Comby vs OpenGrok

Comby is a free, open-source tool for searching and changing code structure with lightweight templates. It recognizes basic syntax in code, strings, and comments across many languages, with parsers listed for C/C++, C#, Go, Java, JavaScript, Python, Rust, Swift, and TypeScript, plus a generic matcher for other formats. The project targets large refactors and one-off changes, and an interactive review mode lets users inspect proposed edits. Comby can run from its command line, Python bindings, or HTTP requests sent to a server on your machine. Installation instructions cover macOS with Homebrew, Ubuntu, Windows through Ubuntu on WSL, and Docker; building from source is also described. Linked projects include an Emacs package and a prototype VS Code extension. Other uses include structural code search, compiler fuzzing, test-case reduction, editor find and replace, and academic research. Comby matches balanced delimiters while accounting for comments and string literals, and supports regex search. It is self-hosted and available for API, Linux, macOS, and Windows use. The Apache-2.0 license is identified in the public repository.

OpenGrok is a Java source code search and cross-reference engine for searching and navigating source trees. It searches full text, definitions, symbols, paths and revision history, with subtree searches, wildcards and date-range filters. Its read-only web interface provides syntax-highlighted cross-references, file and directory history, and revision diffs. Supported revision control systems include Git, Mercurial, Subversion, CVS, Perforce, ClearCase, Bazaar, Monotone, Razor, RCS, SCCS, Teamware and AccuRev. Plugins can add support for programming languages or revision control systems. The web application provides a REST API under `/api/v1/` and a granular authorization framework; authentication is handled by the application server or a reverse proxy. Setup requires creating an index and deploying the web application. The guide lists Java 21 through 25, Universal Ctags and a servlet container such as Tomcat 10.x. OpenGrok is free and open source under the CDDL license, and is maintained by volunteers. Support and project requests go through discussions, mailing lists and GitHub Issues.