copydetect vs Deckard
copydetect
github.comDeckard
github.comSide by side
| Figure | copydetect | Deckard |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | — | — |
| Free plan | — | — |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | — | — |
| Windows | Yes | Yes |
| macOS | Yes | Yes |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 0 | 0 |
| Spec score · Code Clone Detection Tools | 7.8 (#6) | 7.5 (#12) |
| Detection method | It uses the Winnowing document-fingerprinting approach used by the MOSS platform. | It generates vectors from parse trees and clusters them to detect code clones. |
| Installation | The project documents installation with pip and requires Python 3.7 or later. | The README instructs users to build Deckard with a shell script in its src/main directory. |
| License | Copydetect is released under the MIT License. | The repository license permits source and binary redistribution subject to its stated conditions and disclaims warranties. |
| Platforms | The package is classified as operating-system independent and provides a Windows command entry point. | Installation instructions use bash or Cygwin; the release notes mention Mac OS compatibility, and the README notes Cygwin can run tens of times slower than Linux. |
| Purpose | Copydetect detects likely code plagiarism by comparing code directories and generating an HTML report that displays copied slices. | Deckard is a tree-based code clone detection tool that can also report clone-related bugs. |
In their own words
copydetect
copydetect is a free tool for comparing code directories and producing an HTML report that highlights matching code slices. It uses Winnowing document fingerprinting, an approach also used by MOSS, and Pygments tokenization for the 500-plus languages Pygments can detect and tokenize. Users can compare test directories with reference directories such as previous submissions, and exclude boilerplate directories from matches. Noise, guarantee and display thresholds adjust what is detected and shown in reports. Install the package with pip; it requires Python 3.7 or later. The command-line tool recursively searches supplied directories, while its Python API supports comparisons and HTML report generation. Reports can be saved to a specified path, highlighted code can be truncated, and custom CSS can be linked. Configuration is available through command-line arguments or a JSON file. The package is MIT-licensed and classified for Education with Beta development status. Its documentation cautions that it may not catch plagiarism designed to evade detection and that a match does not establish that plagiarism occurred.