40 languages. It also features improved management and configuration features.
Simplifying Search
Graney says the product meets a long-standing need among dev teams. "Whether you're doing open source or other kinds of development, the biggest challenge facing developers is often finding what's out there," Graney says.
The Krugle device plugs into the data center and crawls code repositories and other sources-including individual workstation hard drives-behind the firewall, Graney says. Searches can be conducted against code and comments alike, allowing companies to search for a specific function across all their source code, he adds. Users conduct searches from a Web browser interface.
Graney says the search appliance can help dev shops struggling to retain or shift knowledge about dev operations. "There's a lot of code out there that's maybe in legacy systems that [companies] need to deal with. Some customers have a boatload of Cobol sitting out there. And a lot of their Cobol expertise is moving into retirement. The ability to find all that code is invaluable."
Positive Response
Tim Murphy, a senior consultant for Daugherty Business Solutions, says the appliance can help developers find code they might not otherwise have come across.
"The most productive developers I've met are where they are because of the resources that they utilize," Murphy says in an e-mail. "Reading other people's code is a great way to find solutions, but it's also a way to get new ideas for approaches to development."
Michael Cote, analyst for research firm RedMonk, says larger organizations can benefit from code-specific search. He says the appliance can pay immediate dividends by helping larger dev shops find code that might be reused across projects, particularly among large enterprises with multiple teams.
"The more you can search over code and find things, it's always useful. Otherwise you rely on e-mail and people to find things," Cote says.
Krugle Enterprise Appliance 2.0 is available now. Customers pay a yearly subscription, with pricing starting at $25,000 per year.
About the Author
Michael Desmond is an editor and writer for 1105 Media's Enterprise Computing Group.