BrontoSource vs Spoon
BrontoSource
brontosource.devSpoon
spoon.gforge.inria.frSide by side
| Figure | BrontoSource | Spoon |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | — | Free |
| Free plan | — | Yes |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | — | — |
| Web | Yes | — |
| Linux | — | Yes |
| API | — | Yes |
| Self-hosted | — | Yes |
| Plans published | 0 | 1 |
| Spec score · Code Refactoring Tools | 7.7 (#11) | 7.8 (#10) |
| License | The support library uses the 0BSD license and compiles to nothing at runtime, according to the getting-started documentation. | Spoon is free and open source under the CeCILL-C and MIT licenses. |
| Purpose | Bronto is a tool for automatically performing smart find-and-replace across a codebase. | Spoon is an open-source library for analyzing, rewriting, transforming, and transpiling Java source code. |
| Support | Users can contact [email protected] or create an issue on the public GitHub repository. | The site directs users seeking professional development, training, or extension support to comment on a GitHub issue. |
Plans
In their own words
BrontoSource
BrontoSource is a desktop tool for deterministic C++ refactoring across large repositories. Teams define explicit transformation rules and apply them across thousands of files. Documented operations include expression matching, extraction, and inlining for functions, constructors, type aliases, enumerators, namespaces, macros, declarations, types, and lambda captures. The command-line tool accepts Clang arguments, a compilation database, or compile_flags.txt, then can generate Fossil-format edits, merge edit files, and apply changes. BrontoSource describes its output as repeatable, traceable diffs for review. Its homepage reports 100M+ lines transformed safely and 10,000+ files refactored in one transformation. The product is in early access, with access arranged through BrontoSource; its API can also be tried on Compiler Explorer without installation. Pricing is on request. A header-only support library supports CMake 3.10.0+ and Bazel 8.1.1+ and uses 0BSD.
Spoon
Spoon is a free, open-source library for analyzing, rewriting, transforming, and transpiling Java source code. It parses source files into an abstract syntax tree (AST), then exposes APIs for inspecting and changing that model. Processors can perform source-level static analysis on selected AST element types, while architectural rules can be expressed as AST checks and run as JUnit tests in continuous integration. Transformation facilities cover instrumentation and refactoring, including helpers for local and generic variables and removing deprecated methods. Spoon can also provide shared analysis of binary and source code through CtClass objects as an alternative to Java reflection. The project supports Java source up to Java 25, but runtime requirements vary: Spoon 11.x needs JDK 17 or later, 10.x needs JDK 11 or later, and 9.x needs Java 8. It is available through Java, the command line, Maven, and Gradle, with a dependency JAR on Maven Central. Command-line use requires manual classpath handling and source dependencies specified with --source-classpath. Spoon is an official Inria project and an OW2 consortium member.