Infer vs Kythe
Infer
fbinfer.comKythe
kythe.ioSide by side
| Figure | Infer | Kythe |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | — |
| Free plan | Yes | — |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | — | — |
| Web | Yes | — |
| macOS | Yes | Yes |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| API | — | Yes |
| Self-hosted | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 1 | 0 |
| Spec score · Static Analysis Tools | 8.6 (#7) | 6.7 (#26) |
| Integrations | Infer documents integrations for Buck, cmake, Gradle, Make, Maven, Xcodebuild, xctool, and compilation databases. | Examples cover extraction with Bazel, CMake, Gradle, make, and compile_commands.json workflows. |
| License | The Infer repository states that Infer is MIT-licensed, while noting that enabling Java support may require GPL-licensed components. | The repository identifies its license as Apache-2.0. |
| Purpose | Infer is a static analysis tool that produces a list of potential bugs from Java or C/C++/Objective-C code. | Kythe is a pluggable, mostly language-agnostic ecosystem for building tools that work with code. |
Plans
In their own words
Infer
Infer is a static analysis tool that examines compiled Java, C, C++, Objective-C, and Erlang code and reports potential bugs before release. Its checks include null pointer problems, resource or memory leaks, coding conventions, unavailable APIs, and concurrency issues such as data races. Some analyses can follow an issue across multiple functions or methods and files. Pulse provides memory-safety analysis, while RacerD checks thread safety. Cost analysis estimates asymptotic function complexity for Java and C-family languages; Hack support is experimental, and Python, Rust, and Swift are not supported by that analysis. Infer captures compilation commands, analyzes the captured files, and writes reports that can be reviewed with `infer explore`; files that are not compiled are not analyzed. Integrations are documented for build tools including Buck, CMake, Gradle, Make, Maven, Xcodebuild, and xctool. It can be installed from binary releases, built from source, or run in Docker. The free plan costs nothing. Infer runs on Linux and macOS, with web and self-hosted options; Windows is not supported.